Zukile Majova
An 11-year-old boy, who was forced by his school principal to get into a pit to recover the principal’s cell phone, is due to go through trauma counselling this week.
The principal of the Luthuthu Junior Secondary School in Ncembu village near Ugie, Eastern Cape seemed to have gone crazy when he dropped his phone into the pit toilet.
First, he ordered older pupils to empty some of the human waste from the toilet with buckets. Then he ordered a grade six boy to strip naked before the boy was lowered into the toilet with a rope under his armpits.
The principal had promised the boy a reward of R200 if he recovered the phone from the pool of human waste, but refused to pay when the boy could not find the phone.
There are fears that the boy, who lives with his grandmother, may have been picked on because he has no parents.
Khula Community Development Project that advocates for children’s rights in the Eastern Cape has organised counselling for the boy who is now the laughing stock at the school and is afraid to go to the loo.
Activist Petros Majola who leads the NGO said the community is demanding the immediate removal of this principal from the list of educators, as he failed in his duty of being a surrogate parent to this child.
“We believe that this boy was introduced to the worst form of abuse as enshrined in the Constitution,” said Majola.
“We call on the South African Council for Educators to remove him from the register of Employees of the Department with immediate effect.”
Parents and the School Governing Body fear a relocation of the child to another school would amount to secondary victimisation of the child.
Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga previously said some 3,800 schools in the country are still using pit latrines.
