Schweizer-Reneke teacher files court papers demanding her job back

Suspended Laerskool Schweizer-Reneke teacher Elana Barkhuizen and trade union Solidarity have filed an urgent application for her to be reinstated.

The papers were filed on Wednesday in the Labour Court in Johannesburg.

In her application, Barkhuizen called for the court to rule that the decision by the school, the North West department of education and provincial MEC Sello Lehari to suspend her be declared unlawful and that she be allowed to immediately return to work.

Barkhuizen's suspension was announced on January 10 by Lehari, a day after she shared a picture she allegedly took of grade R learners at the school on a parents-teachers WhatsApp group. The image, which later went viral on social media, caused an uproar as it appeared that the four black learners in the class had been seated separately from their white classmates.

In her papers, Barkhuizen alleged that the school's headmaster had informed her of her immediate suspension with pay on January 10 2019, exactly five minutes before Lehari had stepped on to the podium at the school and publicly made the announcement.

Barkhuizen said she was not informed of the school’s intentions prior to the suspension, nor was she given an opportunity to reply. She stressed that the email notification she received the following day again informing her of the suspension did not contain any reasons as to why she had been placed on suspension.

"The MEC has no right and/or powers to form part of any decision to suspend me, and certainly had no right and/or the power to announce my suspension on a public platform and thereby setting in motion a sequence of events that has caused great harm for various parties, including the learners harm, which continues to persist to date," she said in the papers.

Barkhuizen was arguing that, as she was appointed by the school governing body and not the department of education, Lehari had no jurisdiction to suspend her.

She further explained that the class where the photograph was taken was not hers but she had simply stood in for her colleague, who was attending to a parent at the time.

According to Barkhuizen, the first person to raise a complaint about the picture was a parent of one of the black learners in the class.

Barkhuizen said she had first spoken to the parent earlier that morning as he had enquired about a 10% discount on school fees, which she had explained no longer existed. The parent was displeased.

After sending the pictures, she received a call from the same parent.

She said the parent called "expressing a clear irritation with what he referred to as a separation of his child and other black learners from the white learners".

Barkhuizen said she tried to explain that this was not the case, adding that the children were moved around during the course of the day depending on the activities under way and the children's needs.

"My explanation again came to naught. [The parent] unfortunately continued with his admonishment … culminating in me advising him to call the headmaster as I was busy with orientation," Barkhuizen said.

The headmaster later informed her that he had received a complaint. After consultation with the headmaster and the school governing body chairperson, Barkhuizen said both understood the explanation given by her and her colleague, and said they would support them and find a means to address the complaint.

She, however, was suspended the following day.

Barkhuizen pointed out that she and her colleague had, on the two days prior to the school’s opening, invited parents to the school where, among other things, the teachers had informed them of the layout of the class.

She said that at the time, none of the parents had expressed displeasure at how she and Olivier intended to conduct their classes.

The teacher, who has been at the school since 2017, said being branded a racist who  needed to be dealt with through an immediate suspension had caused harm to her.

Lehari's office has yet to reply.