South Africa: Refugees 'barred' from schooling

Many refugee Somali parents are not sending their children to South Africa's public schools because they are intimidated by the official processes required to get their children into school and because of the discrimination foreign pupils frequently experienced there. Abdulkadir Khaleif, a representative of the Somali Association of South Africa in the Western Cape, told the Mail & Guardian that the documents schools required before admitting Somali children had often 'been lost because of the war' back home. He was one of about 80 participants at a two-day workshop in Cape Town held by the University of Johannesburg's Centre for Education Rights and Transformation.