When School Codes and Culture Collide: An Evaluation of the Judgement of the South African Constitutional Court Pertaining to Cultural Symbols in Public Schools

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Culture is seen as the fourth pillar of sustainability. The challenge of culture is twofold; firstly, to form useful diversity between cultural groups and, secondly, to promote unity and commonality between individuals through cultural values. Jon Hawkes argues that culture represents many of the intangible aspects of a community's values and customs that are often ignored in the doings of government. He makes a case for the viewpoint that a society cannot be democratic without there being clear avenues for the expression of cultural community values. His arguments are equally applicable in the case of diversity in public schools. The policy of separate development of the previous South African government has brought about that the management bodies of public schools, as well as teachers, parents and learners in general, were not exposed to the customs and values of diverse cultural groups. In many cases the situation has changed drastically. Today it is not uncommon that the learner corps of a school is representative of the diverse South African population. This diversity poses new challenges, for instance where there is conflict between the implementation of codes of conduct of schools and the cultural values and customs of the learners of a particular school. In the presentation, I shall make a few remarks on the wearing of cultural symbols by learners in public schools as an expression or sign of legal pluralism and the South African government's responsibility to promote cultural sustainability in the public school sector. This will be done in the context of a recent judgement of the South African constitutional court in Pillay v KwaZulu-Natal MEC of Education (case no CCT 51/06 delivered on 5 October 2007) which dealt with the question whether a Hindu scholar should be allowed to wear a nose-stud in spite of the school's code of conduct prohibiting her to do so.

Stream: Cultural Sustainability

Paper: A paper has not yet been submitted.

Christa Rautenbach spent fourteen years in the employ of the Department of Justice, during which period she was involved as a prosecutor. Although she is an academic scholar since 1994, she is still involved in the practical side of law as an advocate of the High Court of South Africa and Commissioner of the Small Claims Court of Potchefstroom. Her principal area of interest is the relationship between the state and unofficial legal orders, and she is co-editor and co-writer of a textbook "Introduction to Legal Pluralism in South Africa" published by Lexis Nexis Butterworths (2006). She is also co-writer of "Customary Law of Succession and Inheritance" in Joubert WA (ed) The Law of South Africa published by Lexis Nexis Butterworths (2004) 223-254. Her current topic of research is the influence of international agreements on cultural and religious minorities, especially their non-state law, in the domestic legal system of South Africa. Since 2006, she is a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany. She is currently the project leader of the Constitution and Law project funded by the Konrad-Adenauer Foundation, and the project leader of a project entitled "Modern Day Impact of Religious Legal Systems in South Africa." She has published extensively on national and international level in this area of law, as well attended numerous national and international conferences where she delivered papers on related matters. She lectures in Legal Pluralism, Law of Succession and Administration of Estates and is the co-editor of the Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal. Since 2003, she is the treasurer of the Society of Law Teachers of Southern Africa. She is an evaluator of the National Research Foundation of South Africa and an evaluator of the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Commission.