A Johannesburg bus driver accused of kicking eight pupils off his bus because they were white is being victimised, the parent of one of the children said on Thursday.
”My child told me that the children were lying. It’s not fair that this poor driver is getting victimised. They [the children] are lying, they demanded to get off the bus,” said Leena Bedworth, whose daughter Simone was on the bus on Tuesday.
Bedworth said her daughter — who also attends Parktown High School for Girls — told her about the incident on Tuesday night, before it was reported in the newspapers.
”The bus was late, but when the kids got on [at the Mondeor pick-up point] he apologised profusely. Then the white children started attacking the driver verbally.”
The driver, who was new to the route, had been asked to go and help on the Parktown High School route after completing his normal route because of the Metrobus strike.
Bedworth said she had contacted Metrobus’s managing director Bheki Shongwe to substantiate the bus driver’s claims that he had been taunted by the children.
Gregg Bauer, the deputy headmaster at Parktown High School for Girls, said the children had been ”kicked off” the bus on Westcliff Drive — about a kilometre from the school.
The children had told Bauer that the driver had arrived late and would not accept directions to the school from two white boys.
When other children tried to approach the driver, saying they needed to get to school because they had tests, the driver ”lambasted” them..
Shongwe on Tuesday denied that driver had kicked the children off the bus and said an investigation was under way.
”We are continuing to investigate, but the preliminary finding is that there is no correlation between what was in the [newspaper] article and what the driver has told us,” he said.
”I have spoken to the driver and he said it was an absolute lie.”
Shongwe was not immediately available for comment on Thursday afternoon. — Sapa