When all the school became a stage: young children enacting a community’s fear and sense of loss

This article gives an ethnographic glimpse of how an urban South African school mirrored a community’s sense‐making during times of rapid social change. The glimpse is extracted largely from an ethnography that was composed in 2000. In this study of school life, the biennial play was central to the year’s activities. In the play the tone, content and style reflected a performance of the discourse of the school community – a discourse of fear and despondency, while searching for hope in spiritual song. Today this previously all White, Afrikaner school is still predominantly White, as Black children’s parents prefer English‐medium schools. On the surface the school appears to be a safe haven for those who were fearful of losing their social position, their language and their way of living, but the initial breakdown of the fabric of the school does not seem to have healed during the time after the study had been completed.