Cape Town - A man forced his way into a classroom at Dr Nelson R Mandela High School in Crossroads and pulled a gun on teacher Maureen Gcantsana in front of her Grade 9 class.
The man was accompanied by one of Gcantsana’s pupils.
Gcantsana, who has worked at the school for 21 years, said chaos erupted: “All the pupils started screaming, I did too. With the gun right to my face, I pushed the man until he stumbled through the door.”
She said Thursday’s drama began when someone started banging on the door. The banging persisted and she opened the door, but blocked it from swinging open with her foot.
A man asked for her name, and when she confirmed who she was, he forced open the door, pulled a gun out of a togbag and pointed it at her forehead. Gcantsana pushed him out of the classroom, and then realised he had left his bag behind.
“But we have been too afraid to open it. We want to hand it to police.”
Surrounded by fellow teachers, a tearful Gcantsana spoke to the Cape Argus in the school’s locked staff room, while hundreds of pupils milled about outside. The pupils who had been in the classroom were waiting for trauma counsellors from the Department of Education in a separate room.
Staff said classes had been informally suspended in the wake of the incident.
Gcantsana said: “I will not come back until my safety is assured. I want the department to make this assurance to me.”
Both the principal, Linda Mnotoza, and Bronagh Casey, spokeswoman for Education MEC Donald Grant, said Thursday’s incident appeared to be an attempted robbery, but Gcantsana contested this.
“They asked for me by name. Only then did the man attack me. I don’t feel as though this was a robbery, I think that the man wanted to scare me. He wanted to send me a message. For what reason, I don’t know,” she said.
Other teachers accused the principal of threatening them with disciplinary action if they did not perform the “duties of security guards” such as patrolling the campus and checking pupils for weapons. Casey accused the teachers of drawing on a history of personal grievances against Mnotoza.
At the beginning of the school year, the Cape Argus reported that teachers at the school were protesting against Mnotoza’s return as principal. Grant rebuked the teachers, saying accusations that Mnotoza was extorting money from parents were unfounded.
Casey said the claim that the department was not supporting the school was false. “There are two security guards at the school, which have been arranged by the department. The department has also provided the school with a fence - damaged in certain areas but not torn down.”
In addition, funding for an alarm system had been approved.
Mnotoza said while the fence was sufficient, they needed more than two security guards: “We need more human resources in security so that they can deal with these breaches when they happen, instead of just having someone manning the gate.”
Cape Argus
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