The KwaZulu-Natal education department and the Human Rights Commission (HRC) have launched an investigation into racism and poor transformation at KwaZulu-Natal's former Model C and House of Delegates schools.
This comes after complaints from parents and the HRC about racial maltreatment allegedly being meted out to black students at mainly former white schools, including inflating school fees to keep them away.
The department has approved a working document to guide the investigators, unearthing acts of subliminal racism "from the point of view of transformation".
Education school management chief director Dr Mike Lotter said the department had sent regulations to schools to encourage them to be representative, but "we found that this was not having an impact".
Now an investigation into a number of schools is under way. Durban High School (DHS) is among the schools whose acts of alleged racism prompted parents to ask the department of education to intervene.
Two DHS Grade 11 and 12 Muslim boys are facing a disciplinary inquiry for wearing a beard at school.
Their parents have accused DHS of violating their religious rights. The learners' lawyers have challenged as "unconstitutional, overboard and disproportionate" DHS's code of conduct which says "boys must be clean-shaven".
In a hot correspondence between the school and the lawyers, school governing body chairman Alec Mctavish said the parent in question had been given a copy of the code at the time his sons were admitted to the school.
"At that time your client could then have made an election to place his sons in a school which allowed the growing of facial hair.," McTavish said.
The school has refused to relax the code, saying it would "impact on the discipline of the school and ultimately on the quality of the learning process".
Education Minister Prof Gabriel Ndabandaba has intervened in the DHS matter.
Other schools which triggered the joint inquiry include Utrecht High School where a coloured boy hit his fellow African learner with a chair two weeks ago. However, the school has downplayed the incident as a "little fight", with principal Henracus Truter saying if had happened 10 minutes later, it would have had nothing to do with the school. The police are investigating the matter.
Pioneer Hoerskool in Vryheid has been accused of bussing in white students from outside before allegedly shutting its admission doors on black learners. Other suspect schools are in the Newcastle, Ladysmith, Empangeni and Durban areas.
Education spokesman Mandla Msibi said some schools were using Afrikaans as a barrier to block black learners.
