Members of the panel,
Colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen.
On behalf of the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), I want to thank the SA Human Rights' Commission firstly for deciding to convene this public hearing on school-based violence and secondly, doing so in Cape Town.
This is a critical matter for us in the Western Cape as we seek to implement our core mandate, which is to deliver the National Curriculum Statement to our learners, build our human capital in the province, and ensure that every learner develops his or her full potential.
School-based violence does, as your own terms of reference suggest, have the potential to infringe on the rights of learners, but it also negatively impacts on our ability to deliver on our education mandate.
The vision of this Provincial Government is to build a Home for All. Our path towards this vision is an economic development strategy - Ikapa Elihlumayo - to grow and share the Cape. Poverty and unemployment are critical challenges, which stand in the way of us achieving this vision.
Central to the Ikapa strategy is the building of human capital and the provision of skills needed to grow our economy. We see school-based violence as an issue, which not only impacts on the realization of human rights in our Constitution but one, which also potentially hinders the attainment of our vision in the Western Cape.
It is for this reason that the Social Cluster of the Provincial Cabinet has decided that School Safety is our number one priority. Only an integrated, co-ordinated and holistic response will yield results. This decision resulted in an additional allocation to Community Safety in this financial year, which saw the deployment of Bambanani School Safety Volunteers to 100 schools in the metropolitan area of Cape Town.
At present a task team from our Department and Community Safety is hard at work developing an integrated school safety strategy, which will be submitted initially to the Social Cluster and then to the Provincial Cabinet itself.
It is important to understand the work that is currently being done by our Safe Schools division, often in partnership with other government departments. The departmental report, which the SG Mr Ron Swartz will talk to, outlines our ongoing work.
This focus on the legislative and policy framework by the Commission will be of great assistance to the development of our provincial strategy on school safety. It is clear to me that an integrated policy framework at national level will give much needed focus and guidance on roles and responsibilities.
Crime, family violence, gangsterism, poverty, substance abuse, racism and sexism influence the psyche of our youth, which in turn impact on behaviour in the school and classroom. It is thus not only external threats, which result in school- based violence, but the attitude and behaviour of our learners and educators.
An impression is often created in the manner in which school-based violence is reported on that government only responds to crises. This is far from the truth. In fact, we have an integrated Prevention, Crime Control, Intervention and Response Strategy.
Our Safe Schools Programme was initiated in August 1997 after the shooting of a grade 10 learner at Sithembele Matiso Secondary School. At that stage 20 youths had died because of ongoing violence in Gugulethu. There were real threats to schools on the Cape Flats with gangs operating in the surrounding communities and learners being caught up in the conflict.
Since then our Safe Schools Programme has developed to the point where our schools generally offer safer environments against outside threats under the most difficult circumstances. The establishment of school safety committees, ongoing work with educators and learners, the establishments of partnerships with the SAPS and local communities have all assisted.
Of great concern now is the fact that some learners at school are either members of, or are influenced by gangs who see schools as a base for recruitment and distribution of drugs. This has resulted in violent attacks on fellow learners and the intimidation of teachers.
The SG will take us through some of the detail of what the WCED has done so far in terms of providing safe places for our children. He will describe the first tier of protection - the things like fences, alarms, security gates. He will also describe some elements of the second tier of protection - the formal safety networks and systems that have been set up at schools.
But whilst the bad things grab headlines, what is often not reported on and what is not common knowledge, is the fairly successful outcomes of our crime prevention and attitudinal or behaviour modification programmes. Through learner and educator seminars, our focus has been on positive discipline, conflict resolution and mediation.
The selection and training of peer educators and mediators has also built capacity at school level and contributed to the establishment of a human rights culture at many of our schools.
I want to touch on two other tiers, ladies and gentlemen, which is the classroom and secondly, our surrounding communities. The new National Curriculum Statement has massive potential for giving us the turnaround we need.
The many outcomes, such as those in Life Orientation, provide hard skills for life and living, the "ubuntu" outcomes plus the over-arching outcomes give us a toolkit for change. The kit is there. The question is: "Are our teachers able to work with this kit?"
Our teachers are quite right when they signal to us that they are on the verge of burnout and that they battle to deliver a curriculum and play a pastoral and social worker role at the same time.
But school is not what it has always been. In the context of a disintegrating family unit and all the influences we have sketched, the teacher is indeed far more of a social worker than ever before. The teacher is the faith-worker, the parent surrogate. In many cases the school literally feeds the child.
If we then add onto this a new curriculum and an associated set of needs, we know that it is true when our teachers tell us about stress. We as a department need perhaps to think more carefully about how to support our teachers better.
We need to ask ourselves - precisely what it is that will make our teaching more effective so that we can produce not only the skills that the economy needs, but also the tools for community turnarounds.
