School ignores migrant order
An immigrant child has been out of school for a year after Bodibe Secondary School in Mahikeng refused to enroll him because he does not have the requisite documents.
His parents received a letter from the school on January 8 saying: “This serves to confirm the school is unable to register [name of child] due to lack of basic documentation of learner registration by his father. Noncitizens.”
The child’s father, Paul Mpofu, is Zimbabwean and does not have documents giving him the legal right to live in South Africa. The child was born in Zimbabwe. He was nine years old when the family moved to SA in 2010. He completed grades two to seven at Matlaba Primary School and grades 8 and 9 at Bodibe Intermediate. But the school refused to take him for grade 10 in January.
Mpofu said that after he read a GroundUp article quoting Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi saying in October that every child needed to go to school regardless of documentation, he went back to Bodibe Intermediate. The school still would not take his son.
Mpofu said he had also tried in May after Eyewitness News reported that Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga had said schools should not refuse migrant pupils entry, nor remove them if they did not have documents.
GroundUp could not get a response from department of basic education spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga. He did not answer his landline or cellphone.
An e-mail was sent to him on November 26. On November 27, GroundUp was advised through the switchboard to e-mail Terence Khala, who also did not respond. The e-mail was copied to
In a text message on November 28, Mhlanga said: “Please resend because I never received your e-mail.”
He provided the same e-mail address GroundUp used to send the first e-mail. The reporter forwarded the questions, but he did not respond.
GroundUp e-mailed and phoned the Northern Cape provincial education department on Monday and yesterday, but wastold the spokesperson would be in the office next week.
The Bodibe Secondary School principal did not answer his phone on Monday. GroundUp sent him a copy of the letter he used to bar the child from school on Whatsapp on Monday with some questions.
He read it but did not respond. Ngqabutho Nicholas of the African Diaspora Forum said that in January, the organisation planned to “embark on a project that monitors schools provincially and nationally … to investigate if what the minister of home affairs instructed schools [to do] is being implemented”. – Republished from GroundUp.org.za