Stats paint picture of people at war with each other

Police minister Bheki Cele presented shocking crime statistics last Tuesday, which confirmed that police were dropping the ball when it comes to protecting citizens. Murders in SA are up to an all-time high of 20‚336 people – 1‚320 more than the previous year. This suggested that 57 people on average are murdered every day in our country. This paints a picture of people at war with each other. While South Africans were still coming to terms with this, news reports indicated that such violence was spreading to classrooms.

Zeerust maths teacher Gadimang Costa Mokolobate‚ 24‚ was stabbed to death inside a classroom by a pupil and a Gauteng high school pupil allegedly pulled out a gun and threatened to shoot a teacher.

In this province, one might assume such acts of violence happen only in bigger towns and cities.

But last week’s Dispatch Weekend edition gave the lie to this with reports that two rural boys were stabbed and killed by their schoolmates within a week. One was Anathi Baku, 20, in grade 11 at Nathaniel Pamla High School in tiny Peddie. Baku was trying to come to the rescue of a friend amid a fracas over a missing phone.

The incident happened six days after a 13-year-old at Tsomo Secondary School killed his schoolmate, also 13, with a pair of scissors. South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco) North West provincial chair Paul Sebegoe is calling for teachers to be empowered through self-defence lessons and to be permitted to carry pepper spray in school to defend themselves and other pupils. But teachers’ unions vehemently opposed the call, saying it would worsen the problem rather than solve it.

National Professional Teachers’ Organisation of South Africa president Nkosiphedule Ntantala laid the blame squarely at the feet of the men and women in blue, saying there was an “agreement” with police to do random searches at schools, but this was not being effectively done.

The crisis of murders inside classrooms is cause for deep concern. But police, as Cele had conceded, are overstretched. The SAPS needs new strategies to deal with crime generally, not to mention violence in schools. Crafting a proper, intelligencedriven plan would make a great difference.

Properly constituted community policing forums can also play a pivotal role.

The SAPS needs new strategies to deal with crime generally, not to mention violence in schools