Chances are you have never heard of Thulani Manqoyi. That’s because of the routine nature of everyday killings in Mzansi, from the elimination of political competition ahead of the upcoming local elections to the assassination of courageous whistle-blowers. We have become so desensitised to the taking of human lives that we literally walk over a corpse in the street; I saw that first-hand when I worked at a university in Umlazi. The only ones shocked by the July riots that killed more than 340 citizens are those who have not been paying attention to the everydayness of violence and murder in our broken country.
Even with our benumbed senses, there is something chilling about the death this week of Manqoyi. He was a grade 6 maths teacher at Heinz Park Primary School in Philippi East, Cape Town. Two thugs made a mockery of security at the gate, walked to the school’s parking lot where Manqoyi was sitting in his car and pumped bullets into the educator’s body. Then they strolled away, according to eyewitnesses, as if on a casual walk in these first days of spring.
Earlier this same month, a woman dropped off her child at her Benoni preschool in Miles Sharp Street, Rynfield. As the mom returned to her car, her lover approached, argued, smashed the car window, went to his taxi and returned with petrol that he poured onto his partner and her car, dousing himself in the process. The woman, helped by a friend in the same car, was then set alight and rushed to a nearby field, rolling in the grass to extinguish the flames. The lover (whatever that word means) then tried to run them over in the field and the women rushed to the school for help.
Connect the dots.
The front of a school in the early morning is an ideal killing zone in Mzansi. Remember Chanelle Henning, the Pretoria mom shot by two masked men on a motorcycle shortly after dropping off her five-year old son at his preschool? Or staff member Noloyiso Gengqa who was shot and killed just after 7am by an ex-boyfriend at Mandleni Junior Secondary School in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape? Or the early morning murder of principal Lazarus Baloyi, shot and killed on the schoolgrounds of his Ennerdale (Gauteng) school this past June?
Why choose a school as a killing site? I have a theory. It is the last place you’d expect someone to end the life of another human being.
When these morning murders happen in or around a school, familiar administrative routines kick in with mind-numbing regularity. The MEC for the province expresses Ramaphosian shock (that is, pretend surprise at what is glaringly obvious). The schoolchildren we are told will receive trauma counselling. And the police are doing everything they can to find the killers. Right.
Why choose a school as a killing site? I have a theory. It is the last place you’d expect someone to end the life of another human being. If you have an ounce of conscience, you surely would not whip out a gun (or a can of petrol) to kill someone in front of innocent children? Yet that is precisely why, for murderous minds, the entrance to schools is the prefect killing field. Everybody’s guard is down. This is a wholesome place, a site of learning. Nobody is that callous. Wrong.
What can be done? The natural instinct of a manager is to beef up the security at the school. For parents, visible and well-equipped security guards at the school gates relieve some of their anxieties. That tactic might work with petty criminals, but it is pretty meaningless when it comes to armed intruders in the parking lot or with an out-of-control male who failed to learn impulse control on his father’s knee.
And then there is the harsh reality of our abiding inequalities — most schools are too poor to afford well-trained security guards. The emaciated fellow often manning the entrance to a township or rural school, is more likely to be an unemployed local, whose job is to move the non-electronic gates back and forth for those entering or leaving. The teachers, staff and children in such schools are sitting ducks for intruders — like the educators who were fleeced by armed robbers during a staff meeting at a school on Qogi Street, Zwide, in Gqeberha last month.
The harsh reality is that you cannot make schools safer unless you make the surrounding communities safer. In a violent country, “safe schools” is a contradiction in terms. That is the ongoing dialogue the country needs right now: a series of deliberations between schools and communities about how to make schools safer for those inside and outside the gates. We will not eliminate the scourge of violence in communities, but we can at least reduce its impact in schools so that “dropping off” does not mean “dropping dead”.
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