‘Ancestral calling’ sparks mayhem, panic at school
TERRIFYING scenes of half-clothed pupils wailing and screaming at Pinetown Girls High resulted in some teachers allegedly fleeing last week, while unnerved parents are worried that the children are possessed by demons or affected by their ancestors.
Experts say the behaviour of pupils at the school has all the hallmarks of “something evil”, and they’ve encouraged parents and teachers to find a solution as a matter of urgency.
Panicked mothers told Independent Media they were worried that their children’s lives were at risk after several pupils screamed, fainted and, in some cases, turned violent without obvious reason, while a few teachers apparently felt unsafe and fled from the school.
On Thursday and Friday last week and this Monday the school descended into mayhem as girls from different grades barged out of their classrooms, and some even ran through the school gates into the busy Josiah Gumede Road, all the while screaming and wailing as if under attack.
A pupil who spoke to Independent Media with her mother’s permission said: “Some children wanted to jump off the building. They were screaming that there was something in them that didn’t want to come out.”
The girl said her fear intensified when one pupil started talking in the voice of a man.
“She was walking like a man, hitting children, and they were running away from her. They were screaming like they were beaten up, like they were being raped. They were screaming so badly. I was traumatised, but it (the spirit) didn’t affect me.”
She said even though the “possessed” pupil could be heard by everyone, onlookers couldn’t understand what was being said as the words and language seemed unfamiliar.
A teacher apparently told pupils not to intervene as it was an ancestral matter.
A mom who was parked outside the school while waiting for her daughter on Thursday last week said she heard a “hell of a noise” and then saw about 15 girls, without socks, shoes and in some cases with unbuttoned shirts or even topless, charging through the gate while screaming at the top of their lungs.
“They need someone who is powerful in prayers. There is an evil spirit that is around that will target whoever is weak and then just circulate to the next one. It can’t be that most of the kids have something similar, have an ancestral calling,” she said.
Another mom said: “My daughter fainted. She said she felt funny, and then she collapsed. When she woke up, the teacher and other children told her what happened.”
The woman said she was angry that the teachers had not contacted her, and she was keen to find another school for her child as she feared for for her safety.
A group of schoolgirls said while they were not affected by the “ancestors”, some of the girls overturned desks and fainted without appearing to know what they were doing.
One mother said something dark and evil was happening, and they needed a powerful person to stop it.
“Other parents asked the principal if they can pray for the school because they believe it’s a bad spirit, so the principal just told the parents to go away and not come back.
“The kids just scream as if they had just seen something, but we don’t know what they had seen. But as parents we know that is bad spirits,” she said.
The school’s principal, Mr S Shange, said he could not discuss the issue and that any communication had to come from the provincial education department.
The spokesperson for the KZN Education Department, Kwazi Mthethwa, said they would follow up on the matter.
“We cannot say for sure that it’s indeed ancestral calling. We have actually had a few schools in the province reporting some similar incidents.
“This calls for the entire education community to work together and come up with a collective approach in dealing or responding appropriately to these kinds of incidents,” Mthethwa said.
The phenomenon at Pinetown Girls High is not unusual, as it has happened at several other schools.
An expert in Zulu culture, Professor Sihawu Ngubane from the University of Kwazulu-natal, dismissed the idea that ancestors were causing the behaviour.
He said when ancestors called on their loved ones to become an isangoma, they would only go to the people who belonged to that family and not groups of unrelated people.