The biggest bully is the intolerant man in charge
Earlier this month the Gauteng department of education warned that bullying at schools would be harshly dealt with as the department had a policy of "zero tolerance" towards it.
Yet one of the biggest bullies on the South African educational scene is the political head of the department, Panyaza Lesufi, member of the executive council (MEC) for education in Gauteng. He also appears to have a policy of "zero tolerance" towards Afrikaans schools, including Afrikaans schools most of whose pupils are coloured rather than white.
In June 2015. Mr Lesufi bullied a Curro school near Pretoria into getting rid of its principal by threatening to withdraw its licence because of alleged racial segregation in school buses. In June the following year he launched a campaign of intimidation against a nursery school in Centurion, unjustifiably accusing it of racism without bothering to ascertain the relevant facts. In August last year his target was St John's College in Johannesburg, which he bullied into getting rid of a teacher who had already been dealt with by the school's disciplinary processes.
Among his latest targets is the Overvaal High School in Vereeniging, which he tried to bully into admitting 55 grade 8 pupils who wanted to study in English even though the school uses Afrikaans as its medium of instruction and was already full, with a number of black children among its pupils.
Overruled by Bill Prinsloo in the Gauteng division of the High Court in an application brought by the school's governing body, Mr Lesufi says he will appeal all the way to the Constitutional Court. This despite the fact that Judge Prinsloo issued a punitive costs order against his department. The judge said that state litigants had the "luxury to litigate at will at the expense of the taxpayer", while school governing bodies had to do so sparingly as they needed to use their funds for the children and not for litigation if they could help it.