‘You taught us to hit’

A conference organised to find ways of eradicating violence in schools took a dramatic turn when teachers were threatened.

Johannesburg - A conference organised to find ways of eradicating violence in schools took a dramatic turn when one of the speakers made threats of violence against teachers.

Khulekani Skosana, president of the Congress of South African Students (Cosas), indicated that they had taken a resolution to defend their members, saying that teachers who administer corporal punishment to pupils should be subjected to their “hit-back campaign”.

“If you hit a child, you are teaching that child that to solve a problem you must use violence. So why are you surprised when we are applying what you taught us? It is you who taught us how to hit,” Skosana said, to loud cheering from Cosas members.

He was speaking at the multi-stakeholder summit on school safety and security in Boksburg on Wednesday where, apart from the use of corporal punishment as a form of discipline, issues such as bullying and an unsafe and violent environment that impacts on pupils’ performance, violence against teachers, sexual abuse and drug abuse were discussed.

Vuyo Zali of the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) said it was a disgrace that some teachers were still using corporal punishment.

But he said Sadtu disagreed with Cosas’s stance to fight fire with fire.

Zali’s words were echoed by Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga.

“This fighting fire for fire is dangerous for all of us. We need to ask ourselves how to deal with this.

“Teachers complain about bad discipline and the pupils complain about being assaulted. We need to find a solution,” she emphasised.

Motshekga pointed out that research had shown that teachers were becoming increasingly distressed because corporal punishment had been done away with and there were no other viable methods of disciplining children.

She added that while some teachers preferred corporal punishment as a method of discipline in spite of its being outlawed in 1996, the reality was that it created an uncaring environment for pupils and was in fact contributing to violence in schools.

The other problem was that corporal punishment taught children that using violence was the only way to solve problems, she said.

One of the delegates touched on the issue of violence against teachers perpetrated by community members. The delegate related the story of a woman who took a sjambok and went to a school to confront a teacher she believed her husband was cheating with.

The woman went through the gates with that sjambok despite the fact that there was a security guard stationed on duty. She then went to the principal’s office to complain about it and the teacher was summoned. The teacher was allegedly not only slapped by the woman in front of her colleagues but sjambokked too.

But it later turned out that the woman had assaulted the wrong person, and her husband confirmed that.

The delegate said it was disturbing that such a violent incident had occurred on school premises.”How could that have happened with a paid guard at the gate? This means that if teachers are not safe, pupils are also not safe,” he said.

botho.molosankwe@inl.co.za

The Star

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