We visit the school strongroom where Witbank child was locked overnight

Punishing unruly children by locking them in the school strongroom at the Blackhill Primary School in Witbank was not an uncommon practice, the grandfather of a Grade 1 child who was "forgotten" overnight in the room told TimesLIVE.

Speaking from the family’s home, Mbuzeni Mathebula said he had heard from other children in the family who had previously attended the same school that pupils were usually placed in the strongroom for a few minutes as a form of punishment.

“I am not sure what my grandchild had done for him to be punished on that day but the other children tell me that if they were ever locked up, it was never for more than 30 minutes,” said Mathebula.

His six-year-old grandson found himself locked in the strongroom last Wednesday from 1:30pm, when the school day ended, to around 9.30am the following morning when he was eventually found.

“He tells us that the teacher called him and took him to the room after school had ended,” Mathebula said.

Earlier, TimesLIVE visited the school to see the strongroom where the child was locked inside. 

The strongroom is not part of the classroom. Instead, it is in an office block of the school, a few metres away from where the teacher’s class is.

“He was found crouching in here next to the door,” education department spokesperson Jasper Zwane explained, opening the heavy steel door to the room.

The small, narrow room resembles a small passage and measures approximately 1.5m by 2.5m.

The room has several shelves which are stacked with boxes, files and a large printer.

As the door is sealed shut, the constricted, cramped structure falls into pitch black darkness, even during the day.

This is because there is not even a single window to the room, meaning there is hardly any ventilation to it too.

There is a large LED tube light in the room, but it is non-functional.

It is impossible to open the door from the inside.

“We are all wondering how he coped in there but he has changed since that day. On the first day after the incident, he seemed okay because he was medicated but on the second day, he seemed more violent,” said Mathebula.

“He says he doesn’t want to go back to that school.”

The family had grown concerned when the little boy failed to come home at his usual time last Wednesday.

After asking around, they were told that the boy could have gone home with another friend but none of his friends could say where he was.

“We then headed to the police station to open a case,” said Mathebula.

The next day however, the family got a call from a school governing body member, informing them that the child had been found.

According to Zwane, the teacher explained that she had forgotten the child there overnight.

It was not immediately clear what the child had done to be punished.

On Sunday, the classroom where the boy usually had class was clean, with the red chairs and desks properly aligned in preparation for class.

The 30-year-old teacher, who was initially suspended by the department, will not be reporting for duty on Monday. Police spokesperson brigadier Leonard Hlathi said she had been arrested on Friday and had spent the weekend behind bars.

She was to appear in the Witbank Magistrate’s Court on Monday on charges of kidnapping and child neglect.

As Zwane and the school principal visited the family on Sunday afternoon, colleagues of the jailed teacher stood outside, also there to offer their support. The teacher is said to be a fantastic, dedicated teacher. 

As visitors filled the family yard, the young boy at the centre of the incident seemed oblivious to the situation. He made his way in and out of the house and later left to play with a friend in the street just a few metres from his home.

Meanwhile, outside the family yard, a group of community members who had assisted in the search for the child last week started to gather. They expressed their dissatisfaction at the incident and the role played by the some of the local leadership during the search for the missing child.

Community members claimed they had searched for the boy from early evening until 11pm that night.

“What kind of person does that to a child? Perhaps she is barren,” one community member said of the teacher. But the Mathebula family called on them to keep their calm, urging them to not take any action against the school.

Asked about what would be a suitable punishment for the teacher, Mathebula simply called for “the law to take its course”.