A number of schools countrywide have become victims of violent crimes and robberies, with KwaZulu-Natal being the hardest hit. The South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) has raised concerns regarding the safety of school-going children, however, the reasons for these crimes goes beyond simply stealing.
SADTU spokesperson, Nomusa Cembi, spoke to SABC News last week and revealed that violent incidents are occurring a lot more regularly, with new reports coming in almost every week, however, a lot of these matters are not always reported.
Recent weeks have seen a drastic spike in the number of reported cases, particularly from the KwaZulu-Natal province which appears to be the most affected.
In many cases, criminals enter the schools with card machines demanding bank cards from teachers in order to withdraw all the money from their accounts.
Oftentimes, these crimes are not reported because they happen so frequently that officials feel it is of no use as it rarely leads to the arrests and convictions of those responsible.
Fortunately, the recent school crimes in KwaZulu-Natal have led to the arrests of four or five people, Cembi reports. when asked about the possible motives of these crimes, Cembi gave some insight.
One can say perhaps there are syndicates involved in this, however nothing has been proven and police are still making investigations and these cases are not yet in court.
These crimes do not appear to be random or once-off incidents, but rather carefully thought through processes where criminals arrive prepared with speed point and card machines.
The motive of these acts of violence is not always simply to steal money, but sometimes schools are targeted by angry community members who are trying to get attention from the government to address their service delivery problems.
Community members use schools to fight their service delivery battles as they believe that government members will only listen to their concerns if they are putting school children at risk.
SADTU condemns these politically-motivated crimes and states that a child's education is important and community members should seek other ways to bring attention to the problems they are facing, without traumatising students and educators.
In the aftermath of these incidences, the Department of Education provides psychosocial support to the learners and teachers who have been affected and left traumatised, but SADTU feels that this support is usually inadequate and is not addressing the root cause of the problem, which in many cases is government negligence.
Follow-up support is not usually provided and the issue is abandoned thereafter.
This problem is becoming so frequent, that a number of teachers have requested to be transferred to different districts as they feel unsafe.
