EDITORIAL | Violent schoolchildren: how do we avoid complicity?

It has been less than a month since schools opened for the 2023 academic year and already there have been two seriously violent incidents reported — one of them a murder.

There is no question that violence in schools is a problem — but it is an issue that is getting worse, not better, and it can no longer be taken for granted that sending a child to school is simply dropping them off in a safe place.

In recent days we have watched schoolyards turn into violent crime scenes. A girl attacked by boy, a boy knifed in a fight, teachers taken hostage by angry pupils after a suicide and even a police vehicle tipped over.

Since schools re-opened we’ve seen children harmed by children and bullied by teachers, teachers threatened by children, and even parents and the police have been at risk.

Last week a case of common assault was opened, and Krugersdorp police are investigating a case of a grade 10 schoolboy accused of attacking and assaulting a grade 10 schoolgirl. The incident was captured on video and has since led to the boy’s suspension from Nic Diederichs Technical High School in Krugersdorp.

Just days later, last Thursday, a grade 10 pupil was murdered at Geluksdal Secondary School in Brakpan, east of Johannesburg — stabbed during a fight with fellow pupils.

On the same day angry pupils at a school in the Maqheleng area of Ficksburg, Free State, held teachers and police officers hostage at the school. The incident took place at Tlotlisong Secondary School in the wake of allegations that their fellow pupil had committed suicide after being bullied by a teacher. It was reported that the child left a suicide note explaining his reasons. A picket at the school turned violent, and pupils overturned a police vehicle. Three more responded to the scene and were pelted with stones before police were able to disperse the pupils.

The government needs to provide more resources to schools to improve security and provide better support to victims of violence.

Last month a submission by Human Rights Watch to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education stated that South Africa is among 116 countries that have endorsed the Safe Schools Declaration and its related Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use during Armed Conflict.

This follows the department of basic education’s launch of the National School Safety Framework, which aims to provide guidelines for schools on how to ensure the safety of pupils and teachers.

On top of this, government also implemented programmes aimed at reducing substance abuse among pupils and to provide support to at-risk pupils.

Yet despite these efforts, we still see bullying, assaults, gang violence and even murder. Improved matric results have been overshadowed by violence and the resulting psychological scarring for everyone involved.

Clearly more needs to be done to address this crisis.

The government needs to provide more resources to schools to improve security and provide better support to victims of violence.

As a country, as a community, as parents and as humane beings, we need to ask what we can do and how we can stop being complicit.

What crime and violence are our children witnessing around them that we accept as normal? What violence has a teenage boy witnessed at home that led him to assault a girl on an open field in front of fellow teenagers — some of whom jumped in to stop while others just watched? What prompts a child to see school as so bad that he takes his own life? Why are schoolchildren fighting with knives?