16 Blacks Break Color Barrier at South African School

Sixteen black children, freshly scrubbed and in prim new uniforms, marched nervously past riot police and a fence topped with razor wire here Thursday to desegregate a public primary school, smashing a racial barrier that has stood for more than a century.

The Potgietersrus Primary School was nearly empty, however, because most of its approximately 700 white students stayed home. Several parents angrily announced they were protesting the court-ordered integration of the whites-only school, while others said they feared bloodshed after weeks of rising tension and threats in this right-wing stronghold 155 miles northeast of Johannesburg.

About 20 white pupils defied the walkout, however, and 11-year-old Robin Garner stood in the entrance hall to warmly welcome the first blacks allowed to enroll since the school was built for white farmers’ children 104 years ago.

“I’m glad they’ve come,” she said excitedly. “They’re exactly the same as us, and they need the education.”

Her new black classmate, Thabang Chula, 10, firmly agreed. “They’re going to teach us like they teach the other children,” she said. “And they must treat us like they treat the other children.”

Resistance fell in the school auditorium as well. Two flags from the apartheid regime, symbols of sullen defiance since white minority rule was overturned by democratic elections nearly two years ago and a new national flag was introduced, flanked the stage until early Thursday. They soon lay furled on the dusty floor.

About 100 armed police officers, backed by dogs and armored vehicles, sealed the street outside the school. One white father threw his daughter’s bicycle toward reporters in anger, and several burly men milled about and glowered at the arriving black students, but no arrests or violence occurred.

Officials said police will be deployed as long as necessary to ensure the children’s safety. Aides also have been assigned to monitor any problems in class.

The desegregation dispute erupted in public last month when militant white parents physically blocked Magiliweni Alson Matukane, a black engineer and senior official in the provincial government, and his three children from entering the school. Backed by the government, he sued and won.

“The battle isn’t over,” Matukane said Thursday after enrolling his children. “Attitudes still must change.”

But peaceful resolution of the case, at least so far, is a victory for the government of President Nelson Mandela as it struggles to dismantle the crudely unequal school systems created for different races under apartheid.

A Supreme Court judge twice rejected claims by the school’s ruling body of Afrikaner parents that the country’s 1994 constitution allowed them to bar non-Afrikaners from attending to protect the “character and ethos” of the school.

“Others call it racism,” said Koos Nil, head of the school’s ruling body of parents. “We call it culture.”

Although Nil and other white parents insisted Thursday that they plan to move their children to private schools, several admitted privately that few such schools exist in the area and fees are far higher than the monthly charge equivalent to $15 at this state-supported institution. Government officials said the group would not be permitted to start a whites-only school.

At a news conference, Ngoako Ramatlhodi, the provincial premier, appealed to whites to bring their children back. “It would be a very sorry state of affairs if parents use their children as political cannon fodder,” he said.

Aaron Motsoaledi, director of education in the province, said many more black students will be enrolled if the missing children don’t return quickly. He said the province desperately needs 35,000 classrooms for 1.8 million black students. Many are forced to study and take exams under trees.