13 August 2025
Joint statement: Equal Education and the Equal Education Law Centre condemn Operation Dudula’s campaign targeting migrant children from enrolling in public schools
Equal Education (EE) and the Equal Education Law Centre (EELC) unequivocally condemn Operation Dudula’s ongoing campaign to prevent migrant children from enrolling in public schools. The move, which was announced recently, aims to ensure, according to Operation Dudula, that there are no “foreign children” in public schools from January 2026. This is a direct violation of the Constitution, the High Court’s Centre for Child Law & Others v Minister of Basic Education & Others case, and the South African Schools Act (SASA). These actions have no place in a constitutional democracy and represent a dangerous step backwards.
Targeting migrant learners distracts us from the real issues
South Africa’s long history of racial oppression, systemic inequalities, and unequal access to services and resources continues to impact black and working-class communities. Many continue to experience unequal and poor service delivery that erodes and robs them of their rights to access basic resources such as adequate health, education, and housing. These failures continue to understandably engender frustration within communities. Operation Dudula leverages these frustrations to undermine our Constitution, violate human rights, and scapegoat vulnerable people, which only takes us backwards as a democratic society. The poor access to resources that EE, the EELC, and other civil society organisations continue to fight against exists, not because of migrants but because of:
- poor government planning and implementation;
- vastly unequal wealth distribution;
- corruption and wasteful expenditure;
- poor political will and failures by the government; and
- chronic underfunding and austerity budgeting. This is especially true for basic education, which has been chronically underfunded, mismanaged, and neglected for decades.
Groups like Operation Dudula exploit public frustration to advance a xenophobic agenda – scapegoating migrants instead of holding the state accountable. This diverts attention from the true causes of poor service delivery and undermines efforts to build an equitable society.
The law is clear: all children have a right to basic education
The South African Constitution gives everyone an equal right to basic education and prohibits discrimination against any child in accessing this right. This is cemented in the SASA, now amended by the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act (BELA) which explicitly prohibits the exclusion of undocumented learners from school and stipulates that all learners must be allowed to attend school, even in cases where the learner’s parent or guardian has not provided the required documentation during the school admission process. In the Centre for Child Law case, the Grahamstown High Court also affirmed that education is a right for all children, regardless of their migration status, and the court found that nationality or documentation is “immaterial”. These laws make it clear that education is for everyone, and that there is no legal or moral justification for denying any child access to school.
Austerity is the problem – not migrant learners
The current challenges facing our education system, including overcrowded classrooms, inadequate infrastructure, insufficient resources, and corruption and wasteful expenditure, are not the result of too many children seeking education, but rather of deliberate policy choices that have systematically underfunded basic education. These are not problems of scarcity; they are problems of political prioritisation. The resources exist. What is lacking is the political will to invest adequately in education.
Excluding any group of children from schools will not create additional classrooms, hire more teachers, or fix broken infrastructure. It will only deny vulnerable children their constitutional rights while leaving the root causes of educational challenges entirely unaddressed. The solution is not to shrink the pool of children who can access their rights, but to expand investment in education to ensure quality schooling for all. This requires reversing austerity measures and prioritising education funding commensurate with constitutional obligations, not scapegoating children.
Further, continuous austerity budgeting has created a false sense of scarcity by withholding billions in funding from basic education, obscuring the fact that true service delivery for everyone is entirely possible and sustainable through progressive revenue-raising mechanisms. The State has refused to make enough resources available, or even to ensure that existing funding keeps up with inflation each year. In a country where communities see their rights being eroded by fiscal consolidation and corruption, violence and intimidation against children is an abhorrent distraction from the true source of rights deprivation for all in South Africa. Inequity in our education system is not attributable to migrant communities, and is especially not attributable to children.
Exclusion is dangerous, discriminatory and unworkable
Campaigns like Operation Dududula not only violate the law, but also:
- promote racial profiling and xenophobic violence;
- create fear and instability in schools; and
- undermine the safety and well-being of all learners.
There is also no legitimate or just way to identify “undocumented” or migrant learners, as this category also includes South African children failed by systemic inefficiencies in the Department of Home Affairs, such as delays in issuing birth certificates. Historically, such exclusionary campaigns have relied on apartheid-like tools, including racial profiling, skin colour, language proficiency, or cultural stereotypes, to arbitrarily label human beings as belonging or not belonging. Moreover, when government institutions turn a blind eye to or tacitly sanction xenophobic intimidation in schools, they create an environment of violence and fear that disrupts learning for all learners, regardless of nationality. Schools must be safe spaces for education, not sites of division and discrimination. The government’s failure to actively oppose such campaigns not only abandons migrant children but also undermines the right to education for every child in South Africa.
We demand immediate action from government
Equal Education and the Equal Education Law Centre call on government to act decisively:
- Publicly condemn Operation Dudula and reaffirm the right of ALL children to access schooling in South Africa.
- The Department of Basic Education and the Gauteng Department of Education must:
- clearly reject any use of violence or intimidation in and around our schools; and
- ensure all learners have safe access to all 81 admissions walk-in centres for 2026 school applications, which include schools and district offices.
- The Minister of Police, the DBE and the GDE must:
- investigate any criminality associated with Dudula’s activities;
- work with the South African Police Services to ensure accountability and make findings public; and
- report on interventions taken to protect learners and uphold the law.
Every child in South Africa, regardless of documentation status, has the constitutional right to attend school. Any attempt to interfere with the enjoyment of this right is a grave constitutional violation and must be met with united and strong resistance. We stand with migrant learners, we stand with abahlali, and we stand with all South Africans fighting for a better future, adequate service delivery and access to resources! We call on all sectors of society to fight against xenophobia and to fight for a system that protects and serves every learner!
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To arrange a media interview, contact:
- Sesethu August (Equal Education Communications Officer) sesethu@equaleducation.org.za or 063 221 7983
- Jay-Dee Booysen (Equal Education Law Centre Media and Communications Specialist) jay-dee@eelawcentre.org.za or 082 924 1352