Chairperson, the question is whether we continuously monitored the safety of learners during the strike; and the answer is yes, indeed. The department, working quite closely with the Department of Police, intelligence, army and all the related departments, even justice, were constantly monitoring the schools. So, government had set up a national strike council and there were also provincial strike councils.
There was a joint operation as well as provincial operations both at national and provincial level, which worked together with the Department of Defence, National Intelligence and the SAPS. They did gather information of where areas were volatile and sent in forces to ensure that those areas that were not safe would be reported. In addition, there was also monitoring on the functionality of schools with particular emphasis on attendance and safety.
The questioner also wanted to know as to what were the incidents that were reported in the information received by the department. Because information on violence was collected by the police most of the information lies with the Department of Police.
All what we did was to report where we knew there were threats and the police would deal with those matters. This is incomplete, because most of the information lies with the police.
In the Western Cape we did get a report that there was an incident of violence. We also got a report from North West that there were incidents of violence, but I am aware that there were more incidents of intimidation and violence. The information on all of those were collected by the police because they were treated as criminal activities and therefore the department would not have been involved in areas where there was violence and intimidation. Those were treated as criminal activities and the police are dealing with those matters.