NEWS

Honour Amongst Thieves - Women Teachers Block Inquiry

There has been strong reactions to the attempt by the management and teaching staff of Ditau High School to block an investigation into allegations that 99% of the school’s male teaching staff is demanding sex from learners as young at 13 and later impregnating them.

Ditau, which is implicated in this free-for-all child molestation together with Lehlasedi, Alfred Matshine, Sedibeng, Letshele and Sekhukhusa held marathon meetings from last week until Monday where sources say the management and teaching staff demanded that the matter be handled internally instead of an outside task team or inquiry being invited to probe. “They said that it is equivalent to the School Governing Body handing them over to a hungry lion and that their idea of an SGB was for a body that will defend them”, said a source who attended the five hour meeting.

“I said to them that we will put together a task team comprising police, a social worker, community leader and a priest to probe. Our approach would be to provide Suggestion Boxes where learners and educators can make their input without fear of being victimised. The submission will go into a report that we will submit to the department of education to act”, said SGB Chairperson Mr. Platus Mokoena.

This is the proposal that had lots of teachers hot under the collars. “what is more worrying is that while the suspects appeared resigned to the eventuality and contemplating taking severance packages the female teachers were the ones who were obstructive of the process, joined by few male teachers”, he added.

The department of Education has since reported that they have launched their own investigation. “We have instructed the (Bushbuckridge) regional office to give us a full report on the allegations and to tell us what is it that they have done to remedy the situation. And we will take it from there”, said spokesperson Mr. Jasper Zwane. He said the allegations are viewed in serious light.

The regional office confirmed that their labour section is liaising with the South African Council of Educators (SACE) and has instructed managers of both Shatale and Casteel circuits to also investigate.

However some community members have raised their cynicism with the department’s attitude towards teachers who molest learners since ‘the department has known about it for all these years but only waited for a newspaper to act as if it cares’.

In the 1990s Mr. Simon Mashego, a teacher at Ditau was sentenced to a prison term for murder and attempted murder after shooting to death a learner he was involved with. He reportedly found her in bed with her policeman boyfriend. That did not serve as a wake-up call to the department. A Sedibeng Primary School teacher was accused of raping a teenage learner and was later acquitted by the Mapulaneng Magistrate Court due to a technicality. “Even though evidence was led that there was under-age sex the department never pursued disciplinary for misconduct or even statutory rape”, a source protested.

Another concerned parent Mr. Steve Mashego wrote a letter to the SGB of Lehlasedi, “I hereby request the SBG to organise a meeting of the parents of all the pupils of the school as soon as possible to interrogate the newspaper report and restore the public image of the school”. Lehlasedi is one of the schools where tens of learners are impregnated every year, reportedly by educators.

“From what I see these people are not innocent. Heads must roll. Given the pregnancy rate at Ditau you can tell that these teachers are not even practicing safe sex. We expect SADTU as a responsible organistaion to also investigate and make sure the perpetrators are punished”, concluded Mokoena.

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NEWS

INVITATION

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NEWS

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EXCLUSIVE

In Sex We Trust - Teachers

Ditau Secondary School is so infested with sex pest teachers that learners claim only two are not guilty of making sexual advances to them. This is a township public school which obtained position five in Shatale Circuit with 36.7% matric pass rate and a minimum age intake of 13 years.

This emerged during an investigation that started last year. The climax came recently when learners were locked out of school for being late.15-years old Maureen Lebyane* complained about a teacher known to this newspaper who she said was harassing her. “If I go to class now he will call me and demand sex for being late. Even if he meets me in town he still asks me when am I going to give it to him”, she complained. The teacher in question is married with two young children.

A former learner of another Shatale school Lorraine Sedibe* (23) was impregnated by her school principal seven years ago. “He started off befriending my brother who participated in a lot of school activities. Before I knew it he was proposing me. We have a child together”, she says. The principal as well is married with children.

Another Bushbuckridge learner Mpho Theko* (20) who also dated her school principal says, “whenever we went for school trips I would spend the day before and after with him. I have a one year old child with him”.

The issue of teachers who sleep with learners and later threaten them with failing if they don’t comply has been a burning issue in Bushbuckridge with nobody, including political formations and civic bodies wanting to tackle it. “The problem is that these teachers buy groceries for these children and the parents are benefitting. Immediately you try to interfere you are being asked if you will provide for the family and whether you have evidence that they are sleeping together?”, a frustrated civic leader who sits on one of the school’s governing body said.

