#SafeSchools are a human right we must not deprive our children of
15 March 2018
Speaker,
In 2017, at the AB Xuma Primary School in Soweto, 87 pupils were raped or sexually assaulted by a scholar patrol man who was supposed to be looking after their safety. He was finally caught and arrested.
It has now come to light that the police investigator appointed to investigate their case has now himself allegedly raped or sexually assaulted two of the victims during the investigation. Let’s remember that these victims are school children in primary school!
On 26 September last year, a gunman entered the Edalinceba Primary School in Duduza in Gauteng at 11 am, walked straight through to the deputy principal’s office and shot him dead.
On 11 September 2017, a video went viral on the internet showing a school principal and two teachers gang raping a child in a school in the Esikhawini district in KwaZulu-Natal. Eventually, a second video of a separate rape incident surfaced in the area and seven teachers were eventually suspended.
On 29 September 2017, a seven-year-old child from Brakpan in Grade 2, shocked teachers and pupils by bringing a loaded gun to school to shoot a “bully” he claimed was tormenting him.
In 2017, it also came to light that 16 pupils had fallen pregnant over the past three years at Bothitong High School, near Kuruman in the Northern Cape, with the department and police struggling to find the culprits. Rape and teenage pregnancy is rife in the area.
In the first quarter of 2017, the Northern Cape Basic Education Head of Department appointed as headmaster of Kakamas High School a teacher who had previously impregnated a learner at that very school. The court had to eventually overturn the decision.
Speaker, today and on Human Rights Day, we will hear from political parties deifying those who made a contribution in the past, like Frantz Fanon, OR Tambo, and Robert Sobukwe without looking at the pressing issues of today such as the safety of learners in schools.
But I want to draw our attention back to right now, to today, and to a crisis facing our young people which we in this house can do something about.
Our schools are dangerous, unsafe places for our children. We hear daily about gang rape, murder, stabbings, sexual assault, drugs, gangs – and the list goes on, but nobody is doing anything about it.
It is a shame to have to force government to acknowledge this truth on Human Rights Day.
With Human Rights Day next week, the DA will be launching our national school safety campaign called #SafeSchools and we are going to fight for the rights of our children.
We have identified six very practical steps that can be taken right now, this year, to make our 26 000 South African schools safe places because our leaders, the Minister of Justice, Minister of Social Development, Ministers of Police and Basic Education are doing almost nothing to fix the scourge raping our schools across the nine provinces.
Like the four horsemen of the biblical apocalypse, they are presiding over the destruction of our innocent youth, but we can stop them and we can fix this! In fact we must fix this – our children deserve better!
The DA’s six-point School Safety plan can and will vastly improve safety at our schools if implemented properly.
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The Department of Justice must make sure the Sexual Offenders Register is properly maintained so that provincial education departments and the South African Council of Educators (SACE) can vet every teacher against the register. I’m told that there are virtually no names on the list. The Justice Minister is sitting on his hands!
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The Department of Social Development must collect information on disciplinary hearings and properly maintain the Child Protection Register. Provincial education departments and SACE must vet every teacher against the register. This is actually a requirement of the Children’s Act! Guess what: virtually no names are on this register either. The Minister of Social Development is sitting on her hands!
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SACE must be revamped and properly capacitated – it is supposed to vet and investigate teachers suspected of unethical or illegal behaviour, but does not have the staff to do so. 248 cases had to be carried over from last year because they couldn’t finalise them. SACE must be able to investigate the abuse of learners by teachers and to properly vet new teachers and teachers who move to a different province. When I questioned SACE in committee, they revealed that they often don’t get the offending teachers file until the teacher has moved and been re-employed in another province. So they can sexually or physical assault children all over again. Worse still, it is now rumoured that provincial officials don’t want to hand over files of disciplinary hearings at all as they are protecting their guilty colleagues. The Minister of Basic Education is sitting on her hands!
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Adequate SAPS resources must be provided to patrol the area around schools and they must be properly trained to work with children to prevent community crime problems from spilling over into schools. Specialised gang units must be introduced and trained in the role that gangs play in school violence. It is a scientific fact that when a local community takes ownership of their local school and they have a friendly relationship with a known local police officer, crime at a school drops radically because they keep an eye out for trouble and report incidents before serious crimes are committed.
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Key school staff members must be declared an essential service to ensure that learners are supervised at all times during school hours. Teachers and principals cannot simply go on strike and leave children to fend for themselves. Last year, in Soweto and Eldorado Park, the DA received complaints from parents whose children were abandoned at school because teachers went off to an unscheduled SADTU meeting during school hours. Under a DA government, no child will be left unsupervised if these measures are taken.
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The Western Cape’s #SafeSchools toll free call centre (0800 45 46 47) for reporting school safety issues must be replicated in every province and the phone numbers communicated to the school community, with posters and letters to parents. The Western Cape’s call centre allows teachers, staff, learners and parents to report violence, abuse, rape, alcohol and drug abuse, vandalism and corruption. It also provides information on dealing with pregnancy, substance abuse and racism among other issues.
Finally, speaker, the DA is going to push the four horsemen of the ANC apocalypse off their rusty dusties to go and do their jobs, protecting our children at school. Any minister who says the current situation is acceptable must be fired.
Any minister who says they have done enough about school safety is lying. The time to act is today. We will be launching our DA #SchoolSafety petition next week and invite millions of concerned parents, teachers, principals, school governing bodies and community members to sign our petition to the four ministers concerned and to the ANC government.
I invite Minister Angie Motshekga, and Deputy Minister Enver Surty to be the first two to sign our petition. Our children must be safe at school.
I thank you.
Issued by Ian Ollis, DA Shadow Minister of Basic Education, 15 March 2018
