AN AFRIKANER school in South Africa's Northern Province faces possible closure after parents voted to defy a government ultimatum and continued to prevent black children from entering the school.
The provincial government plans to take the school's governing body to the Supreme Court in Pretoria on Monday for practising racial segregation. A spokesman for the province said the school at Potgietersrus, near Pietersburg, could lose its state grant or be closed down.
On Wednesday, the ANC-controlled provincial government extended a deadline to allow parents to reconsider their stance. However, a parents' meeting on Thursday evening voted to continue the blockade.
The row began last week when a group of white men in khaki clothing, the traditional garb of right-wing Afrikaners, prevented three black children from entering the school for the new school year. The children, all from one family, have since moved out of their house after racist graffiti was sprayed on the walls.
Their father, Mr Alson Matukane, said 70 other black families from the town were sending their children to a school in, Pietersburg, 50 km away, because the local school would not admit them.
A school spokesman said the school had no room for the three children and that parents were concerned to maintain the Afrikaans traditions of the school. The provincial government countered that there was room at the school.
According to the Johannesburg Star, most of the 200 parents at the meeting were clad in khaki. It quoted one parent saying: "it will be an uphill battle but we must fight. God warns us in the Bible about mixing race. It is only the communist government who wants this. Under no circumstances will my children mix with blacks."
While President Mandela's government has outlawed racial segregration in education, white privilege still survives in many "Model C" schools, which were handed over to parental control in the last days of apartheid but retain state funding. Many urban "Model C" schools have become more integrated, but all-white Afrikaner schools survive in many rural areas because black parents are afraid to present their children for registration.
Meanwhile, the National Party, the former party of apartheid and Afrikaner supremacy, is attempting to relaunch itself as a new, centre right, non-racial party. The party leader and deputy president, Mr F.W. de Klerk, officially opened new party headquarters in Pretoria yesterday and outlined a new Christian Democrat survival strategy for the party.
Mr Roelf Meyer, who is resigning as Minister for Constitutional Affairs, is to become the party's first general secretary. There had been speculation last year that Mr Meyer might form his own centrist party or even join the ANC. His decision to accept Mr De Klerk's offer is seen as a significant boost to the National Party's effort to transform itself.