HITCHHIKING PUPILS DROP OUT DUE TO BEATING

GEGE – Two pupils have dropped out of school, while another had to be taken to a clinic for treatment after being allegedly beaten by a teacher.

This is despite that corporal punishment was long banned in the country by the Ministry of Education and Training. The consequence for the alleged continued use of corporal punishment at Bethel Lutheran Primary School, in Gege, has seen two young girls, both aged 11, skipping the country in fear of being canned. The pair was caught hitchhiking in South Africa, in an attempt to reach one of the Gauteng Province’s cluster cities, where they were expecting to find refuge with a relative.
A family member later explained that one of the girls often visited the relative in Gauteng during the December school holidays. She clarified that the girl’s uncle usually fetched her by car and that she had never embarked on the long journey through public transport, which is why they were all surprised to learn that the two were trying to reach the place by hitchhiking.

After they were found flagging cars for lifts, the youngsters were immediately deported back into the country. However, disturbingly, they haven’t gone back to school ever since their return, allegedly in fear of being punished. This was confirmed by their guardians during a visit by this reporter to their homestead, which is located close to the Gege Border Gate, on Saturday. The two young girls threw the whole Gege community into fear when they disappeared last Monday, resulting in their guardians reporting them as missing persons at the local police station. For three days, the girls could not be accounted for until a South African elderly man, who was going home from work on Tuesday evening, came across them hitchhiking in an area close to Piet Retief in the neighbouring country and offered them a place to sleep.

His efforts were initially met with resistance from the young girls, who ran away to a nearby homestead after the elderly man started to ask many questions about their travelling. Little did the girls know that the homestead they were hiding in, coincidentally belonged to the same man they were running away from. The man later caught up with them and eventually got the opportunity to get answers to the questions he had earlier posed to the youngsters. He learnt that the girls had jumped the border from neighbouring Eswatini, and were hoping to find a relative who resides in Gauteng. Seeing the danger which the young girls were getting themselves into, the man promptly called the local Mkhondo Radio Station, where an announcement was aired. This enabled local enforcement agents to locate the girls, who were brought back to the country on the following day.

However, it has emerged that since their return, the girls have refused to go back to school because of the persisting practice of being beaten by their teachers. A guardian to one of the girls conceded that the girls would not be returning to the school anytime soon because she felt they must have been too traumatised to take the drastic decision to abandon their homesteads.

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