Afro-textured hair and the policing of black girlhood: race, gender, and resistance in a desegregated school in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Abstract

The study presented in this dissertation examined how Black African schoolgirls experience, understand, and resist the policing of Afro-textured hair in a racially desegregated secondary school — Dundee Comprehensive Secondary School (a pseudonym) — in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Despite the legal and political shift toward educational inclusion post-1994, the study reveals that discriminatory school practices rooted in colonial and apartheid ideologies persist. Focusing on 16 purposively selected Black girls who wear their hair in styles such as Afros, braids, dreadlocks, and fade haircuts, the study explored how school-based regulation of hair becomes a mechanism for racialised, gendered, and cultural exclusion. Using African Feminist and Black Feminist theoretical frameworks and employing participatory drawings alongside focus group discussions (FGDs), the research foregrounds the girls’ voices and lived experiences. The findings unveil the covert yet pervasive ways in which hair-based discrimination manifests in desegregated schools. Verbal, undocumented rules disproportionately target Black girls, with teachers, often non-Black, employing language and punitive actions to deem natural African hairstyles as “untidy,” “unacceptable,” or “ugly.” These practices contribute to the policing of Black girlhood, the erasure of cultural and religious identities, and the reinforcement of Eurocentric aesthetic norms. Participants also described how such scrutiny resulted in psychological harm, diminished self-worth, and, at times, exclusion from school spaces. However, the study also reveals powerful forms of resistance. The girls challenged the informal policies through visual storytelling, group solidarity, and affirmations of cultural pride. Their refusal to conform to oppressive beauty standards signals a broader demand for transformation. The study proposes a conceptual framework that maps the intersection of institutional power, cultural identity, resistance, and policy opacity, offering a lens for addressing racialised aesthetic control in South African schools. The dissertation concludes with urgent recommendations for inclusive policy reform, teacher sensitisation, and learner protection aligned with the South African Constitution and the South African Schools Act (84 of 1996).