Building citizenship in fragmented societies: The challenges of deracialising and integrating schools in post-Apartheid South Africa

Soon after the collapse of Apartheid, the new government in South Africa set about restructuring the educational system, which was previously segregated by race, class and language. This paper argues that the deracialisation and integration of schools in South Africa has been difficult to achieve and as a process, uneven in different parts of the country and in types of schools.The paper reports on a study conducted in the Limpopo province of South Africa (formerly, Northern Transvaal), which explores the extent to which schools that formally catered exclusively for the white Afrikaans-speaking community are deracialising and laying the foundations for a new democratic citizenship. It shows that some schools have merely complied with provisions under the constitution that access may not be denied on the grounds of race, status or religion and have created parallel learning streams so that there are virtually two schools within one institution—one ‘school’ that teaches the curriculum in English to predominantly black students and the other, that teaches virtually the same curriculum to almost exclusively white Afrikaans-speaking students. In other cases, where linguistic and cultural integration appear to have been achieved, the study shows that such ‘integration’ amounts to little more than assimilation and accommodation and that the true challenge of turning diversity into a productive resource remains.