Rietondale High School in Pretoria has been vandalised just a month after being renamed from Hoërskool HF Verwoerd.
Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi confirmed the development on Monday via Twitter.
The vandalism reportedly happened on Sunday.
According to the Gauteng Education department, “criminals” defaced the school’s main gate by spraying paint on it.
Taps and shower heads, which were recently installed in the school’s new bathrooms, were also stolen.
Transformation agenda
Lesufi expressed outrage at the incident and said it “undermines our transformation agenda.”
This act will not deter us from our agenda of transforming the education system.
Vandalism targeted at our schools requires the urgent attention of all structures of civil society and our partners in the education sector
Gauteng MEC
He called on the police to “do everything in their power to apprehend these faceless individuals.”
Symbolism of renaming
The school was renamed in August at a widely publicised event which Lesufi attended.
The department said at the time that the renaming “symbolises a democratic gesture of moving South Africa and its citizens from a painful past of inequality and racial divisions.”
HF Verwoerd was a former Prime Minister of South Africa during apartheid.
Many view him as the driving force behind the deepening of apartheid’s system of segregation based on skin colour.