Johannesburg -
The 13-year-old schoolboy caught on camera assaulting a teacher with a chair and a broom in front of his schoolmates has been expelled from Glenvista High School.
He started the new year at an undisclosed school in Joburg after his old school’s disciplinary committee found him guilty of assault and also of bringing its name into disrepute.
Fellow pupils witnessed the assault and one filmed the incident with a cellphone. The footage went viral online.
The clip that led to the teenager’s long suspension and subsequent expulsion showed him attacking the teacher with a broomstick in a classroom and also throwing a chair at him while his classmates laughed in the background, encouraging him to “go f*** him (the teacher) up”.
As the teacher walked away without retaliating, the boy angrily called him a “fat f***”.
A classmate who could be heard laughing hysterically in the background and encouraging the teenager was the one who recorded the clip in September.
There is other footage, not circulated, showing the teen biting the teacher’s hand as he tries to grab his school bag, punching him on the arm and kicking him.
The boy was suspended from school and the teacher laid a charge of assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm against him. However, the criminal matter was diverted and the pupil attended a diversion programme, since completed.
On December 4, the school sent a letter to the Department of Education recommending that the boy be expelled, after the disciplinary committee that had sat on November 29 found him guilty.
In a letter, which The Star has seen, the principal said the boy had not been behaving in accordance with the school’s code of conduct and that the disciplinary committee had found him guilty of assaulting his teacher and bringing the school into disrepute.
A letter sent a month later from Boy Ngobeni, the Gauteng Department of Education head of department, to the school approves the expulsion and recommends that the teenager attend a diversion programme on anger management. He also informed the parents of the right to appeal against the expulsion within 14 days of receiving the notice. The family, however, did not appeal.
The boy’s lawyer, advocate William Karam, said he was willing to appeal but the teenager and his grandmother told him not to.
“They just wanted to put the matter behind them. What he did was not right, I’m not condoning it.
“But clearly the child has anger issues and I believe we had strong grounds to appeal because of the multiple mitigating factors.”
The boy lives with his grandparents, who are his guardians and are believed to have raised him since he was two weeks old.
His father died a few years ago, and it’s alleged that his mother was once a drug mule who was arrested while transporting drugs for Nigerians. She received a 10-year sentence but allegedly spent only five behind bars.