Johannesburg - The drowning of Parktown Boys’ High School pupil Enoch Mpianzi has spearheaded the Gauteng Department of Education’s (GDE) idea of reconsidering excursions that involve water activities.
This comes after two pupils died in separate incidents involving school water activities last week.
Keamohetswe Shaun Seboko, a 13-year-old Grade 7 learner from Laerskool Bekker in Magaliesburg was found dead in the school’s hostel swimming pool on Wednesday.
He died during swimming lessons with 59 other learners. It has been alleged that there was an element of bullying which led to his drowning.
on Sunday, MEC Panyaza Lesufi said he feared that schools had become mortuaries, and that changes needed to be made in school activities, including excursions.
“We owe it to the parents who are bringing their children to our schools. Imagine if families are scared to bring their children to us purely because we’re turning our schools into mortuaries. It needs to stop,” Lesufi said.
“I really think that we should change the policy one way or another, because we authorise every trip in schools. I authorise international trips. Sometimes schools think I’m being difficult.
“When they pitch international trips to me, I scrutinise everything. I really feel that we are authorising the trip, but not the activities, and that’s where new systems need to be placed.
“That’s my view and we’ll ventilate it within the education system to say ‘if they are going to go for a water-related matter, what are the requirements needed before we authorise the trip’,” Lesufi said.
The body of Mpianzi, 13 - who went missing during a water activity during a Grade 8 orientation camp - was found on Thursday in Brits, North West.
Mpianzi was last seen on Wednesday when a water raft he and other pupils had built, overturned on the Crocodile River.
“We (the education department) were only notified about the incident a day later. When I arrived at the scene at Nyati Sports School, I requested the last people who worked with the pupils through the water exercise to take me through it, to have a better understanding of what they did.
“The exercise was a simulation as though pupils were dropping from an aircraft and had to cross the river with an injured person using the rafts they built,” Lesufi said.
He was he told that the people who were in charge of the pupils at that time were not aware that a pupil had gone missing.
“It was when the headcount was being done that they realised that the numbers did not correspond. “After thoroughly checking for the missing pupil, that was when we were notified,” he said.
Lesufi said the camp had to be cancelled because the situation had turned unbearable. “We told the social workers to allow the pupils to have breakfast and immediately after that, they should be taken for counselling sessions and return to school,” he said.
Spokesperson for the Mpianzi family Sebastian Kodie Motha said: “We are very concerned about what happened. We arrived here on Thursday around 10pm. We didn’t expect this to happen at all.”
“What made matters difficult was that the children are still new at the school and they don’t know one another. My nephew probably went into the water separately from others without guidance.”
Lesufi said matters concerning the timeline of the incident, the raft building process and safety measures would be the key terms of reference for the department’s independent investigators.
“What we normally do in such incidents, we establish an independent investigation team. This is separate from the police, and on the basis of their investigations report, we act accordingly.
“There are some teachers whose employment we had to terminate because of the independent report fingering them in wrongdoing.
“The report will tell us who is liable and within the next three months it should be ready and it should be shared with the school community and other interested parties,” he said.
Lesufi also said the department had sent a list of questions to the school’s management.
“They must explain some of the things we have picked up ourselves regarding the incident,” he said.