About 1 000 pupils — somewhat short of the 100 000 promised by the Congress of South African Students (Cosas) — marched through central Cape Town on Tuesday to protest violence at schools.
The march went off without incident, despite an earlier police warning to shopkeepers and vendors about the possibility of robbery.
When the pupils, virtually all in school uniform, threatened to race ahead at the start, about 45 police linked arms at the head of the march and led the students all the way to the provincial legislature.
There, Cosas provincial chairperson Siya Sintwa handed over a memorandum to education minister Cameron Dugmore and community safety minister Leonard Ramatlakane calling for police or defence-force members to be deployed at schools.
Dugmore, who was initially booed by the pupils but then cheered when he began addressing them in Xhosa, thanked them for the discipline shown on the march and said he and Ramatlakane undertook to meet the Cosas leadership within 14 days.
He said his department already has a school safety programme in place, which it will review, and is deploying an additional 25 ”learner support officers” to boost school safety.
The officers are tasked with keeping a school’s premises secure, investigating disturbances and visiting the homes of absent pupils.
However, Dugmore said, some of the violence at schools involves pupils themselves, and this requires a change of behaviour and a culture of peace and respect.
Some of the pupils scribbled slogans on the back of newspaper billboards, which they carried during the march.
Langa High School grade 11 pupil Mandlakhe Nohesi held up his own mini-poster saying ”Down with crime”, written in ballpoint on a page of a foolscap pad.
”I’m here to stop crime in our schools,” he said. ”We want to be safe. It is becoming a big problem these days … Guns, stabbing each other, and criminals getting into our schools illegally.
”It is so difficult because we don’t feel safe at schools.” — Sapa