When they say they can't find black talent

I started teaching at Claremont High School (CHS) in Cape Town in 2012. It was a new school (established in 2011) with carte blanche in hiring. I discovered them in an article published in the Mail and Guardian and I decided to send an email on a whim and they responded. I didn’t do a PGCE but I had volunteered in schools throughout my studies and I was a Mandela-Rhodes Scholar nogal! I had a masters in education. I know CHS took a chance on me. And I’m glad they did because I saw the cracks in the system and that hiring can be made with concessions. 

I taught English for three years at CHS. I left when I realised there would be no room for me to grow into leadership. In the third year of the school’s existence they hired a disproportionate number of white teachers placing black and coloured teachers in the minority even though the school body was black and coloured children. The message was clear: white people are the faces of authority. It was easier to say I’m moving to Joburg because my partner is in Joburg. I probably should have stayed but I didn’t have the energy to fight to be seen as worthy for promotion given the kind of work I did beyond my teaching responsibilities. 

I applied and was offered a teaching position at St Mary’s school in Johannesburg (2015-2016). They also took a chance on me. I had too much experience for what they were looking for but a black English teacher made them look progressive. My sister told me without skipping a beat: you’ll be unhappy there. She wasn’t too far from the truth. I was a junior English teacher which I accepted because after three years at CHS I wanted something light with little heavy lifting. I spent my first year observing which gave people the wrong impression that I was quiet. I carried on blogging and got involved in extra-murals. I spent the second year getting more vocal and more involved. That’s where the problems started: when I had an opinion about the curriculum and the black girls began confiding in me about what they were experiencing. By the time I left some of my colleagues had stopped talking to me. I had written a blog post about heritage day and people’s feelings were hurt. I decided to let go of the issue because I had no critical mass to support me in spite of the conversations I had with the head of the school. I left and I took a job at the University of Pretoria and did my PhD. 

Over the years I applied to schools for shits and giggles and every time I felt invisible at UP. I wanted to experiment and see what would happen when a black woman with a Masters degree, leadership and volunteering work, teaching experience applied to prestigious schools. Just to see if they would grant me an interview. Here’s a list of the schools where I applied (the ones I can remember; this is not chronological):

• Parktown Girls High School
• Reddam House College, Waterfall
• Redhill (Sandton)
• St Andrew’s College, Grahamstown (they granted me an interview: a blog post for another day)
• German School in Cape Town 
• Roedean School (SA)
• Jeppe High School for Boys (they granted me an interview: a blog post for another day)
• Michaelhouse (twice: they re-advertised and never responded to either of my emails)

I should mention that in each case above I had the experience they were asking for. A technical matter might have been my SACE certification (South African Council of Educators): I had used an annual certificate I had to apply for through the school which I had done during my time at CHS and St Mary’s (a span of five years). In some instances they wanted someone with HOD experience which is exclusionary because few black teachers are promoted to become HODs in both private and white public schools (I can count the ones I know on one hand). Others would say experience in an IEB school would be an advantage which is code because this limits the opportunity to people who are already in the network. 

This is a garbled and summarized version of the story. In between all of this I was involved in a variety of work such as facilitating workshops in schools, writing publicly, attending summer schools abroad, starting a podcast, starting a girls school in Khayelitsha, starting NPCs with friends and just being an eager beaver black woman: but no one poached me. No head of a school coaxed me to join their prestigious school. And I carried on with my life. Stayed at the University of Pretoria and taught the next generation of teachers (where there were plenty black students in the PGCE classes I taught; by the way). I attended meetings at the DBE, attended conferences, wrote open letters, spoke on radio and eNCA and lived my life. 

So when they say they can’t find black talent to lead their schools, tell them they are lying. When they say they can’t find black women with the right experience or the right qualifications, tell them they are lying. They have deliberately overlooked people like me. I don’t think of myself as exceptional. There are many talented black young professionals who would consider teaching as a career but because of the experiences in their own schools they never considered teaching as an option for a variety of reasons: the primary being the trauma they experienced at the hands of white teachers. 

I could say more about the hiring practices of white teachers without my experience. I could say more about dodgy hiring of teachers behind the guise of SGB posts which are not used to transform schools but rather to further the project of keeping Model C schools as white as possible. Perhaps I’m asking you to read between the lines and make your own conclusions. If you are a parent perhaps ask why your child has never been taught by a black teacher. If you are a student, ask your teachers why there aren’t any or many black teachers in the staff room. 

To heads of private schools and model C schools: take responsibility for the the actions you took to exclude black people from key positions in your schools. Especially those whom you deliberately ignored. Go back to your inbox and count the number of black applicants you ignored or turned down. Stop lying and saying you can’t find black talented people in Africa. 

This image is a visual representation of my experience.