Schools must have resident social workers to treat delinquency
DEAR Mr President, as I sat at home and read the newspaper recently, my attention was grabbed by a tiny article about a schoolchild who fought with his teacher on the school premises.
Over the years many articles have been written about the deteriorating behaviour of schoolchildren. Schools used to be safe havens where the majority wouldn’t dare do things that would result in expulsion.
But over the years I have observed a shift from what used to be a learning environment to a place of war, drugs, bullying, suicide and failure as an everyday thing.
Schools also used to have social workers to help combat problems faced by children. There is only so much that teachers can do. Having to deal with overpopulated classes is a problem on its own. Unfortunately teachers are not trained deeply to deal with the many problems pupils face.
Mr President, it saddens me as a young person who is a sister and an aunt to schoolchildren to see the situation. Children today have easy access to drugs and alcohol. Children from dysfunctional families who don’t know who to turn to are bound to perform poorly academically. They become bullies or victims of bullies.
A teacher may fail or reprimand a child without looking for the root causes. What will the future be for a child who finds it easy to release his anger against a teacher or who decides to bring a knife to school? Is this the generation we are pinning our hopes on?
Mr President, your grandchildren may be fortunate not to go to such schools, but the majority does and will. What is the solution? I believe it is to hire professionals who understand human behaviour. As a trained social worker I am limited in the attention I can give schoolchildren. We depend on them to be referred to us. We do not see or interact with them on a daily basis. In the office environment social workers deal with whole communities and broader society.
But social workers should, as in olden times, be employed at schools. Counselling plays a major role in one’s development, especially for young people who are bombarded with troubles. Having social workers at schools will enable children to better understand problems and find solutions.
Mr President, I weep for the future generation. A solution must be implemented. — Zimi Fitshane, via e-mail ANC government with the outage of water over the past days.
Inadequate planning for capacity, backup and maintenance have resulted in failure of what is the most essential infrastructure service for all citizens.
Yes, it is most inconvenient and inexcusable for rubbish not to be collected, for potholes not to be fixed, grass not to be cut and electricity not to be supplied. But humans can exist without these, for a period – indeed with the present level of service we already do. But not so with water!
Together with oxygen, water is essential for human survival.
If this is not a sufficient wake-up call for Buffalo City voters to commit themselves to a party that provides good governance wherever it governs, then it is almost impossible to imagine a greater incentive for change. — Bill Gould, Southernwood
To stem the splinter
WITH all due respect to ANC secretarygeneral Gwede Mantashe, his explanations for the failure of the national executive committee to remove President Jacob Zuma seem to arise from faulty analysis.
He attempts to invoke fear of a repeat of the splintering phenomenon that led to the formation of COPE and the EFF as reason for the inaction.
However, the chief culprit that eventually brought about the splintering he refers to was disinformation.
For reasons he can easily put his finger on, ANC structures operated on false information, leading them to arrive at false conclusions and regrettable actions. It had become routine for members to toss a log of false information into the fire and reignite divisions and mistrust, or to impugn the characters or intentions of innocent members for corrupt ends.
Had the ANC national executive committee of the time established a commission of inquiry to investigate the information it was receiving long before the splintering – it would have found it was false. The innocent would have been vindicated, the guilty disciplined and the organisation would probably have survived intact.
The facts surrounding Zuma have, to the contrary, been thoroughly investigated and are what they are as we all see them.
Mantashe should now be more concerned about the self-destructive trend which seeks to condemn those calling for Zuma to resign. It could be that the new splintering requires dialogue.
He needs to condemn those who seek unconstitutional solutions, such as the KwaZulu-Natal ANC Youth League, which inexplicably advocates the use of our armed forces and militia to defend Zuma.
There is no room for violent solutions in a democracy.
By keeping Zuma on board, the ANC keeps Nkandla alive and dominating the national agenda above the things the ANC really wants the nation to focus on as the election cycle begins.
Remove Zuma and the pendulum will gradually return to the people’s agenda. Additionally, criminal cases arising out of the Nkandla project may still be heard.
When that happens, the president’s role will again come into focus. We would then prefer that Zuma was free to fight his legal battles away from the people’s business.
It is not the ANC that has its back against the wall as Mantashe maintains. It is Zuma. The responsibility for a smooth transition lies with Zuma himself in his capacity as president of the state.
To spare his party divisions, he could take the matter of his resignation out of their hands and make the decision a personal one and a gift to national healing and reconciliation.
As a loyal member of the ANC, Zuma can easily prevent any splintering by addressing his most ardent supporters and preparing them for his decision to step down. — Wongaletu Vanda, via e-mail
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