St Mary’s School, in Waverley in Johannesburg, one of South Africa’s most elite girls’ schools, has cancelled a speaking invitation to Klaas Mokgomole, the coordinator of Africans for Peace, after Islamist activists objected to his views on Israel.

In documents seen by The Common Sense, the school said it had taken the decision in the interests of the “safety and well-being” of its children. Sources who spoke to The Common Sense said that the school had come under pressure from Islamist parents and related lobby groups and that, instead of standing up for its invited guest and making clear that intimidation would not be allowed to shape the ideas articulated on its campus, the school withdrew Mokgomole’s invitation.

Africans for Peace is a non-profit organisation that works to promote “independent civic dialogue and conflict resolution” as a “collective of independent students, scholars and activists who bring an African lens to the global debate on peace and stability on our continent and around the world”.

In a note seen by The Common Sense, Mokgomole wrote, “What appears to unsettle some is that black South African voices do not always conform to the narrative they seek to control. […] Students should never be shielded from different perspectives. […] Education is meant to cultivate critical thinking.”

The incident follows a similar controversy at Roedean School a few months ago, where the school cancelled a tennis fixture against Jewish children after coming under pressure from Islamist actors. That school had previously consulted with a radical Islamist group, which had, among other things, welcomed the 7 October 2023 attacks on Israel, to provide Islamic education guidance to its pupils.

The Common Sense played a central role in exposing the Roedean scandal and that the school had lied about the reasons for the cancellation.

For St Mary’s, the Mokgomole incident echoes a previous political cancellation controversy. In 2018, former pupil and former Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille (and current Johannesburg mayoral candidate for the DA) said she was told by the school that she would be banned from a Bible-reading role at her 50-year matric reunion after objections from activists and pupils about her views.

An insider with knowledge of the school said that its capture by radical and leftist activists echoes what has been seen at elite academic institutions in America, where, under pressure and intimidated, institutions folded, agreeing to deplatform speakers and institutions holding centrist and moderate opinions and views in favour of those that held hard-left-wing ideological views.

Experts who spoke to The Common Sense said that educational institutions that seek to censor the views presented to their students in pursuit of a single ideological narrative retard the thinking ability and mental development of those students.