I started my teaching career in 1993 in Ezakheni in the northern part of KwaZulu-Natal when the province was in political turmoil. As KwaZulu-Natal is a predominantly Zulu-speaking area and I am Sotho-speaking, people assumed that I supported a particular political organisation which was not popular in the area where I was working.
That year, the education department decided to scrap the matric exam fee after most of the learners had paid it at the beginning of the year. Learners started to demand their exam fee back as they had heard over the radio that schools had to refund them. They went to the principal’s office on several occasions. He informed them that the money had already been paid to the education department in Pretoria and procedures had to be followed before money could be deposited back into the school account. They wanted to be refunded from the school fund, which was impossible as the fund was used for the daily running of the school.
The matter dragged on until just two days before the winter holidays. On this afternoon I was awoken by loud footsteps in my yard. There was a group of Grade 12 learners who wanted to know the whereabouts of the principal because he was not at work. They were very violent and ordered me to accompany them to the school premises where we would meet with other learners so that a colleague and I could explain the whereabouts of the principal. I left with them, and when we were just around the street corner, I saw another group of learners coming our way with my colleague. The two groups joined and we two teachers were made to walk in front of the mob of students as we marched to school — they were afraid of the soldiers who were patrolling the area for political unrest. On our way to the school we were not allowed to speak to one another in Sotho because the learners could not understand us. It was terrible and frightening because, at the time, a lot of people had been killed by necklacing.
On our arrival at school we met the rest of the learners, who were waiting for us to explain to them where the principal was so that he could refund their money. It was a very heated debate. My friend was very aggressive and wanted to beat them, but it would be impossible to beat that mob. I cooled him down and asked the learners to listen to me.
A while later they asked us to lead them to the district office where the principals’ meeting was being held as they thought our principal might be there. When we were close to the district office, soldiers confronted us — people were not allowed to move in a mob like that. They asked us to lie down to be searched because they were not convinced that we were teachers. After establishing that we were teachers, they shot at the learners to disperse them and escorted us to the district office.
On arrival at the office the manager briefly told us that he could not talk to us on that day as he was only meeting with principals. The soldiers left us there and we were afraid that those learners who were dispersed by the soldiers would now hunt us down and kill us.
We went back to our rented rooms and locked ourselves in until the following day when we met with the rest of the teaching personnel and explained to them what had happened the previous day. As it was the last day of the quarter, I immediately hired a taxi that drove me home to the Free State for ever. I am presently deputy principal at another school.