School integration is an important indicator of equality of opportunity and racial reconciliation in contemporary South Africa. Despite its prominence in public and political discourse, however, there is no systemic evidence on the levels and patterns of school segregation. Drawing on the literature on the post-apartheid political settlement and sociological theories of opportunity hoarding, we explain how the small White minority and, to a lesser extent, the new Black middle class monopolized access to South Africa’s most prestigious schools following the abolition of de jure segregation in 1994. Using the 2021 Annual School Survey—an administrative dataset covering all South African schools—and the 2019 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study school survey, we find very high levels of school segregation along racial as well as socioeconomic lines. White students almost exclusively attend former White schools, have little exposure to the low-income Black majority, and are vastly overrepresented in elite public and private schools. We argue that in South Africa and other contexts with under-resourced education systems, elite capture of the few high-performing schools serves to reproduce race and class privilege.

中文翻译：

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机会囤积和精英繁殖：后种族隔离时期南非的学校隔离

学校融合是当代南非机会平等和种族和解的重要指标。然而，尽管它在公共和政治话语中占据重要地位，但并没有关于学校隔离的程度和模式的系统证据。借鉴关于后种族隔离政治解决方案的文献和机会囤积的社会学理论，我们解释了在南非废除种族歧视之后，少数白人以及在较小程度上新的黑人中产阶级如何垄断了进入南非最负盛名的学校的机会。 1994 年发生了法律种族隔离。利用 2021 年年度学校调查（覆盖所有南非学校的行政数据集）和 2019 年国际数学和科学研究趋势学校调查，我们发现种族和社会经济方面的学校隔离程度非常高。白人学生几乎全部就读于以前的白人学校，很少接触到占多数的低收入黑人，并且在精英公立和私立学校中所占比例大大过高。我们认为，在南非和其他教育系统资源不足的地区，精英占领少数表现优异的学校有助于复制种族和阶级特权。