By Niémah Davids and Andisiwe Makinana
Pupils at 26 Western Cape schools returned to classes on Monday after the two-week break to find the premises vandalised.
The Western Cape education department confirmed that at least 26 schools had been broken into during the holiday.
At Groenvlei High in Lansdowne, several classrooms were burnt out by vandals.
They had set fire to prefab classrooms, damaged ceilings, destroyed bathroom basins and stolen school equipment.
School principal Walter Adonis said it was as if a "mad dog had been let loose".
Pupils will have to be squeezed into the remaining classrooms.
"We are not going to allow vandalism to destroy us," Adonis said. "We will be busy with education and will send a message to criminals that we will be victorious."
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Governing body chairperson Allison Georges said the vandals had returned three or four times.
She said the thugs had first invaded the premises on June 30, the day after the school closed for the holidays, and set four classrooms ablaze.
Over the past week they had been revisiting the scene. Fresh damage had been discovered on Friday and again on Monday morning.
"They stole sporting equipment and a television set, and vandalised the toilets by cutting off water pipes and damaging ceilings. There are no toilet facilities and no water for more than a thousand pupils at the school.
"When we came here on Friday, water was gushing from the pipes," Georges said.
On Monday morning knives were still lying around in the school library, where chairs had been turned upside down and papers and books strewn about.
Paddy Attwell, communications director for the education department, said the department's physical resource planning team would assess the damage at vandalised schools this week.
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This article was originally published on page 1 of Cape Argus on July 16, 2007
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