A South African court has made a landmark ruling prohibiting the country’s schools from promoting any one religion at the expense of the others, saying to do so was a violation of the Schools Act.
The ruling after a petition was brought forward by the Organization for Religious Education and Democracy (OGOD) to review the religious policies of six schools found to promote religious bias.
“We have, however, also found at the level of principle that neither a school governing body nor a public school may lawfully hold out that it subscribes to only a single particular religion to the exclusion of others”, Judge Willem van der Linde ruled.
The decision takes into account that while one religion may be observed over others in appropriate spaces, public schools should not be considered the same as places of worship.
With this new ruling, schools will be forced to review policies surrounding religious expression within and allow students the freedom to practice their respective religions without fear of any consequences.
OGOD has also argued that decisions by schools to stop teaching the theory of evolution is an abuse of pupils’ rights, much like the imposition of creationism studies.
Opposing the bid by OGOD, alongside the six directly affected schools, were AfriForum and trade union Solidarity who argued that schools should retain their religious ethos.
