Moral crossroads for teachers’ unions in E Cape

On Thursday we reported that the Eastern Cape education department is being sued for R15m after Mbizana teachers allegedly dished out corporal punishment to a then 16-yearold pupil. The girl was allegedly being reprimanded for not doing a school assignment. Two teachers at Marelene Senior Secondary School, one a head of department, allegedly beat the child 61 times, breaking her hand in the process. The HoD gave her three lashes and the teacher a further 58.

While the pupil’s lawyers have sent a letter of demand to the department, the teacher is facing a criminal trial on a charge of assault with intent to cause grievous body harm.

After the incident, the pupil dropped out of school. Should the state be successfully sued in this case, that will set a precedent, which will inevitably result in a flood of civil cases against the department.

This is because despite corporal punishment having been outlawed in 1996 in SA, many teachers, especially in rural areas, are still using it as a way of “disciplining” pupils.

By now teachers should know that using corporal punishment is against the law, so Naptosa provincial chief executive Loyiso Mbinda blaming the department for “failing to manage the transformation process after corporal punishment was banned” is a serious concern.

Teachers who still use corporal punishment should be blacklisted and never given the responsibility of standing in front of pupils again.

To try address this scourge, the education department plans to recover some of the money they will have to pay out in civil lawsuits like this from the teachers who caused them by abusing the pupils.

This is a move in the right direction, as teachers have to be held personally responsible for their actions. Understandably, none of the teachers’ unions has outright thrown their weight behind this plan.

This is because the unions have to be seen as being worker-controlled, and coming out to back such a plan could cost them members.

But unionists – some of whom are parents – should rather be concerned with stopping teachers from beating children than about losing abusive teachers to rival unions.

Teachers who use corporal punishment should be blacklisted and never ... [stand] in front of pupils again