OPINION | Lessons on leadership and belonging from the Milnerton High School assault

Professor Armand Bam

The Milnerton High School assault should never have become a national mirror. But it did, not because violence between learners is new, but because the moment exposed something deeper and far more unsettling about how power, belonging, and responsibility are being learnt in our society.

It is tempting to treat the incident as a school discipline matter. Sanctions were imposed. Processes were followed. Statements were issued. And then we moved on. But the real leadership question does not begin or end with a disciplinary hearing or court. It begins with what young people are quietly learning about authority, difference and accountability from the adults who run their schools, their institutions and their country.

How is difference handled?

In recent weeks, another set of school stories has unfolded alongside Milnerton. The controversy between Roedean and King David over sporting fixtures, including allegations that Jewish tennis players were initially refused competition, and public admissions that some parents objected to playing a Jewish school, reveals a different but related failure. This is not about logistics or scheduling. It is about how difference is handled when it becomes uncomfortable. What is especially striking is how quickly public conversation moves from concern to camps. Social media is filled with statements. Private voice notes circulate rapidly. Screenshots and forwarded messages become substitutes for engagement.

Outrage is not the problem. For communities with long and painful histories of exclusion and violence, outrage is understandable and legitimate. But leadership is tested in how outrage is held. When influence is exercised primarily through closed networks and emotionally charged audio messages, positions harden. People retreat into those who already agree with them. The possibility of listening, of understanding how harm was experienced, and how trust might be rebuilt, quietly disappears.

The leadership challenge

The deeper leadership challenge is not whether people have the right to be angry. It is whether those with influence are willing to create spaces for direct, principled, and courageous dialogue, rather than reinforcing the comfort of our respective moral camps. It is precisely in moments like the Roedean-King David dispute that leadership should move towards one another - not away. These dynamics are not limited to elite schools. The prolonged and highly public battle involving Wesley Neumann, the principal of Heathfield High School, is another example of how leadership becomes entangled in institutional defensiveness, legal escalation and public polarisation. What began as a contested decision during the Covid-19 period has evolved into years of litigation and appeals, leaving a school community suspended in uncertainty. Beyond the legal merits of the case, the leadership cost is real: instability, eroded trust and a school caught in the middle of a prolonged institutional standoff.

Young people are watching

For young people watching from the sidelines, the message is not about labour law or governance processes. The message is about what happens when authority and accountability collide, and how slowly institutions seem able to resolve conflict in ways that restore confidence rather than deepen division. A recent conversation with a parent at a public school brought this into sharp relief. While commenting on the need for improved diversity in the swimming pool, the principal explained, calmly and matter-of-factly, that white parents are in the pool at swimming practices and volunteer at the tuck shop, while coloured parents are not to be seen. But it is exactly this type of framing, free of any understanding of nuance, that deserves to be questioned. It is this thinking that assumes absence reflects choice rather than constraint, and overlooks how historical exclusion, insecure work, transport costs, and school cultures continue to influence who feels able and entitled to belong.

Is accountability negotiable? 

The same leadership pattern appears beyond school gates. At the very moment we are debating bullying and exclusion in education, we are also confronted with yet another cycle of public funds allocated to community projects that remain incomplete, poorly governed and allegedly mired in corruption. Tens of millions of rand are promised. Outcomes remain elusive. Investigations are announced. Responsibility becomes diffused across committees, processes and time.

The pattern is familiar. Authority is exercised. Harm is acknowledged. Consequences are delayed. This is leadership as administration, not stewardship. Young people do not need formal lessons to understand what is happening. They watch how adults handle failure. They observe how harm is addressed. They notice who is protected when systems falter. And they learn very quickly that accountability appears to be negotiable.

Courageous engagement

Put these stories together, Milnerton, Roedean and King David, Heathfield High, public project failures, and a troubling leadership culture emerges. We are teaching young people that power can be asserted without relational responsibility. That discomfort with difference can justify exclusion. That conflict is best managed through camps and closed conversations rather than courageous engagement. And that institutional authority can outlast institutional credibility.

Even our wider political culture increasingly mirrors this logic. Public leadership is often reduced to performance, spectacle and strategic outrage. Complex policy problems become soundbites. Global politics is framed through economic posturing and symbolic defiance rather than sustained cooperation. Visibility frequently outruns substance. In such an environment, leadership becomes something to display, not something to carry. This matters for how children understand authority. A learner watching adults justify the avoidance of uncomfortable conversations learns that retreat is safer than engagement.

Do position matters more than people?

A learner watching institutions protect themselves before protecting communities learns that position matters more than people. A learner observing that identity becomes a trigger for camps rather than dialogue learns that difference is something to be managed at a distance, not lived alongside. We cannot ask children to practise empathy, inclusion and responsibility in schools when the broader leadership culture consistently models something else. Disciplinary codes are necessary. Restorative processes are important. Policy matters. But culture teaches far more effectively than compliance ever will.

What defines leadership?

Leadership is not a title. It is a daily moral practice. It is revealed in how leaders respond to harm, how they hold power when trust is fragile, how they treat those who are different, and how willing they are to be accountable when things go wrong. If leadership becomes primarily about protecting institutional reputation, managing outrage and maintaining control, young people will learn to equate authority with dominance and belonging with conditional acceptance.

And then we will continue to be surprised when intimidation surfaces in corridors, exclusion is normalised in sporting spaces, and resentment grows quietly in communities that already feel marginal to the life of the school. The tragedy of Milnerton is not only what happened to one learner. The deeper tragedy is what it reveals about the leadership lessons being rehearsed all around our children .If we want young people to grow into citizens who can live with difference, take responsibility seriously and resist the temptation of camps and shortcuts, then leadership in schools, in departments, in governing bodies and in public institutions must embody those values first. Leadership worthy of the name does not retreat into closed networks when conflict arises. It does not outsource courage to policy. It does not allow discomfort to set the limits of belonging. It creates the conditions in which people can find one another even, and especially, when doing so is difficult.

*Bam is the Head of Social Impact and PGDip NPO Leadership Development at Stellenbosch Business School

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