Children on their way home from school in the Eastern Cape.
Although most cases of sexual misconduct at schools involve male teachers, authorities are seeing a number of women teachers engaging in sexual relationships with pupils.
The issue made international headlines this week when, in the United States, a former teacher revealed she fell pregnant after having sex with a 13-year-old “almost on a daily basis”.
The South African Council for Educators (Sace) said it barred two women at a Free State school from teaching for an indefinite period after they admitted having sexual relationships with two pupils. The women, in their early 30s, one of whom is married, pleaded guilty to having sex with the 17- and 18-year-olds, who were in grades 10 and 11.
Recently a young teacher at Grey College in Bloemfontein handed in her resignation after details surfaced of an intimate kiss with a matric boy.
There were 14 complaints of sexual misconduct involving women teachers that Sace received between April last year and March this year.
According to statistics from five of the nine provincial education departments, 108 cases of sexual assault and of teachers having sexual relationships with pupils between April last year and March this year had either been finalised or are still being investigated.
At least 58 of these involved teachers in KwaZulu-Natal and 33 were in the Western Cape.
In August, the KwaZulu-Natal education department expelled 12 teachers who were found guilty of either having sexual relationships with or sexually assaulting pupils.
Tsedi Dipholo, Sace’s head of registration and ethics, said the two Free State teachers took the two boys with them in a small bakkie whenever they had to run errands for the school.
“They would drive to a dam and engage in sex with the boys. One of the parents found out about this after noticing that one of the boys had an expensive watch. The two did not deny having sex with the boys.”
In a separate case, a middle-aged Gauteng teacher pleaded guilty to “grooming” a pupil, who was her child’s friend. “She sent him suggestive SMSes. They chatted on WhatsApp but there was no sexual relationship.”
Dipholo said: “Whether you propose love or had sexual intercourse, we have a zero tolerance approach.”
Sace’s chief executive, Rej Brijraj, said: “We [the council] go after any teacher who takes advantage of any learner in a sexual manner.
“In the council’s view, the trauma and the psychological effects on learners who have been sexually abused by teachers, whether the learners are male or female, are about the same.
“Even if the child feels that it is consensual, the child does not realise at the time that the child is being taken advantage of. It’s only when he or she grows up, they realise a wrong has been done to them.”
He said the council had taken a decision to embark on an advocacy campaign to encourage school communities to protect their pupils.
Brijraj said they were investigating a case of a principal who allegedly impregnated the daughter of a deputy principal.
“Contrary to popular belief, our statistics are showing that more of the abuse that has been reported has been perpetrated by older teachers in their 30s and 40s and not those who just started teaching.”
He said romantic relationships between teachers and pupils who were of the appropriate age, even if there was parental consent and marriage in mind, is banned.
“I would like to say to parents that they must please assist society in not selling their girls unwittingly because, if they accept promises of marriage or gifts, then they are giving the perpetrators an escape route.”
In the past financial year, Sace had to withdraw 38 cases because parents refused to allow their children to appear as witnesses at disciplinary hearings.
Professor Bonita Meyersfeld, the director of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, said the issue of some parents allowing romantic relationships between their daughters and teachers was “very worrying”.
“If somebody is hurt by another person, how is it possible to make that person live with them and be in a binding relationship.
“The violation will continue until there is an absolute clampdown and accountability.
“At the moment I fear we continue to see a kind of concern that ‘Oh, you’ll ruin the career of the educator,’ and misinformation about whether it’s the fault of the victim. There are all of these things I think that undermine the basic principles of a safe school environment.”
Matakanye Matakanye, the secretary general of the National Association of School Governing Bodies, said they will tell parents why they should identify children whose rights may have been violated by teachers.
“Parents must quickly bring to the attention of the school governing body and school management cases where the relationship between a teacher and a learner is not of a professional nature,” he said.
Teacher’s affair with girl not a ‘teenage fantasy’
A 17-year-old matriculant’s diary of her sexual escapades with a Cape Town teacher led to him being dismissed by the Western Cape Education Department for unprofessional conduct.
George Grey, who is 30 years the girl’s senior, was exposed when her mother found her diary containing details of their sexual relationship and her infatuation with Grey.
He referred an unfair dismissal dispute to the Education Labour Relations Council, which upheld the decision to dismiss him.
In October last year, his bid in the Cape Town Labour Appeal Court to have his sanction overturned was dismissed with costs.
At the arbitration hearing, the girl spoke of the development of her relationship with Grey. This included an exchange of calls, text messages, emails, gifts, kissing on school hiking club outings, Grey visiting her home when she was absent from school and sex at his home. The two drove to a secluded spot after she told her parents she was going to a school fashion show.
Grey denied having a relationship with the girl, “dismissing it as a figment of her imagination and putting her evidence down to teenage fantasy”.
Labour Appeal Court Judge JA Savage said the arbitration award was justifiable.
“The arbitrator rejected [Grey’s] contention that the learner’s intermittent changes in her version regarding the alleged relationship were lies, finding that they were most probably occasioned by the appellant’s own attempts to unduly influence her to protect himself.”
He said there was no basis to support a finding that the arbitrator “misconducted himself or exceeded his powers”.
“His finding that a sexual relationship existed is supported by the learner’s evidence and by the contents of her diary which provided a contemporaneous account of her relationship with the appellant.”