The cost of losing your dignity comes cheap at the Luthuthu Junior Secondary School in Mthatha, Eastern Cape. In fact, it could have been a real steal at R200. But turns out, it was a round zero.
The R200 is what an orphaned, 11-year-old pupil was allegedly promised for being suspended by a rope and dropped into a pit latrine to delve though human faeces to retrieve the principal’s smartphone.
By all accounts, other pupils were also asked to assist in the search, but the lot fell on the 11-year-old to be dropped down the toilet. This alone screams of abuse of power, in this instance only outweighed by the stripping of a young boy’s dignity.
Whether it was the shame or the foul stench that clung to him like an embarrassing cloak, he did not have the words to tell his grandmother what happened at school.
Instead a friend had to relate the story of how, on the day of the incident on March 1, the Grade 4 pupil was asked, by the school principal, to strip to his underwear and search for his smartphone, which he said contained important school documents.
I was so heartbroken when I learned about what the child had been made to do.
— Grandmother
His grandmother confronted the principal.
“He was made to take off his school uniform and washed after,” she told sister publication DispatchLIVE.
“I was so heartbroken when I learned about what the child had been made to do. On Friday, the school principal, in the company of other teachers, apologised, and I forgive him.
“They explained that the phone had important school documents."
But, said the grandmother, “no child deserves that”.
She is right. No child, no human being, deserves that.
Not the humiliation, the indignity and being made the object of ridicule by his peers.
By the same token, no child should die because a government department has failed them, just as it failed five-year-old Michael Komape, who drowned in a pit latrine at Mahlodumela Lower Primary in Limpopo in January 2014.
That account, after all these years, is still a chilling read.
“He had drowned, and was lying in the filth in the pit with hand outstretched, as if seeking help,” said judge Eric Leach.
His body was left in the pit for hours, covered in muck and human faeces until eventually it was removed. He had suffered “the most appalling and undignified death”, said Leach.
Two different cases, years apart, with the same shameful thread running through them.
That is why the principal, who has since been arrested, is not the only one complicit. His appalling lapse in judgment could only happen at a school still subjected to using pit latrines. If he needs to answer for his deed, so must the government and the education department.
At last count, an estimated 1,598 of the 5,000 state schools in the province still use pit latrines. In 2021.
This despite numerous court battles by advocacy groups such as Equal Education. It seems court victories don’t always translate into implementation.
Last year, citing figures provided by the national education department, at 3,710 schools, plain pit latrines were the only form of toilets (plain pit latrines are banned by the Norms and Standards for School Infrastructure).
So it will not be enough to lash out at the educator only. The outrage should in equal measure be directed at a system that allowed the incident to take place.
All the right noises are already being made. The principal has been suspended. The MEC was set to visit the school on Thursday. Counselling has been organised for the pupil and his peers who were affected by the incident.
But the true test will be if this is the last time we report on a pupil, failed by a system, having to use a pit latrine, or sit in a mud school, or become a pawn in a game where teachers wield the power.
Somehow, this sadly has all the makings of a dream deferred.
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