Durban - Terrifying scenes of half-clothed pupils wailing and screaming at Pinetown Girls High resulted in some teachers allegedly fleeing last week, while unnerved parents are worried that the children are possessed by demons or affected by their ancestors.
Experts say the behaviour of pupils at Pinetown Girls High has all the hallmarks of “something evil”, and they’ve encouraged parents and teachers to find a solution as a matter of urgency.
Panicked mothers told the Independent on Saturday they were worried that their children’s lives were at risk after several pupils screamed, fainted and, in some cases, turned violent without obvious reason, while a few teachers apparently felt unsafe and fled from the school.
Last Thursday, Friday, and this Monday, the school descended into mayhem as girls from different grades barged out of their classrooms, and some even ran through the school gates into the busy Josiah Gumede Road, all the while screaming and wailing as if under attack.
A pupil who spoke to the Independent on Saturday with her mother’s permission said: “Some children wanted to jump off the building. They were screaming that there was something in them that didn't want to come out.”
The girl said her fear intensified when one pupil started talking in the voice of a man.
“She was walking like a man, hitting children, and they were running away from her. They were screaming like they were beaten up, like they were being raped. They were screaming so badly. I was traumatised, but it (spirit) didn't affect me.“
She said even though the “possessed” pupil could be heard by everyone, onlookers couldn't understand what was being said as the words and language seemed unfamiliar.
A teacher apparently told pupils that they were warned not to intervene as it was an ancestral matter.
A mom who was parked outside the school while waiting for her daughter last Thursday said she heard a “hell of a noise” and then saw about 15 girls without socks, shoes and in some cases with unbuttoned shirts or even topless, charging through the gate at high speed while screaming at the top of their lungs.
“They need someone who is powerful in prayers. There is an evil spirit that is around that will target whoever is weak and then just circulate to the next one. It can't be that most of the kids have something similar, have an ancestral calling,” she said.
Another mom told the Independent on Saturday that: “My daughter fainted. She said she felt funny, and then she collapsed. When she woke up, the teacher and other children told her what happened.”
The woman said she was angry that the teachers had not contacted her, and she was keen to find another school for her child as she was afraid for her safety.
A group of school girls said while they were not affected by the “ancestors”, some of the girls overturned desks and fainted without appearing to know what they were doing.
One mother told the Independent on Saturday that something dark and evil was happening, and they needed a powerful person to stop it.
“Other parents asked the principal if they can pray for the school because they believe it's a bad spirit, so the principal just told the parents to go away and not come back.
“The kids just scream as if they had just seen something, but we don't know what they had seen. But as parents, we know that is bad spirits,” she said.
The woman said the first time this occurred, parents were not notified, but on the second day, they told parents to be calm and that everything was under control.
“But I came that day to fetch my kid because I was afraid that something was going to happen, that the spirits were going to be there.”
The school’s principal, Mr S Shange, said he could not discuss the issue and that any communication had to come from the provincial education department.
The spokesperson for the KZN Education Department, Kwazi Mthethwa, said they would follow up on the matter.
“We cannot say for sure that it's indeed ancestral calling. We have actually had a few schools in the province reporting some similar incidents. This calls for the entire education community to work together and come up with a collective approach in dealing or responding appropriately to these kinds of incidents.”
The phenomenon at Pinetown Girls High is not unusual, as it has happened at several other schools before.
In 2020, girls at Clairwood Secondary suddenly started screaming and thrashing about on the ground for no apparent reason. One girl clutched her head, fell to the ground and rolled around screaming, while other pupils around her scattered in terror.
A teacher at Clairwood Secondary, who was also a sangoma, performed a ritual on the affected girl, who soon calmed down. The sangoma said the affected girls all had braids/extensions and were being troubled by the ancestors of the people whose hair was used.
Bishop Vusi Dube of the eThekwini Community Church has called for immediate spiritual intervention at the school. “I truly believe what's happening there is demonic. As people of faith and people who believe in exorcism, we have to go to the school to pray or exorcise the demons.”
Dube said the parents had to be part of the process while an interfaith team should perform the rituals.
An expert in Zulu culture, Professor Sihawu Ngubane from the University of KwaZulu Natal, dismissed the idea that the ancestors were causing the disruptive behaviour.
He said when ancestors called on their loved ones to become an isangoma, they would only go to the people who belonged to that family and not groups of unrelated people.
“What contaminates other children are evil spirits. This looks like it's an evil spirit called ukuphosa. It causes hallucinations, and that can spread to others. Ukuphosa means to throw, to throw evil spirits to an institution,” said Ngubane.
He said that ukuphosa was not something common but could still be practised in deep rural areas.
Ngubane said since prayers were no longer done at schools, more incidents like the one at Pinetown Girls High have been happening.
The Independent on Saturday