Curro Once Again The Talk Of the Nation As People Cry Racism Following Latest Career Day Pictures
Private schooling institution Curro Holdings, simply known as Curro, has come out of the frying pan and straight into the furnace of public grilling after a post they made on their social media platform.
Curro uploaded a gallery of career day pictures on their Facebook accounts, with each picture showing children cosplaying a career of their choice. With the post, it showed white children portrayed as vets. What sparked the most controversy, however, was that one of the black pupils was shown behind a till, working as a cashier. In the newly-edited post, following the backlash, the picture is no longer up.
The uproar was fueled by the juxtaposition of a black learner being given a cashier career role while her white contemporaries were in a relatively higher-earning job.
Curro responded to the furor by issuing a short statement, saying: “Curro Holdings acknowledges that a post we published on social media portraying children in various workplace contexts was offensive due to the inappropriate stereotypes it depicted. The post was in error and has been deleted. We apologise for the offence caused and are urgently following our internal processes to understand fully the circumstances of the post to ensure that such an error is not repeated in the future. We will communicate further once the details of this unfortunate incident are established. Curro reiterates its commitment to diversity and non-racialism in our schools.”
South Africans, however, were irate at the post, with people accusing the institution of wrongly conditioning black learners, while also calling out Curro for blatant racism, a charge they have been notoriously guilty of in the past.
@MtsheposSA posted the now-deleted photo of the little black girl along with the picture of her white counterpart playing a vet, and said: “Curro believes the destiny of Black people is being cashiers while whites can have careers of their choices and owning means of production.”
@PhilaMphela said: “What baffles me in cases like this is that marketing materials go through various points of approval before being made public. At no point in that chain, did somebody say “this is racist”. Nobody?!”
@VimleshRajbansi decried the post, saying: “Why does Curro give the black girl the dream of a job as a cashier while the white girls can dream to become vets?”
Curro, on February 2024, found itself being plagued by more racism allegations as the Protea Glen branch of the school located in Soweto had to suspend one of its staff members for calling black learners monkeys. In 2023, the same school was embroiled in a scandal when now-axed executive head Shanette Tiquin was unseated from her position after calling a teacher at the school the same thing.
Another racism incident took place in 2019 at Curro Castle Oakdene in Johannesburg, when one of the teachers at the academy called black pupils monkeys on July of the same year.