‘It’s not the first time’: friend of Alex school stabbing victim

A 16-year-old boy whose best friend was fatally stabbed by a classmate at Pholosho Junior Secondary School in Alexandra this week has alleged that he escaped being a victim of the same boy last year.

“He tried to stab me last year after I intervened and tried to stop a fight. My mom had to come to the school and a meeting was held. He never bothered me again,” said *Vuyo. *TimesLIVE is not using his real name to protect his identity.

On Monday, Vuyo and Qhayiye Mgaye allegedly intervened when a fight threatened to break out on the school premises.

This time, one of the boys allegedly jumped over the school fence, after apparently leaving for home, and back into the schoolyard and allegedly fatally stabbed Mgaye.

“It’s not the first time,” said an emotional Vuyo.

“Earlier this year, he stabbed another child who was new to the school with a pair scissors. They did nothing to him. He wasn’t suspended. Nothing.”

On Tuesday, a day after the incident, Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi visited the school and said he had been told by community members that the 16-year-old perpetrator was not a first-time offender. The school, however, did not paint the teen as a troublemaker, Lesufi said.

Lesufi bemoaned drugs and gangsterism as problems reported at the school.

He stressed that after 90 minutes of meeting with community leaders, school leadership and pupil representatives he had no answers about what had led to Mgaye being killed.

Lesufi said he was pained and speechless about how to offer comfort to the grieving family.

At least two other pupils reported that the alleged assailant was a troublemaker who gambled at school. 

“He has always made it seem like he wants to rule the school and the teachers have let him,” charged one pupil.

Addressing the media at the school, Lesufi bemoaned the fact that a life was lost,, saying schools should be the safest place for pupils.

“A school should not be a place where a parent is called to collect a body. It should not be a place where pupils are singing outside and not in a classroom,” Lesufi said while scores of pupils, dressed in their brown uniforms, sang in protest outside the school gate.

The alleged perpetrator was handed over to police on Monday by his parents, a move welcomed by Lesufi.

“We shouldn’t only visit the family of the victim. We must also visit the family of the perpetrator. It is my intention to visit them and thank them for taking the child to the police and them demonstrating they are parents,” he said.

Perhaps, Lesufi said, that child was in need of help.

He said what had played out was an indication of societal problems, adding that he had heard about a nearby shack being rented by a group of pupils to use as a drug den.

With this being one of several incidents in which a pupil allegedly killed another on school premises, Lesufi said it could no longer be the situation that a pupil is expelled, only for them to be accepted at another school where trouble would possibly brew again.

“I am fighting the minister, legislators and members of parliament that we are recycling the problem. I can tell you now without any fear of contradiction that the pupil who stabbed another pupil will be expelled, but to where? What we need is a law that says if you are found guilty of this kind of act, you should be taken to a rehabilitation centre, have a report that says you have been rehabilitated, and on the basis of the report we place you in another school.

“It cannot be that you move from one school to another because we are transferring a problem, not solving it,” he said.

Three years ago, Lesufi identified more than a dozen schools in which there were problems of ill discipline. Within those schools, they conducted programmes with some “troublemakers”.

“We took the problematic — those accused of using drugs, those who are violent —  to prisons to visit and see the situation. They came back changed - not all of them, but most of them.”

Lesufi said there was no trouble at those 15 schools again.

Lesufi touched on former president Kgalema Motlanthe’s visit to the Alexandra school in 2016.

Motlanthe, who had studied at the same school, had donated R100,000. He left it up to the school to decide what it wanted to use the money for.

During his visit on Tuesday, Lesufi was told a decision had been made that the money would be used for the erection of a wall around the premises. But the wall was yet to be erected as the leadership had not decided who should get the job.

“The perpetrator jumped the fence to exit, so if that decision was implemented, we would not be here,” said Lesufi.

“If the parents did not squabble, we would have had the wall.”

Chaotic scenes played out outside the school premises on Tuesday when pupils abandoned classes to sing and demonstrate in honour of Mgaye.

They were led by student group Cosas.

A parent, Koekie Mokoena, was among the protesting pupils.

“I have a child who attends grade 7 here. Government should fix this and let these children know that rights are accompanied by responsibilities. What we live with is that we cannot reprimand our children because when you do, they call the police.

“I attended this school and it used to be a good school that competed with some of the best, but it is no longer that,” she said.

“Today our kids are killing each other at school. Who will be next?! This is the result of too much freedom,” she said angrily.

Scores of neighbours, pupils and a large media contingent gathered outside the Mgaye family’s modest home in Alexandra.

“We are heartbroken about losing him,” said his aunt, Fundiswa Sefa, when she addressed the media.

“He was a humble boy and I am not saying this because he is no more. He was a good child. There has never been a single complaint about him. He understood the family he came from. He wanted to be a police officer to assist with enforcing the law,” she said.

“We were expecting so much from him, especially for his mom. She is not in a good space at all. He was the third of her five children and her only boy.”

Vuyo stood a few metres away with a crowd of other pupils outside Mgaye’s home, his school bag draped over his shoulders. 

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