Beatings rife in schools, but few teachers punished

Pupils have been assaulted, kicked and hospitalised

THE rod is not being spared in many South African schools.

Pupils are being beaten even though corporal punishment was outlawed 17 years ago.

Two years ago, 2.1 million pupils reported being victims of corporal punishment, but only a few hundred teachers have been prosecuted for assault.

The South African Human Rights Commission is concerned that such punishment is still rife despite it having been made illegal in 1996.

Provincial education departments in the Western Cape, Gauteng, Northern Cape, Limpopo and North West dealt with just 215 cases between April 2012 and March this year. As a result, 11 teachers were sacked, 112 were given final written warnings and 146 were suspended without pay for between one and three months.

One of the main reasons for the low rate of prosecutions was the reluctance of parents to let their children testify in hearings against teachers, said Rej Brijraj, chief executive of the South African Council for Educators.

He said the council had to withdraw a case on June 10 after a teacher paid a parent R20 000. Last year, more than 14 cases were withdrawn when pupils refused to testify.

Brijraj said about a dozen teachers had been sent on anger management courses in the past few years.

“Corporal punishment is unlawful. It’s a crime. Teachers still have to find other ways of disciplining learners. There is a need for the systematic and organised development of teachers in alternative forms of discipline,” he said.

Complaints dealt with by the five departments included:

A Limpopo teacher who assaulted a pupil with a chalkboard duster so seriously that the child had to undergo surgery; and

A high school principal in the Western Cape who kicked a pupil and bashed his head against a wall.

The educators’ council dealt with 182 cases in the same period, imposing suspended sentences of a minimum of 10-year bans from teaching on 20 teachers.

According to the General Household Survey, published last month, about 44% of the pupils who reported experiencing violence in schools were from the Eastern Cape.

Alarmed at the increase in the incidence of corporal punishment, the Human Rights Commission convened a meeting last week with education stakeholders. Commissioner Lindiwe Mokate said the Human Rights Commission had a mandate to monitor the right to basic education.

“We do feel that the exercise of corporal punishment does put a limit to the enjoyment of the right to basic education. So this is why we do need to take this up.”

She echoed comments made by Brijraj that parents tended to report corporal punishment and then withdraw the complaint, saying this could be linked to pupils feeling intimidated.

“There is legislation that says you may not practise corporal punishment in schools and this is the message that needs to go out to everybody,” she said.

The Centre for Child Law at the University of Pretoria started this month to conduct research into the prevalence of corporal punishment in South African schools.

Among the cases due to come before the educators’ council are two in which beatings by teachers caused pupils to lose an eye.

In two cases in Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape, two teachers caused two pupils to lose sight in an eye after they were injured by flying splinters from sticks used during the assaults.

A teacher from Thohoyandou in Limpopo, who pleaded guilty after a splinter from a cane he was using to beat a pupil accidentally flew into another pupil’s eye, was fined R60 000.

Former Mpumalanga teacher Sibongile Mashaba, who taught

Corporal punishment is a crime. Teachers still have to find other ways of disciplining learners

at Sidlemu Primary in Kwalugedlane, was alleged to have beaten Grade 1 pupil Sebanele Ndlovu so severely that he died a few days later, in June last year. She is free after an inquest hearing in March found that Ndlovu had died of unnatural causes — but that there was no evidence to link the teacher to his death.

Police confirmed that the teacher would not even face a charge of assault, despite Mpumalanga education MEC Reginah Mhaule saying t hat there was a probability that Sebanele was beaten by Mashaba, who also allegedly instructed other pupils to assault him.

The secretary-general of the National Congress of School Governing Bodies, Monokoane Hlobo, said it would hold seminars throughout South Africa on the issue of corporal punishment in schools. “We want to warn teachers to refrain from this activity.”

Western Cape education spokesman Paddy Attwell said incidents investigated by his department against teachers ranged from shoving and pushing pupils to more serious forms of assault.

“Sanctions can range from final written warnings to dismissal in extreme cases and in the case of repeat offences,” he said.