Xoli, Bawdy, Sam and Karla are a group of grade 11 girls who attend the Diocesan School for Girls (DSG), Makhanda. The all girls’ school is a 187-year-old private boarding school that delivers an IEB curriculum. Their brother school is St Andrew’s College, a 232-year-old all boys’ school. Classes are shared by boys and girls from Grade 10-12. These two schools are separated by a giant green gate which is locked at 11pm in the evening and unlocked at 6am in the morning by tired security guards in navy blue uniform. While St Andrew’s is a gateless grounds spanning 5 blocks, DSG has recently built a wall around itself with electric fence to keep the outside out and the inside in. The girls roil and suffocate inside. 

They are baby anarchists. New free–thinkers. And dreaming together into future liberatory possibility. 

Xoli and Sam are in love or falling in love. Something muted and grounded and real. On Saturday afternoons they bunk out of school grounds with Bawdy and Karla to the often deserted train station in the centre of Makhanda to get high, shit-talk, dream, wonder if they will get to the other side of now. They are thinking into critical liberatory pedagogies into building nations that are not the stifled prison-house they feel they are in. They all feel, acutely, the discomfort of something itching – they know something is not right with the world. 

There is friction in Xoli and Sam’s fragile relationship; Bawdy fuels the fire while dealing with preganancy and the decisions she must make. Karla’s mother as recently passed and she is moving through the aftermath. They talk about school and boys and race. They talk about disciplinary cases happening at both the boys and girls schools. Bawdy insists the politics will play themselves out. There is an altercation, an ideological impasse at which point one must act. It is the realisation of something euphoric, of power to destroy, of having the real potential to dismantle; and something horrific, no longer romantic, real and with real consequences. Suddenly there is the sound of the school guard and they run. In the panic and commotion as the nearby public rush towards the rising fire, the girls separate pursued on foot. At the normal meeting place, all but one girl return – Sam. 

Sam is handed over to her school which immediately begins the process of questioning, gathering evidence and building a disciplinary case. Sam exposes Bawdy. Heads must roll. Sam’s parents remove her from the school before the date of her official tribunal. Xoli gets expelled. Bawdy gets expelled. Karla gets one-month suspension which she will spend at her father’s lake house in Plettenberg Bay.

Details

Duration:

65 minutes

Recommended Age:

16 years – 19 years

Recommended Grade:

Grade 10 – Grade 12

Language(s):

English (first language) No second language listed.

Curriculum Connection:

Life Orientation/Life Skills

Themes Covered:

Change, Discrimination, Family dynamics, Group dynamics (peer pressure), Identity, Intra/interpersonal conflicts, Life skills, Prejudice, Racism, Relationships, Sexuality