Abstract

Schools were the first public institutions in South Africa to be closed when the country recorded its initial cases of Covid-19. As a public health crisis quickly extended into an education crisis, government action and decision-making had an inevitable effect on the rights of learners, the impact of which was most severely felt by the poorest and most vulnerable children. While there were several varied responses to government actions, this article discusses three specific case studies that demonstrate the successful role that legal mobilisation by ‘repeat players’ within progressive civil society played in mitigating the impact of the pandemic on the rights of learners. The purpose of this is to catalogue the tactical repertoire employed and the lessons learnt in these legal mobilisation case-studies for further struggles for education reform or, indeed, for broader social reform.

摘要

当该国记录最初的 Covid-19 病例时，学校是南非第一批关闭的公共机构。随着公共卫生危机迅速蔓延为教育危机，政府的行动和决策对学习者的权利产生了不可避免的影响，最贫困和最脆弱的儿童受到的影响最为严重。虽然对政府行动有多种不同的反应，但本文讨论了三个具体案例研究，这些案例研究证明了进步公民社会中“重复参与者”的法律动员在减轻大流行对学习者权利的影响方面所发挥的成功作用。这样做的目的是对这些法律动员案例研究中所使用的战术曲目和经验教训进行分类，以进一步争取教育改革，或者，