White and black primary school children in South Africa have been sitting at separate tables in a classroom photo, sparking anger among parents.
The picture shows 18 white pupils sharing a long combined table while a handful of black students sit behind at the corner of the room.
The photo, taken by a teacher at Laerskool Schweizer-Reneke kindergarten, was shared on WhatsApp group by the pupil’s teacher.
Then, it was shared to all parents of the children to show them how their first day at school was going.
The photo of the kids, who are aged between four and five, reflected South Africa’s dark Apartheid past of oppression and racial segregation.
A mother of one of the black students told TimesLIVE: “This was meant to be an exciting day for me but it’s not. I am pi**** off.
“All I saw was messages from the white parents saying ‘dankie, dankie’ [thank you on WhatsApp] but no one was saying anything about the separation of the learners.”
The image went viral on social media and has seen the school criticized for letting such segregation to occur.
ANC campaign manager and activist Mcebo Dlamini wrote on Facebook: “What is most provoking about this image is not that black kids are ostracized from white kids, that is common in our supposedly post-apartheid Africa.
“Rather what becomes painful is that there are black people who still insist that racism has ended and who think that blacks and white can have peaceful relations that do not have undertones of racism.
“This is impossible so long as white people have power, what therefore is needed is to change the existing power dynamics such that black people can have dignity.
“You can take your kids to the whitest schools in the country but so long as the black majority is poor, your kids will always be reminded that they are black and therefore inferior.”
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