FIGHT THE POWER
I AM FREE TO BE ME
RESPECT THAT
By: Zanele Ntuli
Meet the Pretoria High School for Girls
and Zulaikha Patel
Section #Young Profiles
It started as any other day: the
Pretoria High School for Girls learners,
teachers’, parents were preparing to
ring in spring with the annual Spring
Feté hosted by the school ~How the day
ended was definitely not envisaged by
anyone. The day left a bitter taste in
some people's mouth and at the
forefront of the activity was a young
lady with a nicely combed Afro,
Zulaikha Patel.
Many of us watched the shared video
on social media where Zulaikha and
several of her classmates were
shouting ‘Take us all… They want to
arrest us Take us all’. Hawu manje why
the shouting? These young girls in
their school uniform why are they
being arrested? bayenzeni besifuna
ukwazi.
What we would later learn is that
Zulaikha and her classmates were
unhappy. They were unhappy about the
school's hair policy that prohibited the
young ladies from doing certain
hairstyles and displaying their natural
hair in a certain way. The school's hair
policy serves as a guideline to what is
appropriate hair to adorn their natural
hair. The girls had had enough of being
discriminated against because of their
hair: what resulted was an explosion
never seen before at the conservative
high school.
On that Feté day, the ladies had had
enough of it all and used the
opportunity of having a crowd to put a
spotlight on their plight at the school.
The policy is an attack on their
identity as black girls, their crowns as
African Princesses.
South Africa watched in horror and
anger as the girls’ retold stories of
how they avoided certain teachers at
the school as they would make nasty
comments about the state of the girls’
hair or throw a comb towards the
learners for them to use it and ‘fix’
their hair. Tsk tsk tsk....
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