Leanne Jansen
Children in KZN were “in crisis” with about 50 teachers a year being struck off the roll for indecent relationships with pupils, the number of schoolgirl pregnancies rising out of control and almost a third of all substance abusers younger than 20, a Durban conference on social ills has heard.
Education MEC Senzo Mchunu called for decisive action, saying government departments, NGOs and school governing bodies had to work together. He suggested forming an association to “institutionalise” the “long fight” to pull KZN’s youth back from the brink.
Mchunu told delegates to the weekend conference of his school blitzes and how he and police had found weapons, drugs and drunk pupils. The implications of more than 10 000 teen pregnancies in 2011 were severe for KZN, home to three million of the country’s five million HIV/Aids-positive population.
By June last year, 465 pupils in the Uthungulu district (Eshowe) had fallen pregnant, he said.
Mchunu related horror stories, including how a teacher had killed and buried his schoolgoing girlfriend in a grave when investigations into him began “hotting up”.
Sexualised
“He (eventually) received a life sentence (in jail). But he is still alive. That child is dead.”
Linda Naidoo, Childline’s provincial director, said children were becoming increasingly sexualised. More than 40 percent suffered physical abuse and 30 percent had lost one or both parents (more than in any other province).
Last month, the NGO’s crisis helpline took calls about 400 cases relating to behavioural problems such as aggression and running away from home; 400 involving the commercial exploitation of children for farm and domestic labour and pornography; 600 pleas for help in dealing with divorce, death, and HIV/Aids infections; and more than 200 for advice on body image, learning difficulties and bullying.
Rej Brijraj, head of the SA Council for Educators, said the “biggest phenomenon” gleaned from its database was teacher-pupil romances and the sexual abuse of children by teachers. Efforts to bring perpetrators to book were hindered by the “culture of silence and complicity” in communities.
Over the past five years, of the 50 teachers a year banned from the profession, 95 percent had been guilty of sexual misconduct, Brijraj disclosed.
However, he said “over 95 percent” of teachers had good morals and values.
