House Chairperson, our children are under siege, because we are under siege as a society from the upsurge of violent crimes that have normalised in society. The proliferation of drugs, the normalisation of sex from a very young age, the breakdown of family structures, and the socioeconomic violence generally unleashed on the majority of our people are the necessary enablers for violent crimes.
If we are honest human beings, we must ask ourselves why it is that most of the violent incidences at our schools happen predominantly in township and rural schools, "Moruti" [Reverend]. What is it about the nature of those schools that make violence, drugs and sexual abuse almost inevitable? It is because these schools cater for the dejected people of our country, for those considered surplus people in our land, for those criminalised just for existing by this anti- black and anti-poor system of governance that we have. So, Reverend, I can't understand how you can even think that you can "moer" [hit] the problem away with the cane. [Interjections.]
It is not because poor African and Coloured learners at these schools lack moral standards, it is because society has bastardised them. It is because wherever they look, they are surrounded by despair and hopelessness. They have no parents to raise them because their parents leave them before sunrise and come back after sunset, and because they have to go and earn a living by raising white children and tending gardens in white-owned homes.
Every day they witness their mothers getting raped and physically abused by their equally psychologically abused fathers. They witness their uncles drinking, abusing drugs, stealing and killing people because this antiblack system has reduced the entire existence of
black people to existing in a zone of nonbeing, a zone of nothingness - black people that have been reduced into beasts by a system and when they act like beasts because of the conditions they have been subjected to, those managing the system do not want to take responsibility; they want to punish them as if they created that antiblack system themselves.
The children who do drugs at schools, who are violent towards other children and to the teachers, who sexually assault other children and female teachers are products of a society we have been breeding while in this country. There isn't a cane big enough to fix that, Reverend. [Interjections.] We cannot have normal schooling in an abnormal society. We cannot have children going to school on empty stomachs and then sit back and think that they will behave the same way as children going to schools not having to worry about their next meals, or where they will sleep.
The violence we see at schools is an indictment of the society we have been building; it is an indictment of our inability to transform our society from the mess we inherited from apartheid. It is an indictment on our lack of empathy and care for the most marginalised in society. So, there is a word that the ANC government like to use, especially since "Cupcake" came into power. We need a
new social compact in this country. A compact that will bind all of us to some universal principles through which we need to raise our children.
No child should have to grow up in rat-infested shacks and flea- ridden shacks. No child should have to go to school on a hungry stomach. No child should have to study under trees or in leaking classrooms' roofs because government officials have decided to steal the money that was meant to improve their conditions. We are expecting our already overworked teachers to carry on the responsibility of parenting and of the state. We want to give them a cane and we want to tell them to fix the problem by beating up children. [Interjections.]
We must force the state to have psychologists in each and every school because what we are dealing with here is a psychological problem - it is a symptom of a very depressed system. Children need care, and not hardcore policing. Our children need love, not judgement, not punishment! More importantly, our children need to be raised in a society that appreciates them, that feeds them, that clothes them, that provides a roof over their heads. Reverend, without dealing with the root cause of the problems, we will never solve the violence at our schools. Thank you very much. [Applause.]