Legal mobilisation for education in the time of Covid-19

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.