Madam Chair, hon members and guests in the gallery, the ACDP requested this debate because we are deeply concerned about what is happening in our schools, given the numerous reports of violence, the proliferation of drugs and sexual abuse in and around many of our schools.
In my day strict discipline was the order of the day in most schools. Swearing at teachers, threatening them or hitting them was not an option. The ACDP wants to see a culture of order, discipline and respect restored to our schools. Additionally, our schools must be safe places for both teachers and learners. A child should never have to fear for their safety while at school and neither should the teachers be. Parents should also not have to worry about the safety of their children while they are at work.
For the next few minutes, I would like to highlight some of the challenges our children and teachers face in schools, particularly with regard to violence, drugs and sexual abuse, which I hope we can discuss further and together propose solutions to combat them.
In my closing statement, I will also offer some ideas of how we can tackle the crisis looming at our schools.
House Chair, between January and June this year, seven stabbings at schools around the country were reported in the news. Four of them were fatal. Last month, another learner was stabbed to death at school with a pair of scissors. If it is true that school violence mirrors what is happening in their communities, then surely, violence would have been worse in the 1980s and the 1990s.
The ACDP notes with concern that school violence now not only includes bullying and fist fights, but it also include murder.
Is it a coincidence, House Chairperson that the increasing levels of violence and murder in our schools seems to have started and increased after corporal punishment was banned in our schools? Why do some of our members call it barbaric or abuse when a headmaster accompanied by a witness, uses a cane to stop a learner from fighting, drinking alcohol and hitting a teacher in a classroom? Are we going to stand by and watch as violence increases to the point of loss of life without any serious intervention?
And we ask further how can female teachers be expected to cope with 16-year- old boys who come to school drunk, disrupt order in the class and then be threatened with rape or violence if they try to correct them?
House Chair, there are still many countries that still use a cane effectively to bring order in their classrooms, and consequently do not have violence and sexual abuse or murder in their schools. I believe that most, if not all these schools still enjoy a better level of discipline and see improved academic results than those schools where learners get away with unruly and violent behaviour. When strict discipline is not maintained in a school, then bullies and gangs will take over and destroy many of our children's lives and future.
Forest High School learners in Gauteng, where a Grade 8 boy was killed in June this year, described their school to the media as a "Prison, where drug abuse is rife, and where older boys demand money from learners visiting toilets and force them to perform sexual acts on them." Older boys are sodomised by their colleagues and they also do the same to the younger ones.
House Chairperson, this cannot continue! It cannot continue! It now appears that school bathrooms may also in future need security officers to ensure that what is happening in these days does not happen.
What should be done to stop abuse? It is a question I am asking. What should be done to stop bullying, attacks on teachers, destruction of property, rape, violence and loss of life in our schools?
Finding answers to these questions is the main purpose of this debate. I am looking forward to a constructive engagement with members, and also with solution solutions their proposing, so that order and discipline can be restored. A spirit of excellence in our schools can also be introduced so that our children and teachers will learn from a safe environment. I thank you. [Applause.]