Asked why would anybody agree to sit on the body if they have no intention of remedying the situation another SGB member said it’s something that needs teacher unions and female teachers to decide that it should stop. “These male teachers abuse these girls infront of the female teachers and their reasons have always been that they will take their own kids to white schools where teacher discipline is high”, argued Patrick Nkuna*, who teaches at Casteel’s Reti High.

It has gotten so ugly that another principal and a science teacher who prides himself of having slept with almost all his learners over a twelve year period are currently embroiled in a love triangle with a former learner they both started dating while still in school. “it’s so comical that the teacher will come to see the girl, immediately he leaves the principal arrives and badmouths him for sleeping with learners at the school”, said a neighbour who is a confidante of the woman.

At the end it is the school learners who fail since it is difficult for them to concentrate in an environment where almost all the male teachers want to sleep with them. Schools with similar reputations in Bushbuckridge include Lehlasedi, Serisha, Alfred Matshine, Sekhukhusa, Letshele and Sedibeng which is a higher primary school.

Asked about the scourge two years ago Mpumalanga SADTU Chairperson Mr. Solwako Mahlangu was evasive. He told this newspaper that while it is against the union’s Code of Conduct to sleep with learners they don’t keep a database of offending teachers who are their members. “We deal with each case as it comes, but we are not in the business of keeping statistics”, Mahlangu said.

South African Council of Educators empower parents to object if their background check of an educator indicates that they have been found guilty or cited for sexual offences in the past. SACE Code of Conduct binds teachers to ‘eliminate unprofessional behaviour such as teacher-pupil relationships, drunkenness, drug use, assault, sexual harassment and others’.

Mpumalanga Department of Education spokesperson Mr Jasper Zwane was not available for comment on whether they keep statistics and whether they make them available to schools prior to hiring a new teacher. This is information that unions would do best to make available to employers, if only they kept it. This is a story we will be following throughout the year.

* Names have been changed to protect the sources

NEWS

Mpumalanga's Litmus Test

During a media briefing after his inaugural state of the province address last year Premier David Mabuza was asked by a journalist what will his administration do to curb corruption. Mabuza responded by revealing a series of underhanded tactics that public servants deploy to squander public funds. “Such will not be tolerated in my administration”, he promised.

On Friday Mabuza will deliver his second state of the province address. This time the whole country will be attentively listening to him. South Africa will be interested because since he took over from Thabang Makwetla (now deputy minister of defence) there has been province-wide service delivery protests. There is an alleged assassination hit list while Mbombela Stadium still has to host a test game.

If one compiles the 2009 Mabuza Report Card, it will be an understatement to say it is disappointing – it’s similar to the Mpumalanga Matric results.

Media reports of openly corrupt officials appointed to the public service haven’t helped the embattled premier much. Corrupt municipal managers being put on extended suspensions with full pay and promised golden handshakes when fired do not augur well for an administration committed to clean governance.

To add insult to injury Mpumalanga posted the lowest matric results in its history following rampant teacher strikes. One is reminded that in his past lifetime as MEC for Education Mabuza unceremoniously left the executive following a matric results scandal. That Mabuza was able to come back and be a premier is tantamount to a cat with nine lives.

However some of his supporters in the African National Congress Youth League are already saying that there is absolutely nothing wrong with how he has governed so far. They point to the alleged existence of a third force led by a senior ANC politician to portray Mabuza’s administration as corrupt and incapable of curbing rising dissatisfaction. They allege that such a campaign is aimed at bringing in Mbombela Mayor Cllr Lassie Chiwayo to the premiership through the back door – the same way he became a mayor after Justice Nsibande was booted out mid-term.

“Look, Lassie lost fair and square to DD and his people must wait their turn to come to power. All these strikes are orchestrated to make DD look bad”, says a youth league member who will not be named. However the same youth leaguer fails to elaborate further when asked how does he explain such a conspiracy while all the areas where there are protests are indeed void of service delivery.

When told that Bushbuckridge has too many projects which have been started and abandoned, an inflated municipal staff made up of non-core workers, it fails to supply water to vast parts of the municipality and to collect dust bins while it bills residents for such services – he fails to explain why will a strike be put at the door of a third force while the grievances will be founded.

