ON WEDNESDAY evening the student body at Potgietersrus primary school in the Northern Province of South Africa was 100 per cent white. By 10 a.m. yesterday it was 44 per cent black.
After a three week blockade and a Supreme Court battle the first 16 black children to enrol at the controversial all white school were able to enter without mishap yesterday morning, arriving on foot with their parents through a heavy cordon of police and a throng of up to loo local and foreign journalists. They found themselves in a school that was virtually empty.
While the white parents at the school backed down on threats to physically block the black children entering the school yesterday, it emerged that they had voted on Wednesday night to "advise" people not to send their children to school. A relatively small number of white children arrived for school and many of these where later removed by their parents.
A spokesman for the school board, Dr Mof Erasmus, said police had threatened to use violence against anybody protesting outside the school and that most parents were unwilling to expose their children to such threats. He denied claims that some white parents had intimidated other parents into removing their children from the school in a concerted boycott.
He felt, however, that up to half the parents in the school would remove their children in protest and send them to private schools. A small number of white men lingered silently near the school gate throughout the morning but made no attempt to interfere with the black people passing in and out.
The black children and their parents arrived after 7 a.m., not in convoy, as expected, but in small groups a few minutes apart. Most had already entered the school by the time the African National Congress provincial premier Mr Ngoako Ramatlhodi arrived with a group of Northern Province ministers and officials.
Addressing an impromptu press conference in the school, Mr Ramatlhodi said that a heavy police presence would be maintained "as long as necessary". There was, however, still a need for an agreed settlement to ensure the children's long term safety.
Following a telephone call from President Nelson Mandela on Wednesday, Mr Ramatlhodi said he was planning to meet today the school board and the leaders of the white right wing Conservative Party and Freedom Front. "We don't want to humiliate the White parents: we understand their fears," he said. "But they also need to understand that there are also aspirations, born of years of struggle, and they need to be met."
The chairman of the school board, Mr Koos Net, told journalists. Later he was heartened by Mr Mandela's involvement because "he is the only one who is serious about minority rights."