A
17-year-old Swaziland schoolgirl was thrashed with 22 lashes of the cane by a
male teacher because her mother is too poor to pay her school fees.
Save the
Children Fund Director Dumsani Mnisi called the action ‘inhumane’ and ‘a
crime’.
Local media in Swaziland
say the girl from Emtfonjeni High School was one of a group of school students
who had been told to stay away from school until their school fees had been
paid. When they nonetheless turned up for classes they were beaten.
The severity
of the punishment breaks regulations in Swaziland that state students can only
be given a maximum of six lashes with the cane and male teachers should not
beat female students.
Save the Children Fund Director Dumsani Mnisi told
the Swazi Observer newspaper, ‘This is
really inhumane. Beating a child for the fact that he/she hasn’t paid school
fees is a crime on its own.’
Mnisi added,
‘How can you beat someone for something beyond his/her control? This is very
worrying. There are clear guidelines for corporal punishment.’
He said the
teacher who did this should be arrested and relieved of his duties.
The
schoolgirl told the Observer, ‘What
is very painful is that my mother is unable to pay my school fees because she
is unemployed.’
Minister of
Education and Training Wilson Ntshangase told the newspaper he not believe
there was a teacher who could treat a child this way.
‘First of
all no teacher is supposed to punish pupils. The guidelines for corporal
punishment state that only the headteacher is responsible for punishing
pupils,’ he said.
This is not the first time children at Emtfonjeni
High School have been whipped because their parents could not afford to pay
school fees. In July 2011 media in Swaziland reported children were given up to 10 lashes each. The school principal at the
time Themba Shongwe confirmed to the newspaper that the pupils were being
beaten for coming to school without the fees.
‘We have been telling them over and over not to come to
school without the money but they still come. We had no option but to give them
punishment for not obeying the instruction to stay at home,’ the newspaper
reported him saying.
When asked how true it was that the pupils were being
given as many as 10 strokes he said, ‘If a pupil is told to stay at home but
defies the instruction on the first day, you give that pupil a certain number
of strokes. But if the same pupil comes to school again the following day, you
have no choice but to increase the number of strokes.’
These are not the only examples of children being abused
by their schools. In October 2011,
Swaziland was told by the United Nations Human
Rights Periodic Review it must stop
flogging children at school because it violated their human rights. But the fact that the
practice of whippings is so ingrained in Swazi schools was demonstrated by
Sibongile Mazibuko, President of the Swaziland National Association of Teachers
(SNAT), who said at the time he was surprised that inflicting corporal punishment
was against a child’s rights.
Save the Children told the United Nations the treatment of
children in Swaziland schools amounted to ‘torture’.
There are countless examples of extreme and often perverted
use of corporal punishment in schools. At Mpofu High School girls are flogged
by teachers on their bare flesh and if they resist they are chained down so
the beating can continue. They get up to 40 strokes at a time.
At Phonjwane primary school teachers lined
up to whip 20 children. Each child received 27 lashes as nine teachers took
it in turn to give each one three cuts. The children’s crime? They had been
watching two boys fighting.
See also
NO SCHOOL FEES SO CHILDREN WHIPPED
CHILDREN CHAINED AND FLOGGED BARE
PROBE VICIOUS SCHOOL BEATINGS
SCHOOL FLOGGINGS OUT OF CONTROL
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