TOM EATON | Who disciplines the whip-cracker, Lesufi? And that’s just the start of it

Let’s be clear: human rights organisations might be appalled by Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi suggesting children need to be beaten to control them, but millions of South Africans agree with him.

When the Constitutional Court ruled in 2019 that “reasonable and moderate chastisement” were unconstitutional, in effect banning the practice where adults hit children with hands or implements to alter their behaviour, there was a massive public outcry.

Over and over again, angry adults took to social media to repeat the same argument: “I was spanked as a child and I turned out fine.”

With all due respect, this is debatable. In fact, I suspect there’s a fairly strong argument to be made that an adult who believes that children need to have their buttocks violently touched to learn life lessons did not, in fact, turn out fine.

There is also a mountain of evidence showing that inflicting pain on a child’s body — euphemistically still described as “corporal punishment” — does almost nothing but traumatise children. To our animal brain it makes almost no difference if the pain is being caused by a loving parent or a stranger attacking us in an alley.

I am, however, under no illusions that I am changing minds here, and that I’m either preaching to the choir or offering yet more evidence that I’m a liberal snowflake who should have got a few good hidings as a child.

So let me get back to Lesufi, who this week made headlines by raising a white flag and admitting that he doesn’t know how to deal with children who are out of control.

Asked by Eldorado Times journalist Priya Ranchod if there was a way to “bring discipline back” in school, Lesufi replied: “When you say discipline, you say the cane. Let’s be honest, you are putting it nicely, it’s the cane, and I say if government is a government of people, it must listen to the people.”

Corporal punishment had been banned, he explained, “because we had a vision of pupils who are well behaved. We never thought we will have these kinds of pupils when the law was passed.”

“Now that we know, is it not possible to say…?” At this point he tailed off, but his meaning was clear.

What was less clear, however, was Lesufi’s plan for rolling out mass canings again. Not that he needs any coherent policies, of course: the fact that he’s still an MEC after his department spent R430m on a R6m Covid sanitisation rollout suggests that he’s absolutely bulletproof politically.

What was less clear, however, was Lesufi’s plan for rolling out mass canings again. Not that he needs any coherent policies, of course: the fact that he’s still an MEC after his department spent R430m on a R6m Covid sanitisation rollout suggests he’s absolutely bulletproof politically.

Still, I’d be interested to know his thoughts on how he plans to literally crack the whip.

For example, could he explain how teachers who can’t be trusted to teach their own subjects can be trusted to judge who needs to be physically abused and how severely? Will there be a set list of caning offences, or will emotionally overwhelmed teachers be allowed to use their discretion? And what is the plan for when genuinely rogue pupils, with no fear of authority, see that violence is now a legitimate tool and start properly beating up teachers? Longer canes? A bigger back-swing?

Even more interestingly, I’d love to know which constitutional safeguards Lesufi plans to abandon next.

After all, if he genuinely believes the government “must listen to the people” and remove human rights according to what it hears, I can only assume he’d happily endorse the results of a referendum in which a majority of South Africans called for the return of the death penalty or the stripping of rights from LGTBQI+ people.

The sanitiser scandal suggested that Lesufi is highly skilled at avoiding unpleasant political blowback, but in this case he’d do well to remember: if you sow the wind, eventually even the smoothest operator can end up reaping the whirlwind.