VULAMASANGO NOT LIVING UP TO ITS NAME?

PIGG’S PEAK – The name of the school, Vulamasango, may sound positive but for those who are enrolled there, it is ‘valamasango’.

This is what pupils said about the school which is now considered as one of the best schools in the country, as they produced excellent results in both the Junior Certificate (JC) as well as the Swaziland General Certificate of Secondary Education (SGCSE).
Pupils from the school, accompanied by warders from His Majesty Correctional Services (HMCS), visited Mhlatane High School yesterday where they motivated fellow pupils.

With nearly 1 700 pupils, Mhlatane has its own challenges of pupils being in conflict with the law, which has seen some of them being enrolled at Vulamasango.
Mhlatane High School is one of the many schools HMCS will visit to interact with pupils and tell them about crime.

Best results

Vulamasango Deputy Head teacher Nosimilo Ntshangase, said although the school produced the best results, she would not encourage anyone to go there.
“Don’t ever find yourself there,” she emphasised.
She started off by saying the first thing that they did when they admitted a pupil was to show love because of circumstances which saw pupils being enrolled at the learning institution.
Ntshangase spoke in jest, saying despite that they had to show love, they were sometimes tough.

“Siyatrabha,” she said, meaning they used corporal punishment whenever necessary.
Ntshangase said the school was growing every day such that there were now about 15 pupils who were not yet placed in classrooms. The school, which started off with only six pupils in the 1970s, now has 504, according to Ntshangase, who said it was the brainchild of the Commissioner General Isaiah Mzuthini Ntshangase, to turn it into what it was now.

His Majesty the King officially launched it as Vulamasango on August 7, 2015. Ntshangase said the school was now competing with others in the country but insisted it was not a good place for children because they were enrolled after committing crime.
She said some committed serious offences such as murder.

Motivate

*Dudu, who is one of the four pupils who spoke to motivate pupils at Mhlatane High School, said the situation at the school was not as rosy as it may seem.
 “You don’t just go to the toilet easily,” she said. She said corporal punishment at the school was rife in comparison to other schools. “We don’t just get three strokes there, they beat,” she said.
She also said girls and boys are separated by a metre distance and that a warder ensures that there are no intimate interactions.

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