I believe that our curriculum does indeed have the potential to help our youngsters contend with drugs, peer pressures, racism, gender-bias, bullying and all forms of violence. Many of these issues are, in fact, already being addressed.
What is required is sustained and ongoing teacher development to assist our teachers achieve these outcomes and give them the practical skills to manage learners in the classroom. Linked to this is ongoing support to our school based management teams and SGBs to ensure adherence to codes of conduct at school level.
Earlier this year we have launched our first ever Provincial Representative Council for Learners. We have a strong cohort of Peer Counsellors being trained in 140 of our high schools as part of our extended HIV and AIDS programme.
Their extraordinary strengths alongside the fledgling RCL movement could bring a convergence of purpose to our youth. Ongoing investment in the learner leadership across the province and in every school has the potential of creating role models who become the example for our learners in general.
This leads me to the second tier. Our Premier said that: "Strong communities based on vibrant and loving families is the cornerstone of prosperity. What guarantees success is when ordinary people are organised and networked into and across community structures both to protect and serve communities".
I am convinced that it is through inspired partnerships and the conscious cultivating of social capital that we will find the power to make huge and real strides.
I am talking about all kinds of partnerships - from the small local partnerships between, for example, parents and the school, right through to macro-partnerships between government departments, with civil society, with business, with labour.
I believe a school is part of the community, and there is a reciprocal relationship between safe schools and safe communities. A community that feels ownership and pride for its school, does not vandalise it and does not allow others to do so.
About two months ago we held our inaugural Community Schools Initiative Week, which is an initiative aimed to make our schools re-look the relations with their communities. Some 200 of our schools showcased amazing existing relationships. Schools found considerable and often unexpected support from small local businesses and agencies.
A principal of a Mitchell's Plain school told me that they had regular incidents of burglary, and that they had suspected the residents of a nearby informal settlement. But I thought the way they responded to this was fantastic; they instead visited the residents, and delivered to them blankets, clothes and food.
Another Mitchell's Plain school had a problem of gangsters frequently having running battles on the premises. What they then did, was to offer one of the classrooms to the local neighbourhood watch as a base, and the school appears not to have any problems now.
A Lotus River school had been burgled every month since the start of the school year. The principal then persuaded an armed response company to set up a satellite office in the school parking lot as a base in the community. This school has also involved parent volunteers in playground and toilet monitoring duties.
This has had the effect of ending the spate of burglaries at the school. These are just some examples of communities and schools that are using creative, cost-effective ways, which contribute to safer environments.
So, what is the way forward?
We must keep in mind that we have a 42% unemployment figure in the age range from teenager to age 35. These are our young parents. Hundreds of our older parents are those whose studies were interrupted or ended with the strife of 1976 and then again in the mid-80s.
The cycle of poverty and unemployment is hard to break. It is easy then to understand the attraction of the cash-incentives of drug dealing on the one hand and the escape offered by drug-taking on the other. Apartheid was sustained violence - people's identities were violated; their prospects were blighted; their languages became labels of difference and prejudice.
It is against this background that Government must respond and act. To this effect, we are developing an integrated school safety strategy that will be strengthened by partnerships, where more resources will be allocated to resource learners' needs. I do not believe there are quick fix solutions. Clearly a national policy framework will assist.
This integrated strategy must include a balance between crime control and crime prevention within the schooling system. To create a safe school environment is complex. The integrated safe schools strategy should culminate in policy, action, co-ordinated intervention and possibly legislation.
There are a number of recommendations that have been formulated over the last while to address violence in schools. Some of these have already been implemented successfully whilst others require wide-ranging actions and additional resources. These enjoy the attention of the department at the highest level and are the subject of the work of the task team.
In conclusion ladies and gentlemen: the human heart has an astonishing capacity for "hope" even when things seem hopeless. But "hope" is best nurtured and multiplied when fuelled by the sense of a plan. We need to both acknowledge the work that is currently being done, but admit that issues of co-ordination, co-operation and clear policy frameworks and resources are required to achieve greater success.
We will not make a difference unless we work together: as parents, teachers, learners, Neighbourhood Watch Members, Bambanani Volunteers, government at all spheres, civil society, all the individuals present here and agencies presenting at this hearing. I look forward to engaging with the Commission today and eagerly await your findings and recommendations. We will also share progress we are making towards an integrated school safety strategy in the province.
I thank you.
For enquiries:
Gert Witbooi
Media Liaison Officer
Office of the MEC for Education
Western Cape
Tel: 021 467 2523
Fax: 021 425 5689
Email: gwitbooi@pgwc.gov.za
Visit our website: http://wced.wcape.gov.za