Almost all the areas that experienced protests indeed lack service delivery while the mayors and public servants live lavish lives. It took Mabuza many weeks of vandalism and destruction of property to finally fire Thaba-Chweu mayor Cllr Clara Ndlovu. “If he indeed is concerned about service delivery why did it take him this long to act? Why is he taking this long to act in Bushbuckridge where there has been countless marches against Mayor Milton Moreme?”, his critics ask. The latest such march was on Friday, led by Kgoshi Lameck Mokoena of Mathibela Tribal Authority and other relics of the past administrations.

There probably could be a third force in the ongoing turmoil but there’s a deafening silence coming from his office. Spokesperson Mabutho Sithole hasn’t commented on allegations that some journalists have received cars to stay silent. There has been little said about allegations of money destined for rural development being squandered by service providers and public servants which is a department Mabuza led before becoming premier.

To say that the issue of a hit list is purely a police matter is gross ignorance – especially when two senior members of government have already been killed. Also especially as two department of Education employees reportedly hired bodyguards last year and haven’t been fired for such expenditure when there wasn’t even a hit list. Truth is; it is an issue for crime intelligence which seems to be trailing journalists all the time. Service delivery protests are matters for the National Intelligence Agency.

Good chess players make for excellent intelligence operatives because they can counter moves before they are executed. However such capacity seems to be dismally lacking in the NIA. And the shortcomings of the country’s intelligence agencies are laid at the door of Mabuza. It is so unfair.

If there indeed is a man at Luthuli House funding service delivery protests they must happen at areas where there is service and the NIA will nip such tendencies at the bud. If Mabuza is committed to fighting corruption the community does not only want to hear about investigations undertaken by his Integrity Unit but prosecutions and jail time.

Under Dr Matthews Phosa some politicians and public servants went to jail for committing a fraction of what many get away with today.

There are strong indications from within the Provincial Executive Council that it will be dissolved and Mabuza recalled as premier. One insider claims that such dissolution will damage Chiwayo’s chances of becoming premier through the back door. He failed to answer how that could be given that Mabuza beat Chiwayo by an odd eighty something votes at the provincial conference. As one campaigner put it, ‘those who supported Lassie are still behind him, one can’t say the same about the 80 something who voted for Mabuza. If the PEC is dissolved and conference is convened next month, it’s anybody’s guess who will win it”. And this is the real state of the province address that Mabuza must explain.

OPINION

How I like my Women


Lately I have been indulging in a lot of feminist literature, most notably The Kanga and the Kangaroo Court by Matshilo Motsei. ‘Burn the Bitch’ is the underlying theme of this analysis of gender relations which I should mention is not really an attack on the person of Jacob Zuma but using his rape trial as a metaphor for gender stereotyping. Zuma does not need any author or book to attack him he will let his loins do the attacking.

My point of departure on this post is, whenever I indulge in such literature I always get to a point whereby feminists accuse the media of perpetuating a certain stereotype about women in magazines, billboards and television. Ask Gender Links’ Colleen Lowe-Morna and you are bound to get a dossier.

True, even the JOKO commercial features an Oluchi look-alike model, almost waify, darker and with an amount of chutzpah one can readily find in Oprah’s buddy Gayle. Magazines never feature an ‘overweight’ model on their cover; unless that model runs her own show and happens to be Oprah. Billboards and television are even worse.

Maybe Oprah is the ultimate feminist. She defies tradition; puts her own ‘overweight’ ass on every cover of her magazine, lets her friend who is a cold-blooded feminist to edit it. Starts her own overly-successful show and anchors it all these years without networks hassling her about her weight. Right there you know that if your perception of the she-species is not politically correct or in line with how femaledom thinks – you are doomed not to contribute to any of Oprah’s empowerment schemes.

But my argument would be that the way women are portrayed in the media is not really how us, heterosexual hot-blooded males would like them to be either. And that hardly makes us feminists because we taking it further.

