Racial tensions resurface in schools

JOHANNESBURG (AP):

A 16-year-old who believes she was kicked out of class for speaking her first language at school has prompted government investigations, and the case is demonstrating how volatile the issue of language and education remains in South Africa. School officials insist a disciplinary problem and not racism sparked the case, but it's now making headlines a generation after hundreds here were killed when students revolted over being forced to learn in Afrikaans, the language of their white oppressors under apartheid. Luthando Nxasana says that when a business class teacher told her to speak English "or get the hell out of my classroom," she gathered her books and left to complain to a more senior teacher. Luthando said she told her teachers she believed being kicked out of class for speaking Xhosa was "very racist."

Xhosa is spoken by Nelson Mandela and some 10 million other South Africans, and is one of the country's 11 official languages along with English and Afrikaans. However, the languages of South Africa's colonisers still rule in the classroom and elsewhere, a recipe for resentment in this nation of 50 million.