When the school year started on 7 January African students in most areas streamed back to schools in response to calls by community, political, church and educational organisations for an end to the class boycotts which have been endemic in many areas over the past three years. The call was backed up by the ANC which urged students to return to implement alternative forms of education.
At the end of 1985 many thousands of students were boycotting classes and many schools had been closed by the education authorities. Student demands for the removal of the army from the townships and the release of detained students had not been met. The decision to return to school was taken after extensive consultation between various community-based, professional and political organisations, teachers, priests, workers and academics. At the same time the organisations called on the DET to address itself to students' grievances, to ensure the release of detained students, to reopen schools closed last year and to repair those damaged in the unrest.
Despite the high turn-out on the first day of term, many educationists remained sceptical that the year would not see a renewal of the boycotts as the regime had responded to student demands by issuing harsh new regulations. These were introduced on 29 December 1986 in terms of the Public Safety Act and were aimed especially at preventing classes in People's Education from taking place and at preventing political mobilisation. They reinforced measures introduced in July last year obliging students to carry identification cards and providing for the deployment of security guards at schools. An estimated 20 per cent of the 1.7 million secondary school students refused to register in terms of the earlier regulations and were barred from school for the rest of 1986.
The new regulations empower the DET to prohibit a student or other person from attending or using any school; any person from obstructing or disrupting any activity of a school; any syllabus, work programme, class or course which has not been approved in terms of the Education Act; the wearing, possession or displaying in schools of a uniform or other article of clothing, case, flag, banner, pennant or poster or any article in which a slogan or on which the badge, emblem, name or flag of any specified organisations appears; the distribution of any notice, letter, book, pamphlet, poster, paper or any other writing dealing with or containing any material on specified subjects.
When students registered on 7 January they were given forms for their parents to sign agreeing to disciplinary action against their children 'should it be deemed necessary by the authorities concerned' and to pay costs incurred for damages or losses to school property. Parents further had to declare that in the event of their children 'being conveyed in a government vehicle', they would 'indemnify state employees against any claim for compensation as a result of loss of life or personal injury'. Many students tore up the forms but after legal experts pointed out that the DET could not make registration conditional on parents signing the indemnity clause, the DET allowed them to delete the clause.
The regime intensified its repressive actions against the NECC, the main organisation behind attempts to introduce People's Education in black schools. A propaganda campaign against the NECC was launched on television and in the press and its remaining executive members not already in detention or hiding were arrested. On 9 January new regulations prohibited the NECC from holding meetings to discuss setting up People's Education.
Most of the 73 schools closed in Soweto, the Eastern Cape and Durban last year were re-opened by the end of January. The DET said that the parents at each individual school had decided 'almost unanimously' that they wanted the schools opened. Conditions were laid down, one of which was that parents had to agree to take responsibility for the 'behaviour and attendance of their children'.
