Since the end of September 2022, Angolan schools have been experiencing turmoil after information circulated that reported the ban on some allegedly indecent hairstyles. According to some media outlets, long and “extravagant” hairstyles have caused students to miss classes in schools in Luanda.
The school put in place a mandatory haircut to “safeguard hygiene” but also to avoid alleged “incitement to violence.”
One of the directors of the school in question, Instituto Médio Industrial de Luanda (IMIL), informs exhaustively what kind of cuts should be avoided in his institution:
However, the reaction was one of surprise and protest on the part of the students, especially for students who wear curly hair or long or braided hairstyles, in the case of boys. This situation has been going on for weeks and gave rise to a protest march by students on October 8. The police stopped the protest, and even arrested some students. The organizers of the march, as mentioned earlier, defended that the attitude was an act of clear violation of their rights:
Angolan legislation does not prohibit the use of curly or natural hair in public and private institutions. So one of the students Daniel Moço told Deutsche Welle news network that the practice is discriminatory:
Some associated the decision of Angolan schools as an act of continuity of colonial practices, as is the case of Isidro Fortunato from the Ubuntu Movement:
In response to the controversy, the Ministry of Education of Angola intervened with guidelines advising schools to combat discrimination. In this note, Minister Luísa Grilo urged schools to create “a harmonious environment of respect for difference in the different ways in which each student’s hair can be presented without, however, subverting the code of conduct and school discipline.”
The guidelines also mention that school managers must obey the laws and must ensure the materialization of the general principles that govern the Education System and promote “strategies of permanent dialogue with the members of the school community to establish rules for school coexistence that ensure the broad protection of the child against all types of discrimination.”
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This post was previously published on globalvoices.org under a Creative Commons License.
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