Fury over racist attack at Northriding Secondary School
THE FAMILY of the Northriding Secondary School learner who was allegedly hit, sprayed with sanitiser and called the K-word by an Afrikaans educator have vowed to get justice.
An Afrikaans teacher at Northriding Secondary School was suspended on Thursday following an alleged racist incident in which the female educator allegedly hit a Grade 8 learner and called other learners “baboons, drug dealers and k ***** s”.
Education Department spokesperson Steve Mabona told the media at the school on Friday that initial investigations indicated that an altercation over noise-making occurred on Thursday morning between a Grade 8 learner and a teacher.
“The educator is then alleged to have sprayed the learner with sanitiser after he left the classroom to report the matter to another teacher in the neighbouring class.
“It is alleged that the accused educator followed and started to engage violently with the learner, further spraying the learner with sanitiser all over his body and allegedly calling him a ‘k **** r’,” Mabona said.
He added that the teacher then had another altercation in the next period, with other learners.
“She started pelting insults at the learners. We are informed that she called them baboons, drug dealers and k ***** s,” he said.
The school’s principal, Francois Oosthuizen, the Representative Council of Learners (RCL) and other teachers then rushed to the classroom and defused the situation.
A decision was then taken for the Afrikaans teacher to be suspended with immediate effect until a disciplinary process had been conducted.
The father of the learner, who cannot be named to protect the child’s identity, said it was a traumatic experience for the family and other children who were in the class at the time.
“It’s traumatic and it’s something that we are really angry about because in 2021we didn’t think we would experience such. In 2021, for a 14-year-old to go through such is just a lot.”
The dad added that the family expected the school to handle the matter decisively and not only for their child but for the other learners as well.
The child’s mother said the family would open a case and lodge a complaint with the SA Human Rights Commission.
“This person stands to account for her transgressions and the contentious hate and racism that she stands for,” the mother said.
She said that other parents had also come forward to complain about incidents of racism.
The mother added that the family were further upset that they only heard about the incident from their son after school on Thursday, and not from the school itself.
Other parents raised the same concern, that they were only informed about the incident long after it happened and in some cases on social media. Oosthuizen said the school was “unfortunately” preoccupied with other matters on the day of the incident.
Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi said the department was extremely disappointed about the incident, adding that racism would not be tolerated at schools.