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One of the main purposes of an investigation into a plane crash – apart from bringing closure to friends and relatives of those who may have died – is to detail exactly what went wrong and then to make recommendations for changes to ensure a similar occurrence doesn’t happen in future.
One would have thought that, in dealing with allegations of racism in a fractured, angry and hurting society like South Africa, the need for transparency would be as important as that in an air crash probe… with the same going for the need to determine what happened and put in place measures to deal with racism.
Yet the Gauteng department of education, which no doubt spent a considerable sum of taxpayer money in commissioning a law firm to probe allegations of racism at Pretoria High School for Girls this year, is keeping the investigation report under wraps.
It has not even provided it to the school principal or the school governing body (SGB).
The SGB was forced to take the department to court to force the release of the report.
Although a judge ruled the matter was not urgent, he did make a telling comment: there was “no logic” in the department not providing it to the school.
In the absence of transparency from the department, then, we are free to speculate that the secrecy might well be because no racism was found.
That would blow another racism witch-hunt out of the water, which would not suit either the Gauteng ANC, nor the province’s premier, Panyaza Lesufi, who are tilting at the windmills of racism left, right and centre.
False complaints of racism do immense damage because they reduce the impact of real cases.
But that’s likely to be less important to the department than scoring populist, revolutionary points.
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