On 25 March 2025, members of the parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Basic Education (Committee) pitched up at Pretoria High School for Girls (PHSG) for a “site inspection”.
Apparently, they arrived at 16h00 for an appointment that was made for 11h00.
The details of how badly the Committee treated the principal, management and the School Governing Body is set out in vivid detail by Richard Wilkinson in an article last week in the Daily Friend, “The ANC-EFF’s relentless assault on Pretoria High School for Girls continues”.
Wilkinson’s article tabulates the names of the Committee’s 11 members. He also mentions that the two DA members were not in attendance because they had to deal with “personal crises”.
Essentially, the Committee seemed intent on doing the Gauteng Department of Education’s dirty work of maligning the principal and besmirching the good name of the school. This dreadful saga has been going on for nearly a year.
The said enquiry took the form of aggressive questioning of the principal, Phillipa Erasmus, by the delegation. It was a rehash of the ghastly and traumatising events that took place at the school in 2024, with the encouragement of the Gauteng Department of Education. The awful events and the trauma inflicted on the PHSG community are captured in meticulous detail in Wilkinson’s article and essays 15 to 22 on the saga on his substack at https://www.school-capture.com/essays.
The chair of the School Governing Body, Craig Hezlett, has said that he could not explain the extreme hostility of the attack on Mrs Erasmus. “I have never witnessed something to this extent in my life… there was a motive and specific narrative involved here.”
The embarrassingly hostile process adopted by the parliamentarians was distinctly racist in tone. The group made no attempt to hide its animus, warning the school to stop acting with its “white privilege”, because it would “bring [the school] back down”.
The haranguing of Mrs Erasmus by the Committee seemed to be a none-too-subtle warning that she and PHSG were still in the educational authorities’ sights.
The school community − SGB, lawyers, and other people representing pupils and staff − essentially humiliated the GDE and others who, inter alia, challenged disinformation that appeared in the media.
The Committee, however, has embarrassed itself and shamed Parliament as an institution, because it felt compelled to formally and publicly reveal what it was doing. It issued a press release!
The Committee’s press release was issued on 26 March, the day after the confrontation. On Friday 21 March, a member of the Committee asked to have a meeting at the school, which was purportedly a “standard oversight visit for a number of schools”, from 12h00 to 13h30, on Tuesday 25 March. On the day before the meeting, the principal was told that she had to make a “presentation” about the school.
On the morning of the meeting, she was advised that the time of the visit would be brought forward to 11h00. The Committee arrived five hours late, at 16h00.
The press statement is more revealing than its drafters intended. It certainly gives credence to submissions that this was a malicious exercise, done for nefarious reasons.
“The Portfolio Committee on Basic Education expressed grave concerns about the language and admissions policies at some of the schools it visited in Gauteng yesterday, including Pretoria High School for Girls.
“Committee Chairperson Ms Joy Maimela said the committee conducted an oversight visit to Pretoria High School for Girls yesterday. Issues of language, admission and racial incidents at the school were highlighted. “The school has previously been in the media about race-related incidents. Some of the incidents are still being investigated, they are ongoing.
“The school speaks about multilingualism and the importance of home language. However, the school only offers English, Afrikaans and Sepedi. They are not prioritising other indigenous languages.”
Three issues instantly raise suspicions that this statement has malicious intent.
First, the statement says the Committee is concerned about language policies at some of the Gauteng schools it visited, “including” PHSG. Why make reference only to PHSG at all?
Second, the statement makes specific mention of the school having had “(i)ssues of language, admission and racial incidents…” and having previously been in the media about race-related incidents … (some of which) are still being investigated, they are ongoing.” But the Committee said earlier in the media statement that the reason for the visit to PHSG (and other Gauteng schools) was the language policies of these schools. Why did the Committee make snide insinuations that these spurious allegations had anything to do with the language policy?
Third, government high schools are obliged to offer two official languages as subjects. A glance at a random selection of government high schools in Johannesburg and Pretoria reveals that most schools offer one official language as the medium of instruction, and two additional official languages. PHSG is no different from the norm. There is no obligation, nor is it likely to be practical or affordable, to cater for a range of official languages which the Committee seems to expect the school to “prioritise”.
The Committee chair asked the principal if the school offered Afrikaans and said that it should be done away with − a somewhat strange question to address to a school situated in Pretoria.
Fourthly, why was the policy of having English as the medium of instruction, and Afrikaans or Sepedi being offered as additional subjects, a problem? For example, Pretoria Boys’ High School offers the same choice. Is this also a problem? PHSG was the only Quintile 5 school visited – which is to say, the least subsidised, fee-paying category of school. These would largely be well-established, suburban government schools.
The government website describes the role of Portfolio Committees, which are permanent committees, as follows:
“Portfolio CommitteesThe National Assembly (NA) appoints from among its members a number of Portfolio Committees to shadow the work of the various national government departments.The role of Portfolio Committees is to:
- consider Bills,
- deal with departmental budget votes,
- oversee the work of the department they are responsible for, and enquire and make recommendations about any aspect of the department, including its structure, functioning and policy.
The work of Committees is not restricted to government. They may investigate any matter of public interest that falls within their area of responsibility. There is a Portfolio Committee for each national Ministry and its associated government department/s.”
In other words, the function of portfolio committees is to oversee the performance of national government departments.
It is very difficult to come to any conclusion other than that the Committee is engaged in a party-partisan charade, presumably to help the increasingly disgraced GDE deal with the pushback the school community exercised on the grubby process that GDE officials tried to use to taint PHSG.
Perhaps, the crucial question is why our education authorities want to destroy an institution that achieves remarkable results and equips its student body for real possibilities for success?
Wilkinson has already referred to this, but it bears repeating: In 2024 PHSG achieved a Matric pass rate of 99%, with 90% of girls receiving results that will allow them to study for a bachelor’s degree at university – nearly double that of the national average. The school achieved a total of 359 subject distinctions.
And the beneficiaries of these extraordinary results are all girls and nearly 90% are black.
Perhaps the answer is as simple as a resentment of success.
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