KZN school to be investigated for alleged religious intolerance

President of the religious body, the South African Hindu Maha Sabha, Ashwin Trikamjee says the organisation will not allow religious intolerance in schools to be overlooked.

This after allegations of discrimination surfaced at Drakensberg Secondary, at Escourt in KwaZulu-Natal, after two Hindu pupils were asked to remove their red Luxmi prayer strings, usually worn on the wrist or cover it up during school hours.

The matter was reported to the South African Hindu Maha Sabha for investigation.

Trikamjee says the principles of the constitution in relation to religious rights must be upheld at schools.

“We’ve written to the Department of Education as well, as soon as we get a response from them, and I’m sure there’s going to be a substantive response, but we are not going to let it lie – as one of those instances; “oh sorry we, it shouldn’t have happened, we apologising”. That’s not going to be acceptable to us. I feel that the time may well come where when you get perpetrators who are deliberately flouting these principles that are enshrined in our constitution, then we must seriously consider laying criminal charges against them.”

Meanwhile, Head of Communications for the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education, Muzi Mahlambi says the department has allocated officials to investigate the matter.

“Immediately we engaged our local officials to be attending to the matter. Our posture to the whole matter is that we should continue with our advocacy, with our education until we get it right. You can’t be punished for belonging to a particular religion. We also are not trigger happy in terms of dealing with those that are somehow making mistakes in interpreting how this should be handled. We are wary when we correct you and then we observe whether was it a deliberate thing or it was out of ignorance and stuff like that.”