Based on ethnographic research conducted in five schools in Durban, this article addresses three issues that are widely perceived as major problems in the transformation of education in post-apartheid South Africa: 1) the rapid and unplanned integration of state-funded schools that has led to overcrowding of classrooms, 2) the class and domestic backgrounds of the indigent isiZulu-speaking African learners who dominated the schools in the areas of study, and 3) the second-language proficiency of their English-speaking teachers of Indian origin.