00:00It's the beginning of a new school year in South Africa, but we're off to a rough start.
00:05Protesters in the third largest city of Durban claim that some immigrant children are getting
00:10preferential treatment at a local school over South African children, raising some serious
00:17allegations against foreigners.
00:19The majority of the foreign nationals in the country, they are bad people.
00:24One percent is good, the rest, they need to go back.
00:26Welcome to the flip side.
00:29There have been some angry scenes outside Addington Primary School in Durban, where some
00:34local parents argue that their kids were refused a spot to make space for the enrolment of immigrant children.
00:42But according to the law, every child in South Africa does have a constitutional right to
00:49a place at a public school, whether they are South African citizens or not.
00:54So they have to accept the children when the children apply to be enrolled at the school.
00:59So the school can't discriminate against immigrant children.
01:04Now, this is obviously not welcome news for anti-immigrant groups like March and March and
01:09Operation Dudula, who say that there are too many foreign nationals in South Africa.
01:15There is a serious risk that there could be further marginalization of foreign-born people in South Africa,
01:22particularly in less affluent communities.
01:25Foreigners think that they're going to take South Africa and make South Africans second-class citizens in their own country.
01:31We are waiting as South Africans because we are conscious enough to now understand what they're doing to our country.
01:35The 2022 census shows that only 4% of South Africa's population are foreign-born.
01:41And of all 14.5 million students in South Africa, only 250,000 are foreign-born.
01:49That's less than two in a hundred learners.
01:52The situation, however, may vary between rural areas and cities.
01:57South Africa has been urbanizing quite rapidly since the advent of democracy.
02:02With freedom of movement, we've seen a lot of people moving into cities.
02:07We are not building enough schools to cater for the children.
02:11We need a lot more schools and a lot more teachers.
02:15Meanwhile, in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, where Addington Primary School is located after all,
02:21that ratio of foreign students to South African students is 1 in 200.
02:27To be fair, though, the circumstances at this particular school are indeed somewhat different,
02:33where there's steep competition to get any placement at all.
02:37We know that about a third of children in this school, Addington Primary, are foreign-born.
02:45That's exceptionally high.
02:47So I think it's important to note that Addington is not a typical South African primary school.
02:53And it's the kind of school that I think a lot of parents, South African parents,
02:57would consider better in terms of its educational quality.
03:00As soon as you create a competition for the different groupings of people,
03:04then you're going to run into problems.
03:06And let's also bear in mind, please, that the kids at Addington Primary will have to process
03:12the considerable stress of witnessing these fiery protests outside their school,
03:17the one place that's meant to be a safe haven.
03:21We can't expose young people to violence between adults because they should be focusing on enjoying school.
03:27What has happened in the school is traumatic for the staff and the children,
03:34whether they're born in South Africa or not born in South Africa.
03:37It would be very traumatic.
03:38I would prefer that the adults stalk one side and leave the children to be children
03:44and attend school and participate in the school activities.
03:47The bottom line is, yes, the government could always do more to level out the playing field.
03:53But the bulk of these protests are nothing but a thinly veiled attempt
03:58at hiding South Africa's reckoning with its xenophobia problem.
04:02And that's the flip side.
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