Bringing in the big guns fails to beat the bullies
WHEN a soft-spoken, slightly built 15-year-old Phoenix Secondary School boy walked into school on Monday morning flanked by two rifle-toting security guards, he didn’t realise he was about to make his problems worse.
The Grade 10 pupil — who was assaulted two weeks earlier for standing up to demands from gang members for cash — was petrified but determined to write his exams irrespective of the violence and threats meted out by school-yard bullies and a bigger gang suspected of drug dealing.
However, his father’s desperate attempt to protect his son by hiring two R900-a-day KZN VIP Protection Services security guards has backfired.
The guards angered the gang. The teen and his family have since been plagued by death threats and will have to move out of their home.
“My son had missed two weeks of school because no action was taken against the bullies,” his father said. “I could not send him to school when the matter is not resolved and his life is threatened. It is my right to take steps to protect my child. Hiring bodyguards was the only step I could take.”
But after the boy attended class with the two armed bodyguards standing outside, a classmate arrived at his home with a fresh death threat.
The classmate waited for his parents to leave, then stood in the driveway and hurled insults at the boy, who suspected other bullies were hiding nearby.
His classmate said they were going to “make him pay” for what he had done.
His friends, who had been sharing their lesson notes with him, have also been threatened.
His father said: “He has been receiving threats over WhatsApp and messages saying he is a sissy for not fighting his own battle. We hear there is going to be bloodshed on the last day of school. He hasn’t been to school since Monday. We are afraid for the safety of our family.
“We always taught our son to do the right thing. He didn’t retaliate when accosted by the gang, but even with doing the right thing we are now forced to move out of our home and away from our community while his bullies are still in school.”
The father, a church minister, said the family would move soon because of the threats.
Childline South Africa statistics revealed this week that it dealt with more than 430 incidents of bullying last year and at least 173 since January.
Experts say the Phoenix case is not “peer bullying” but gangstyle violence fuelled by drugged and drunken pupils.
At his modest home this week, the teen put on a brave face.
His voice quivered when he spoke about the impact on his family. “I don’t regret standing up to the bullies,” he said quietly, “but I regret how my family has been affected.”
Parents at the school were furious this week, some that bullies reigned and others because they feared having armed guards at the school.
KZN VIP has been patrolling daily, herding truants back to class and standing guard at the end of the school day. “The increased security has ended the drug trade in the school and that has led to more threats on the boy’s life,” KZN VIP CEO Glen Naidoo said.
“It has escalated from bullying to gangsterism. There was criticism over the armed escort at school, but we had to be armed for protection because over the past few weeks we have confiscated knives and pangas from the schoolchildren.”
National Department of Basic Education spokesman Elijah Mhlanga said this was the first case in the country in which bodyguards had been hired to protect a child from bullies.
“Bullying is a huge challenge in our schools. It will take a combined effort by parents, learners and teachers to clamp it down. Extreme measures should not be necessary if parents or guardians . . . taught their children values that would instil a culture of respect for self and others,” he said.
This week in Inanda, north of Durban, teachers were horrified when a teen was attacked with a panga in a school gang fight. The 17-year-old, of Sithandimfundo Secondary School, is recovering in Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital.
Last year, Paddy Padayachee, acting director-general in the Basic Education Department, told parliament’s education oversight committee that violence in schools was common, with the classroom the “primary site”.