Pinelands High School
High School in South Africa
Pinelands High School is a public English medium co-educational high school situated in Forest Drive, Pinelands in the city of Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. It was opened in July 1952 and the founding principal was Jack Kent. The school now enrolls approximately 980 students.
In 2004, the school provided filming locations for the motion picture Ask the Dust, with the sets built to simulate Los Angeles in the 1930s.
Academics
Grades 8 – 9
English Home Language, Afrikaans or isiXhosa First Additional Language, Mathematics, Creative Arts (Art, Music and Drama), Economic Management Sciences, Life Orientation, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences and Technology.
Grades 10 – 12
Compulsory:
English Home Language, Afrikaans or isiXhosa First Additional Language, Mathematics or Mathematical Literacy and Life Orientation.
Elective (minimum of three):
Accounting, Computer Applications Technology, Consumer Studies, Design (Surface and Textiles), Dramatic Arts, Engineering Graphics and Design,
Geography, History, Information Technology, Life Sciences, Music, Physical Sciences, Tourism and Visual Arts.
Academic Extension Subjects (optional):
Advanced Programme English, Advanced Programme Mathematics and IT.
Notable alumni
Lesley-Ann Brandt, actress
Tim Harrell, professional baseball pitcher who represented South Africa at the 2000 Summer Olympics
Craig Matthews, South African cricket player
Austin Smith, captain of the South African men's hockey team at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London
Controversy
On the morning of 26 July 2024, Pinelands High School was notified of a video circulating on social media. The video showed a group of coloured Grade 8 learners "auctioning" off black Grade 8 learners who were forced into a bicycle cage on the Pinelands campus. The "auctioneer" would place the starting bid and then the students outside of the cage would offer their biddings, reminiscent of the slave trade.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Pinelands High School” as high School in South Africa. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as high School in South Africa. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7195522. Authority coordinates are -33.937, 18.507. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952, 2004, 2000 and 2012.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Pinelands High School”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Pinelands High School primary sources, Pinelands High School archive and Pinelands research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Pinelands High School”?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Pinelands High School” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.