Two Chatsworth schoolgirls from Southlands Secondary were involved in a fight outside school last week. Several videos of the fist-fight between sparked concerns over escalating violence among schoolchildren, prompting calls for action from parents and community leaders.
Image: Video screengrab
PUPIL on pupil violence in South African schools is not a new phenomenon. Its frequency and intensity, however, have reignited public anxiety. The recent stabbings in Chatsworth schools and in other areas of the province call for a deeper understanding of the root causes. We need to harness insights from practices at schools that have managed to reduce this disturbing phenomenon, where young people resort to unrestrained brutality without remorse.
What is clear is that school violence is a systemic problem produced by a peculiar ecosystem that the country has inherited from its apartheid past. South Africa has one of the most comprehensive policy frameworks on the continent to address school violence, including the National School Safety Framework (NSSF), the Safe Schools Call Centre, and other related policies. As with most well-intentioned socio-economic and educational policies, we fail dismally at actual implementation.
It is not unusual to find that many school principals are unaware of the full content of the NSSF. While some critics might argue that the country has experienced three decades of democracy and that our apartheid history is well behind us, the apartheid spatial legacy remains the most important structural factor that contributes to both societal and school violence. We must remember that apartheid deliberately concentrated poverty, unemployment, gang activity, substance abuse and family dysfunction in specific geographic areas – in townships, informal settlements and rural peripheries.
Schools located in these areas inherited communities dealing with intergenerational trauma, economic exclusion and entrenched social pathologies. In Indian townships like Chatsworth, post-apartheid racial integration has seen an influx of African families and the daily commute of thousands of children from neighbouring black African townships. The integration of the different races without support to schools and communities about how to co-exist peacefully, means that racial conflict may also be a contributory factor.
Another significant contributory factor is performative violence associated with masculinity, and competition for status and dominance. Many school-based assaults involve boys struggling with issues of reputation, humiliation, bullying and dominance. Given that economic opportunity is uncertain, symbolic capital, that is, being feared or respected, can become exaggerated forms of social currency and social status.
School violence in South Africa is largely a mirror of community violence. Even the most sophisticated school safety framework cannot insulate a school from its surrounding neighbourhood when children walk through it every day. This is clearly evident in areas like the Cape Flats, parts of Soweto, and the Eastern Cape, where gang recruitment, drug trade and interpersonal violence cross the school gate regardless of what policies the Department of Basic Education has published.
Young people may internalise aggression as a legitimate means of asserting respect or resolving disputes, especially in contexts where violence is constantly observed and becomes a learnt behaviour. The normalisation of interpersonal violence in communities takes the form of domestic conflict, gang activity or media exposure. When violence becomes culturally acceptable as a means to resolve disagreements or conflict, it lowers the psychological barrier to its enactment. This simply means that very little thought goes into this means of dispute resolution.
Research in developmental psychology shows that repeated exposure to violence desensitises young people. We often underestimate the psychosocial burdens that South African pupils, particularly in poor communities, carry. Experiences of domestic violence, sexual abuse, food insecurity, HIV/Aids orphanhood, and parental incarceration are some of these burdens that children endure, and the effects of which they carry with them into schools. The absence of home stability is a telling factor.
While the NSSF advocates for psychosocial support for such pupils, social workers, school psychologists and counsellors required to deliver that support simply do not exist in sufficient numbers in under-resourced schools. It is estimated that South Africa has one educational psychologist per 30,000 pupils in the public system, a startling ratio that reveals that thousands of children in dire need of such services do not receive the help they need. Pupils in distress, or those displaying early warning signs of violent behaviour, go undetected and unsupported.
Research shows that the structural inequality in South African education has created severe socio-economic class differentiation between affluent quintile 4 and 5 schools, and destitute no-fee schools. What we have is a school system that is effectively tiered along class and race lines that align very closely with apartheid-era designations. This is a significant issue as it determines a school’s capacity to respond effectively.
In recent discussions with principals of quintile 4 and 5 schools, they reflect on how they can employ full-time school counsellors or psychologists, fund extra-curricular programmes that keep pupils constructively engaged, hire private security, and install access control systems and CCTV cameras. They also engage specialist conflict-resolution facilitators, and respond swiftly to incidents, with legal and communications support.
These school leaders also report the mechanisms they have in place for early identification of psycho-social distress. They recognise that pupils experiencing trauma, depression, exposure to domestic violence, or substance abuse show warning signs long before an incident. They also reflect on the importance of developing a school code of conduct, getting parents and pupils to buy into this contract of acceptable behaviour, and making them aware of the consequences of violations.
They also emphasise that it takes the efforts of the entire management team and teachers, and the backing of the school governing bodies (SGB). Quintile 1 schools in Chatsworth, Phoenix or uMlazi have far less capacity to do the above. They depend entirely on what the state allocates, which is never enough to cover even basic necessities like water and electricity bills. Such schools have broken perimeter fencing, no security personnel, and open access that allows community members, gang members and unauthorised individuals to enter school grounds freely. It is also not unusual to find that schools in poor communities are frequently severely overcrowded, with class sizes of 50 to 60 pupils.
Under these conditions, even a motivated and well-trained teacher might struggle to maintain a safe and supportive classroom environment. In South Africa, the effectiveness of the SGB varies considerably, and depends heavily on the capacity of parent members. In poor communities, many parents are unemployed, work multiple jobs and usually have less formal education themselves. As such, they are less able to participate meaningfully in the SGB processes. This is not a reflection of their commitment to their children, but of their material circumstances.
In affluent schools, on the other hand, the SGBs may include lawyers, doctors, business people and professionals who understand governance, can hold management accountable, and can mobilise resources and networks in response to safety crises. What makes this particularly cruel is that the schools with the least capacity to respond to violence are also the schools with the highest exposure to violence.
Pupils from deprived contexts bring the heaviest psycho-social burden into the institutions that are least equipped to handle these issues. What becomes clear is that a comprehensive school-safety framework without equity in implementation capacity protects the already protected. Addressing school violence in South Africa meaningfully requires not just better policy, but a fundamental redistribution of counselling resources, infrastructure investment in the poorest schools, and community-level violence reduction that addresses what children experience before they arrive at school.
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.