Scholars flock to border towns

ren complete matric in South Africa.

Phiwokwakhe’s brother, Sicelo, said he would be proud of her if she passed matric because he had failed grade 12.

“But I feel bad that she has to lie on the floor when she’s studying.”

Another Swazi pupil attending attend the Afrikaans-medium, feepaying Komatipoort Akademie in the border town of Komatipoort.

A source close to the school said two of the children paid R300 a day each to live in guest houses. The other two, a grade one and a grade 11 pupil, live in Ressano Garcia — a town on the Mozambican border — and travel daily to South Africa, crossing the border legally in a car driven by the grade 11 pupil.

“The grade one is struggling because she’s not used to the language of learning, which is Afrikaans. She is Portuguese. The one who is in grade nine [staying at a guest house] is doing very well. She’s been here since grade one and her Afrikaans is superb,” the source said.

Last year Mozambican student Karina da Sousa Pareira, who was in grade 12, bagged distinctions in English first additional language, life sciences and life orientation.

She is now a first-year student at the University of the Free State.

Passport to possibility: Swazi children rent rooms and attend school in South African villages (above) in the Jeppes Reef area near the border. Taxi bakkies (below left) run between the illegal border crossing and a village in Jeppes Reef. Members of...

Photos: Delwyn Verasamy and Hanna Brunlöf, below right