Corporal punishment to make a comeback?

Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi has said that he supports a ‘strong review’ of the law that banned corporal punishment in schools.Corporal punishment in schools was banned in 1996.

He shared this view during a meeting of parents of pupils of Fred Norman Secondary School in Johannesburg on Tuesday, after an incident where a black teacher told a pupil’s granny she ‘did not like coloureds’.

‘Let’s be honest, you are putting it nicely, it’s the cane, and I say if government is a government of people, it must listen to the people.

‘I am saying we passed these laws because we had a vision of pupils who are well behaved. We never thought we will have these kinds of pupils when the law was passed.’

‘But I am for the strong review of that. I know I differ with many people, I differ with human rights people. If you can’t install the authority of the teacher, you have no education, you have no education.’

Ella Mokgalane, CEO of the SA Council for Educators, said they ‘discourage in the strongest possible terms the abuse of assault in any manner.

‘Corporal abuse remains outlawed and should not be applied on any pupil in our schools or outside our schools.’

Faranaaz Veriava, head of education at Section 27 said: ‘If the MEC is implying that we should bring back corporal punishment, then that is extremely disappointing.’

Veriava said that the ban was premised on moving from a culture of authoritarianism to a culture ‘where the rights of every human being, including the rights to be free of physical harm, would be respected’.