PARENTS of children attending an all white school in the northern Transvaal are to tonight whether they will continue to prevent black pupils from studying alongside theirs children.
The government of the Northern Province, dominated by President Nelson Mandela's African National Congress, has said it will shut the Afrikaner school if right wing parents do not end their blockade. Yesterday it extended an earlier deadline to shut the school at Potgietersrus, nears. Pietersburg, to give parents a chance to meet and reconsider.
"If they do not voluntarily decide tomorrow to allow access to all children, we will proceed with court action," a provincial spokesman said yesterday. "It will be in the interest of all parties if they decide to allow access to other races in that school."
The blockade began last week with parents guarding the school, gates to prevent the entry of three black pupils. Although Potgietersrus is a traditional right wing stronghold, the parents and school board denied yesterday that they were motivated by racism. School officials said that the school was full and that parents also wanted to maintain the school's Afrikaans language tradition. English speaking white children had also been turned away.
The ANC, however, praised the provincial government's stand. "Decades of inequality and neglect need to be reversed. Resistance to these changes will only exacerbate the current problems in education at a time when we need to be working together to find solutions", the ANC said.
The stand off has raised again the continuing racial imbalance in South Africa's education system. Under apartheid, far more was spent on educating the white minority than the black majority. The former National Party government allowed many schools to opt out of the state system before the 1994 elections.
These "model" schools, although state funded, are in effect controlled by parents. Although integration has been relatively smooth in urban areas, many of these schools are still privileged, predominantly white schools, while township schools are black, poor and very overcrowded.