Spokesperson at the Free State Department of Education, Howard Ndaba, says the learners who are in school uniform in the video taken last week Friday (July 26), have been identified by officials who will not only investigate the matter but will institute disciplinary proceedings against those fingered. Ndaba warns learners in the province that this behaviour will not be tolerated by the province. “We really want to send a stern warning to our learners out there throughout the province that we are deeply concerned about the level of violence in schools where learners are involved infighting. We don’t want to turn our schools into a boxing ring,” cautions Ndaba.

Several instances of violence in schools over the course of 2018 garnered widespread attention, with the Central South African region not being exempt from this unfortunate trend. In September 2018 two learners from Carlton van Heerdan Secondary School in Upington engaged in a knife fight that left one in a serious condition at a local hospital. Later that month in the North West, a learner at Ramotshere High School in Dinokana, Zeerust, stabbed his teacher to death. In November 2018, a seven-year-old grade one learner in Makapanstad was fatally stabbed by a high school pupil. The assailant allegedly accosted the primary school pupil after he had a fall-out with the boy’s older sister, whom he was dating.

Provincial Secretary of the South African Teacher’s Union (SATU) in the Northern Cape, Henk Brand, urged communities to rally together in reducing the scourge of violence in schools. Brand acknowledges pupils have their right, but laments the “wheels of enforcement in schools are turning too slowly”.

OFM News