The final bell rang and I packed and headed to the hall for detention. I was waiting for some comments from Letitia but she just walked past with her group and didn’t say anything. I started worrying. Did she know what we were up to? Was there something big waiting for us in the hall? I felt nervous.

There was a teacher sitting at the front. I had never seen her before. My heart beat faster; this was not going to work, clearly we hadn’t thought it through properly. I walked up to her and handed her my detention slip. She looked it, looked at me and handed it back, indicating with her head that I should take a seat. How on earth were we to conduct a meeting with adult supervision?

Then the rest of the group started coming in. There was Jasmin, Lona and Alice. There were some other students I didn’t know too. There were even two boys. I wondered if they knew what we were up to, or had they just misbehaved and were sent here.

Everyone was now settled and the room was silent. I was scared.

How r we goin 2 do this? I wrote on a piece of paper and passed it on. I addressed it to Jasmin and gave it to the girl in front of me. She passed it on.

Mrs Karl is cul. I’ll handle it.

The note returned. I wasn’t convinced. I wrote another piece of paper and handed it over.

What’s the plan? We need to rethink.

One of the girls was already doing her homework and didn’t see the note being passed to her. This was going to be an epic fail.

“Psst…” the girl in front tried to signal her. “Psst…” she tried again. The girl saw and took the note. My fears were now realised as she dropped it.

“What is that?” the teacher asked, clearly aware that we were up to no good. “What do you have there?” she asked again, when nobody spoke. “Alright, hand it over.”

The girl looked around, wanting us to say something. Jasmin nodded. She got up and handed the note to the teacher.

“OK. So someone please tell me what’s going on? Rethink what?” Mrs Karl asked. Again, nobody said a word. I was shaking at this point as I imagined immediate expulsion. I didn’t need this. “Let’s do it the easy way. You,” she said, pointing to the girl in front. “Why are you in detention?”

The girl took out her slip and read, then said “I ‘violated the Code of Conduct’, Ma’am. I spoke Xhosa in class.”

The teacher looked from her to the next girl. The answers were roughly the same. I was the only one with a violation of speaking back to the teacher.

“Alright, so all of you are here because you broke the rules. So why do you need to break them further by disobeying detention rules?”

This was hard. We looked around and nobody was willing to answer. I knew this was a poor plan.

“Mrs Karl, we feel that we shouldn’t be punished for speaking our home languages at school. The school does teach Afrikaans and Xhosa. So why is it that we are only allowed to speak English and not practise our other languages? Shouldn’t the school be encouraging us?”

Jasmin was now officially my hero. I wanted to get up and hug her right then.

“And I was sent here because a teacher couldn’t pronounce my name. She wanted to change it and give me a name that was easier for her to say. Why should I be punished when I refuse this name?” I said. I could feel my voice breaking with anger and frustration. “And I was told that I would get punished for wearing my hair in an afro. Now I think that’s not fair. What does my hair have to do with my education?” I felt confidence well up in me, along with the anger.

“Our Constitution clearly states that everyone has the right to speak in their own language, but the school is taking this right away,” Lona added.

Mrs Karl frowned. I could see she wanted to know more, but I thought she might tell us to get back to work.

“OK. Let’s talk about this,” she said, closing the book she was reading.

***

Tell us: Is the school going against the South African Constitution? How?