Experts have reacted in anger to comments by an education department official that the rape of a 10-year-old girl by a fellow pupil, aged 11, may have been "consensual sex between minors".
Three weeks after the incident at an Eastern Cape primary school the department has yet to act, saying it is still investigating whether the incident was rape.
The mother was alerted to the rape after a video of a teacher interrogating the two children went viral.
In the 30-second video clip, which the Sunday Times has seen, a teacher asks the two children in Xhosa what happened. When the girl begins to cry, the teacher shouts and shakes her finger at her.
The visibly shaken girl then explains, saying: “He said I must kneel down and I did that, then he raped me.”
When questioned, the boy responds: “I raped her at the back and then in front.”
The incident has exposed glaring failures by authorities. The school did not report the rape to the police or the education department, and the department has taken no action against the school, the principal, the teacher or the boy.
Read the full story in the Sunday Times.
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