Let’s turn churches and schools into safe zones for kids
No social place in South Africa is safe for children anymore. Churches no longer hold the sanctuary and sanity they used to.
Instead, they have become a breeding ground for pastors preying on the most vulnerable members of society.
A week hardly goes by without learning about yet another young girl having been violated sexually by an individual who was supposed to offer protection.
Mothers have never been more afraid to leave their toddlers with fathers or uncles because they may be subjected to sexual molestation.
Schools are not spared from these horrendous, sickening deeds of immoral men in our society either.
As a final-year teaching student, I was flabbergasted to see the images of the Reiger Park High School principal engaging in sexual activities with one of the minors in his school.
The law is unambiguous when it comes to social relations between teachers and pupils. The relationship is limited to those of professionals in a teaching environment, and that’s it.
So clear is South African Council for Educators (Sace), that it has even suggested naming and shaming of sex predators in schools.
Sace identifies any sexual relations as misconduct on the teacher’s part irrespective of the school a pupil attends.
Teachers are, first and foremost, parents to pupils. As a teacher, how do you involve yourself in sexual intercourse with your symbolical child? What an unforgivable abuse of power!
Secondly, when pupils are at school the teachers take over the responsibility of looking after them.
How is society supposed to be comfortable during school hours knowing that the worst might happen to their children at any time?
To make matters worse, this is a place where pupils are meant to be groomed into responsible citizens of the country.
The Reiger Park High situation is only the tip of the iceberg; this is what happens the country over.
It is unfortunate that only a few cases get to be heard and make headlines.
What aggravated the situation is that a head of a school is involved. Not that anybody below him should then commit such crimes but the level of complacency is unprecedented.
These are individuals who dent the image of our dearly beloved profession.
They don’t deserve to be educators but to be relegated to dustbins of prisons.
Allegations of other teachers being involved shows the level of patriarchy entrenched in our workplaces, not just schools.
The poor girl’s future has just been ruined, simply because of a man who allowed his erection to be his direction.
Is this what we have become fellow compatriots?
May the full might of the law take its course in due time.