Pretoria Girls’ High hair policy tops the news

Johannesburg - Protests against the Pretoria Girls' High School hair policy topped headlines in South Africa last week, a media monitoring organisation reported.

"This is the biggest story by far this week, dwarfing Pravin Gordhan and the state-owned enterprises," said Roi Africa's managing director Tonya Khoury.

The school policy story took nearly a quarter of all news coverage, followed by coverage of the finance minister's current tense position – which encapsulated nearly 9% of all stories.

The solar eclipse garnered 3.94% share of news coverage compared to proceedings to appoint a new public protector which was the focus of just 1.25% of news stories over the past week.

Meanwhile on social media in South Africa, the Pretoria Girls' High School story rapidly gained traction.

"Race-related issues generally make big media in our country, but the rate that this story escalated was astonishing. It no sooner broke than it swamped the charts."

Internationally, the American election comprised nearly 30% of all news.

"New entries include Hurricane Hermine, Apple's back taxes and Facebook's SpaceX explosion."

Debate about the potential sainthood of Mother Theresa also made a mark on the global news, as did the 'burkini ban' in France.

This article first appeared on News24