‘ We ’ re just window dressing Nelson’: Mandela Foundation snubs top girls school
It says it was ignored by St Anne’s even though it was invited to help formulating transformation process
The Nelson Mandela Foundation has withdrawn from the transformation process it codesigned for St Anne s Diocesan ’
College in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, saying it was overlooked and ignored.
It became involved after a group of former pupils in June compiled a 6,000-word public document alleging instutionalised racism at the top private school and talked about harsh experiences to which the pupils of colour had been subjected over the years.
In a letter dated November 25, the foundation s CEO Sello ’
Hatang said: It is with great
“regret that I must inform you that the Nelson Mandela Foundation has decided to withdraw from the transformation process which our two institutions co-designed for your school.”
Hatang confirmed to Sunday Times Daily that the letter was authentic, and that the foundation had pulled out of the process with St Anne s.
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Hatang says in the letter it took several months to agree on terms of engagement and to finally sign the memorandum of understanding (MOU).
For the foundation it constitutes both the mandate and the warrant for the work we committed to doing with you. It is not something which should be signed, put in a filing cabinet and forgotten about,” Hatang said.
He accused the school of breaching the MOU signed between the two institutions.
I am sure you will appreciate “the impossible position the foundation is put in when its team members attend joint operations committee (JOC) meetings and are simply informed about decisions which have been taken and processes which have been initiated. What this communicates to us is that we are being co-opted into an agenda that we don t
’ have any meaningful say on, and that the work we bring to the process is merely window dressing, he said in his letter.
” Hatang questioned how the foundation could be partners with the school on a transformation process and not be consulted on the scope, positioning, mandate and selection process for the new head of transformation role.
He accused the school of ignoring a carefully negotiated and workshopped four- phase transformation process.
I could go on, but let me just “say that, by its actions, the school has rendered the MOU redundant and compromised the trust which is fundamental to these complex and difficult processes. ”
He further accused the school of ignoring a survey the foundation conducted, and needed feedback from the school community. The integrity of surveys “ such as this hinges on participants receiving appropriate and timely feedback. To hear from the foundation “project team that at the JOC meeting on November 23, the school would still not commit to a feedback mechanism tells me as many other things which have happened in the past few months that in — practice the foundation s role is ’ not the one defined in the MOU.
He concluded that through many hard months of work, the foundation project team has enabled the school to acknowledge the enormous challenge of institutionalised racism which it faces, and to understand the scope and the depth of the transformation work required.
He said they will be informing their various stakeholders, including the Archbishop of the Anglican Church, that they have withdrawn.
Please feel free to make my letter to you available to the school s stakeholders,” he ’ wrote.
According to a parent who has two girls at the school but didn t want to be named fearing ’ that her daughters might be victimised, the school, institutionally and culturally, has not changed.
They are still stuck in the apartheid era,” the parent said.
He said black parents formed a committee and proposed the Nelson Mandela Foundation to the school as part of the process.
To our surprise, the foundation has been frustrated to the extent that they withdrew from the process,” he said.
He highlighted that none of the school s academic teachers ’ are black, and black staff at the school are employed only as cooks and cleaners.
No black person in that “school is in management or an academic teacher,” he said.