In a usual woman magazine they will have Nonhle Thema or Zizo Beda in a knee high purple dress, a blue diamond pendant hanging on her chest, diamond[s] (they are Forever) earrings decorating her ears, a D&G handbag partnering her and a pair or really sexy stilettos to boot. Then they will have various pictures of her in skirts, dresses, pants etc. they will squeeze her into everything from DKNY, Gucci, Louis Vittone, True Religion, Dolce and Gabbana etc. but what the feminist fail to see is that half the time the stylists are either women or gay men.

Ja, you heard me right, gay men are the chief stylists in most of these women magazines. These sods are good at seeing beyond the fabric. So, the magazine Fashion Editors pick gay men to style the female models and the end-product is what feminists complain about as a patriarchal portrayal of women. Which makes me ask; does partriarchy include gay men?

I mean those stylists are gay with a capital letter G. No wonder when you see how they style men you get to understand their sexual orientation. What I’m saying is that my perception of Nonhle as a sex symbol is not when she’s dressed up for the J&B Met and spread across a magazine’s centre spread; it’s of Nomhle spread naked on my bed and licking her fingers one by one, inviting me with each blink. That’s partiarchial and true; no hot-blooded man salivates over a fully-dressed woman in a chiffon.

No wonder when these gay sods style males you get to see a lot of flesh, because for them, that’s how they want to see their men – on all fours on their rugs muscles dripping and inviting.

NEWS

Walk A Mile In My Shoes

Today I want to grumble and begrudge the public's hypocrisy when it comes to their treatement of journalists. First; I'm picking a bone with the Hit Squad [Bheki Cele and his two political bosses] that is running the Police force in this country who instruct their goons to 'shoot to kill' which is equivalent to killing the executing the suspect. Okay, since that instruction was granted they have indeed executed quite a few.

So, last month they argue that e.tv should disclose two thugs who were 'threatening' to attack tourists during the World Cup. Suddenly the ANC, ever the leash-dog of government follows suit with threats of their own which as journalists we nowadays laugh them off - even though we live in the Wild West (Mpumalanga Province) where gun-culture is the way to sniff out the people you don't like.

With subpoenas to e.tv I was suddenly surprised when two journalists disclosed that they have spoken to a hit man who had a long Wish List of people some powerful politician wanted snuffed. I waited to hear police demanding that the journalist disclose who the alleged hitman is - but nah, silence. After all the cops care more about foreign tourists than locals, that is why when one comrade threatened a man with an early appointment with the hangman they said someone should lay charges first - and when some guy threatened another one with crying sulphuric tears they looked the other way. Which makes me wonder; what would have happened had the guys threatening tourists appeared wearing ANC t-shirts? Would we have had the same furore or would they have been dismissed like Julius talking about nationalisation?

Okay; however my point today is actually about a picture I used in a newspaper recently. If you live in Mpumalanga Lowveld you know what I'm talking about. A mother is sitting next to her dead son's corpse. Some people are suddenly accusing me of self-hate. They shout rhetoric like, "during 9/11 we never saw dead Americans but we saw tons in Haiti. The media only respects the corpses of whites and not those of Blacks. You are being operated from outside". And now you know how hard it is to tell an ignorant argumentative fool that you saw corpses of whites during the Balkan Wars when Serbians and Muslims and Bosnians were having a field day bayonetting each other.

However the picture in quesion was used for a specific reason. It is not self-hate but precisely for the same reason The World newspaper used the picture of Hector Pietersen and SWAPO used that of the piled corpses in Kassinga. To shock people to pause and think. That woman sitting next to her dead son is not happy by a far shot. She is distraught, sad, heartbroken and feels like dying. It is a situation no mother should ever find herself in.

But that picture is used to warn mothers to do all they could in their power to make sure that they never sit next to their dead sons who have been killed by the community because it got tired of being terrorised. The picture is meant to say, 'if you can't adjust your child now, you are definitely going to trade places with this mother and it's not a pretty feeling'.

Finally, a young man died and was killed by the community and the story says that I know who killed him. However I'll put my dick on the block to say that no cop will ever subpoena me to disclose the names. WHY?

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NEWS

Who is Your Biographer?

Recently I have been reading beautifully written obituaries for Limpopo Province born sculptor Jackson Hlungwani who passed away early in February. The touching obituaries were mostly written by white male journalists. This happens at the time that black people are begrudging the portrayal of African people in Western and white media as backward, heathen and requiring a white Jesus to present them with their own copper snake.

