As usual, Radio 702 was on point and quickly booked the topic of the Pretoria High School for Girls issue for one of their talk shows.

Perhaps giving it to John Robbie on his breakfast show wasn’t the best call though.

Interviewing a Daily Vox contributor, John Robbie spoke to Mishka Wazar about the matter and, well, she handled herself really well considering.

During the chat, Mishka, an ex-PHSG learner who is Indian, explained how some of the school’s rules are nonsensical and outdated. Robbie confronted this argument in a typical patriarchal way, attempting to comment on how he thinks black girls should follow the rules and wondering where does it stop.

Here’s the gist of the audio you can hear below:

“I had black friends and they were not allowed to have their hair in very long braids, they were not allowed dreadlocks, they were not allowed afros,” she stated.

Wazar said when she and others had questioned the status quo they had been told that the rules were there to protect tradition. She questioned whose tradition was being protected.

The former pupil also said there was a culture of silencing dissent at the school.

Robbie responded by saying that, in general, school rules make no sense to pupils. Balancing out the conversation, he suggested that such a school cannot be dubbed as racist.

“You’ve got to have a boundary line somewhere because there is an element of discipline,” he said.

Robbie went on to state that self-expression should have some limits. “I’ve seen braids which are fantastic and I have seen braids which have been over-the-top show biz.”

The conversation ended with Mishka stating that neither she, Robbie nor non-black people have any right to comment on black women’s hair.

Twitter, obviously, was not impressed:

Unlike the suggestion made by the second tweet (“playing devil’s advocate”), putting John Robbie up against Mishka Wazar was a great contest. She was able to bring her argument across in a calm manner, and at the end it seemed that Robbie was a little more “woke”.

Listen to the audio below to hear just what the issue is about:

[source:enca]