Pretoria Girls’ High Faces Protest From Black Girls Over Racist Hair Policies

Lately one may see floods of comments on Facebook and other social media platforms by South Africans as the school over there have a policy that is not acceptable by many students.

It is alleged a prestigious high school has racist hair policies, but protests are being seen across several schools in the country.

The start was simple. A group of young black girls from Pretoria Girls’ High protested the policy in their school. A video footage shared on Instagram shows a 13-year-old Zulaikha Patel in a tense standoff with private security guards with the help of her fellow schoolmates. All were yelling, “take us all, they’re going to arrest us.”

The students said teachers allege their hair is exotic and the Afros needed to be tamed.

Patel said, “The issue of my hair has been a thing that’s followed me my entire life, even in Primary I was told my hair is not natural, it’s exotic, my Afro was not wanted or anything like that and then the issue followed me to High School.”

Pretoria Girls’ Code of Conduct meanwhile is not found mentioning Afros in specific, but it of course lay out rules for general appearance.

The school was founded in 1902 and during the apartheid it was for all white students. Since 1990 it started taking admission to all races.