Trends in the desegregation of former Whites-only state schools in Pretoria (South Africa): a time-space investigation

ABSTRACT

The school is a confined interpersonal contact space for students and lends itself to the social integration of mixed-race populations. However, the success of an integration process is, amongst other factors, linked to the racial numerical mix of a desegregating school. The literature on school desegregation in South Africa lacks empirical evidence that would support or contradict popular views on demographic trends in the desegregation process. This article investigates the changing racial profiles of former Whites-only state schools (referred to here as FMC schools) in Pretoria over three decades. The key findings are: (1) the number of Black (=non-White) learners in FMC schools in Pretoria constantly increased and surpassed that of White learners shortly before 2015; (2) the number of Black learners in primary FMC schools constantly increased faster than that in secondary schools, and (3) after a brief period of school desegregation, White and Black learners re-polarized again into White and Black school clusters. These findings suggest that social integration is not the primary motive for registering at FMC schools but that it is driven by access to quality education and further streamed by choices of association.

KEYWORDS:

• Whites-only state schools
• South Africa
• desegregation
• trends
• time-space analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Reference to ‘race’ is a sensitive issue. To avoid confusion the four official race groups in South Africa are referenced in this article as Africans, Coloureds, Indian/Asians, and Whites while ‘Blacks’ is used as a collective term for the three non-White groups. In 2021, the estimated population of South Africa was 60.1 million with (black) Africans representing 80.7 %, Coloureds 8.8 %, Whites 7.8 % and Indian/Asians 2.7 % of the total population (Source: Statistica Research Department (https://www.statistica.com/statistics) accessed 01/07/22).

2. Examples include: Christie (1991), Chisholm et al. (1998), Swart et al. (2002), Fiske and Ladd (2004), Soudien et al. (2004), Sayed and Soudien (2005), Brown (2006), Tihanyi (2006), Nkomo & Vandeyar (2008), Tabane and Human-Vogel (2010), Zuma (2010), Grootboom (2012), Christie and McKinney (2017).

3. These are the towns on the border of the former homeland of Bophuthatswana and include: GaRankuwa, Soshanguve, Mabopane, Winterveld, Suurman, Temba and Hammanskraal.

4. There is an opinion (Gruijters et al., 2022) that a facility should only be considered ‘desegregated’ once it closely reflects the total racial demography of the country. However, this is a misconception since ‘desegregation’ expresses an optimum possibility of equal interaction and not the count of entropy.