Blacks might not be the most uncivilized bunch but post-’94 they lag behind in realizing what is really important in their lives. They have been on a honeymoon since April 27 and now that it’s nearing sixteen years they decide that they would rather stay there than come back to reality.

While the white chaps were busy researching and eulogizing Hlungwani the black male journalist was unashamedly busy chasing socialite Khanyi Mbau or taking the head-count on Jacob Zuma’s wives and kids or stressing about some celebrity with papgeld issues. The white female journalist was covering the J&B Met or Survivor SA to fulfil her own’s pastime. The sista [black journalist] was spewing her diatribe about how she hates South African men, especially kwaito star Zola if she was not asking celebrity Zizo Beda for the millionth time if she owns a pair of sneakers [she knows the answer is an unequivocal ‘no!’]. And then the darkies wonder why world opinion of them carries more weight than their own perception of who they are.

Black people in South Africa are a forgiving bunch who struggled for hundreds of years for their liberation but ended up settling for a sham deal. They are a ‘liberated’ bunch who believe that their state president is above the law and moral guidelines. They let white people write about them and then accuse Max du Preez of racism.

Hlungwani was black and them, and that in the South African newsrooms there was no black journalist with enough knowledge to conjure a story about him is disturbing. Certainly there were many black journalists who knew that millionaire Mandla Mthembu’s Lamborghini will be auctioned and that Khanyi and tender-boy Theunis Gouws will be in Cape Town shopping.

This point is raised because if Afrikaans rock boy Steve Hofmeyr or eccentric Nataniel died today there will not be a black writer who is capable of writing their obituaries because quite frankly darkies don’t know anything about Afrikaners and their cultural heritage.

Finally a question is raised; why has black journalism degenerated into gossip-mongering? Could it be that experienced writers like Sandile Memela have migrated to government to serve pot-bellied masters or the current crop are only obsessed with free parties and the largesse that accompanies their PR brown-nosing style of journalism?

I protests that black literature does not get space in print because there are not enough black writers who can read and finish a novel but few with the drive. Darkies must ask themselves why do they allow their story to be written by the vanquished? Do they expect defeated souls to tell the truth about them?

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PROFILE

Zinja Promises A Big Bite

Bushbuckridge offers a unique opportunity to anyone wanting to venture into music given the language diversity that characterizes this part of Mpumalanga. Almost every person claiming permanent residence of this melting pot can understand a third of the eleven languages spoken in South Africa.

It is that advantage that local kwai-hop [a mixture of vintage kwaito-hip-hop] group which calls itself Zinja wants to take to penetrate the South Afrikan music industry. Made up of six members who go by names such as Ndabs, Glex, Soja, Jozzline, Spicegold and Geuzin the group has already recorded a sizeable number of songs and shot five videos. Our vote for their videos is 'they make Nollywood look like a rehearsal, they are brilliant'.

“Our fascination with music started in 2008 when we set up a group called MP Gangsta [modeled after GP Gangsta for sure] which has since received limited airplay on Ligwalagwala FM, [an offshoot of the state owned SABC]. Seeing that we couldn’t always perform together as a group due to distance we formed Zinja, which is an off-shoot of MP Gangsta”, Mahlatse ‘Ndabs’ Ndabandaba opens our interview.

He says that they opted for Zinja ‘to warn that we are biting, we are hot’. Ndabandaba admits that there’s no lyrical content in kwaito music which made them decide to fuse both kwaito and hip-hop. He says the repetition of lyrics turned them off but they still wanted to flow on a kwaito beat – lest they decided on kwai-hop instead of a pure hip-hop genre.

“We saw that a lot of things were happening in places around us and nothing was moving in Shatale. We thought that if we can make it through music, more people who otherwise would have done crime will follow suit, and that’s the bigger picture for us”, adds Gladwell ‘Glex’ Machaba.

While the two are cynical about the linguistic purity that has engulfed local music with acts like Zuluboy (isiZulu), Tuks (Setswana) and Proverb (English) they somehow believe that good music should cut across races and cultures. “Either you feature someone from another tribe to cut across or you write in those languages, which is an advantage that us, while we represent Bushbuckridge to the end, has”, Ndabandaba concludes.

Zinja’s album Boots & Kherian, which was produced by Johnny Quest and Spicegold should be out as they are negotiating the final details of their deal.