Johannesburg - The Congress of South African Students (Cosas) won’t withdraw its call that pupils “return fire with fire” if they are assaulted by teachers.
Instead, the organisation wants pupils to physically retaliate and open cases against teachers until the department implements resolutions from last year’s discipline summit.
At a media briefing on Wednesday, Cosas deputy secretary-general Zama Khanyase said the call to retaliate wouldn’t cause chaos in schools as most of them were already chaotic.
“There’s chaos in schools. It’s just that the chaos hasn’t received media coverage,” said Khanyase. “We, as Cosas, are hurt that when a teacher is hit, the media and the department will go there, but when a learner is hit, we don’t get that response. Even before we made the call, there were learners defending themselves.”
She said the resolutions from last year’s discipline summit should be implemented. One of the resolutions was that teachers needed to find alternative ways of disciplining pupils other than corporal punishment, which has been abolished.
“The summit said we must look into alternatives. We understand that teachers are frustrated. As part of our call, we are telling the Department of Basic Education that let us implement the resolutions of the discipline summit,” Khanyase said.
Until then, she said, Cosas wouldn’t take back its call for pupils to defend themselves. “We can’t retract this call until we feel that justice is given to learners. When we say fight fire with fire, we mean that if a teacher hits you, report it to the police.”
Spokeswoman for the Department of Basic Education Troy Martens said it would engage with the leadership of Cosas to ensure there was no violence in schools. “This is concerning. We don’t want schools to be turned into war zones,” she said.
Cosas also announced its decision to uphold the sacking of its president Sandra Baloyi and treasurer Ntombikayise Tini by a special national congress.
Acting president Kagiso Kgabo said six provinces had demanded a special congress and raised motions of no confidence against the two.
Kgabo said Tini and Baloyi would be brought before a disciplinary hearing on charges of bringing the organisation into disrepute with regard to comments they made on social media regarding the legality of the special congress.
The Star