EDUCATION Pupils fight for admission When the school year began in January many pupils and students found themselves barred from re-entry to school. There were protests in the Transvaal and Cape Province over the use of this measure to control pupils and to undermine organised protest, and over the expulsion of activists.
Stricter regulations in November last year governing the suspension and expulsion of pupils in African schools were followed in January by the tabling of a parliamentary bill threatening greater central government control over admission to schools.
Controls over re-admission The bill, amending the Education and Training Act, had a clause giving the Director-General of Education absolute discretion to decide whether a pupil should be excluded from a school if he believed the pupil's presence would be 'prejudicial to the interests of the school or to the provision of education'.
The exclusion of pupils from school is a powerful instrument of control in the hands of the authorities, as there is a severe shortage of school places in black schools, and given that the character of education for black pupils, particularly in African and Coloured schools, makes it difficult to pass the final school exams at the first time of writing.
Protests and boycotts Protests by pupils and parents over the readmission of pupils who had failed their matric exams were reported in East London, the Vaal Triangle and the Eastern Transvaal.
In Soweto, tension over the refusal of the authorities to re-admit ex-detainees and pupils who had failed exams turned to violent protest in January. Teachers and principals were attacked and six schools were closed by the authorities. There were also protests over registration procedures and over the presence of white inspectors and members of the 'security forces' in Soweto schools. Pupils demanded that the regulations introduced in November last year should be scrapped and called for the formation of Student Representative Councils (SRCs).
Pupils from 70 Soweto schools formed a Soweto Students' Coordinating Committee (SSCC) to represent them, a role previously played by the Soweto Students' Congress until it was restricted in October last year under the emergency regulations. Although pupils returned to school after two weeks, the SSCC said that neither the immediate issues nor the underlying causes had been resolved. The organisation urged parents to protest at the continuing detention of pupils, at least 36 of whom it said had been detained since the start of the year.
In Tembisa pupils responded to a call by community organisations to end a class boycott which had started in October last year, by returning to school when the term started in January. The Tembisa Students' Organisation (TESO) and community organisations called on the authorities to redress their grievances, which included the harassment of SRC members and teachers and interference in educational matters by the 'security forces'. A member of TESO, Amos MATHONSI, was detained in October last year, and was one of several Tembisa pupils still in detention in January. In February Calvin LETSOALA, chairperson of the Tembisa Education Crisis Committee was detained, under the Internal Security Act, and the authorities expelled about 80 members of the SRC and other activists in February. By March pupils from eight Tembisa schools had formed the Tembisa Students' Co-ordinating Committee, with the issue of the expulsions as one of its main concerns.
Army in Western Cape schools In the Cape Peninsula, where 2,000 African pupils were said by the Department of Education and Training to be on a waiting list, unable to find a school-place, the presence of army personnel was a focus of concern. According to a newly-formed organisation of teachers in the Western Cape, the Defend Democratic Teachers Union Committee (DDC), the DET had embarked on a military style of control of schools in the Western Cape. It said that most of the black schools in the area were directly 'at the mercy of' the SADF. The organisation was formed in January to mobilise against the restriction of three Western Cape education organisations in December.
POLICE Atrocities revealed in court Between September 1984 and December 1988, according to official reports monitored in South Africa, at least 1,113 people were killed by the police in political conflict.
Cases arising from killings by police during the height of resistance in 1984-6 are still proceeding.
- An inquest into the deaths of 14 people, including children, shot by police in Mamelodi on 21 November 1985, continued in Pretoria in the first months of 1989. In June last year, when the inquest began, police witnesses admitted that they had discharged teargas into an 8,000-strong crowd and then opened fire, although the crowd showed no sign of violence. In January, a resident told the court that she had witnessed the killing of Jerry NGWATLE, who was shot in her garden. Ngwatle had been sitting on her lawn with some friends when police arrived demanding identity documents. Without provocation one of the police-men had kicked Ngwatle and then shot him in the back when he ran off. In further police evidence, Sergeant Dion Looths, who had fired at people during separate incidents on the day, told the court that the police were instructed not to fire bullets into the air, but to 'aim at a target when dispersing a crowd'.
- A claim for damages by 21 families and the Methodist Church in Africa arising out of the destruction of the KTC squatter settlement in June 1986 continued to reveal police complicity in the attack, which left 60,000 people homeless. Giving evidence at the end of last year, Major Dolf Odendaal, of the Peninsula riot squad, said that it was 'pure coincidence' that police disappeared at exactly the moment that 'witdoek' vigilantes began to attack KTC residents. He said that police shown in a video detaining a church minister while ignoring 'witdoeke' burning down homes were 'distracted'. Requests in court for the release of police orders relating to the KTC events have been blocked on six occasions by the Minister of Law and Order or the Minister of Defence invoking the Internal Security Act.
The South African Police paid out 3,450 million rand in 456 claims for damages in 1987-8, compared to 856 million rand in the previous financial year, according to a statement in parliament by the Minister of Law and Order.
The claims included over half a million rand paid out for unlawful arrest and over two million rand for injuries, most of which occurred as a result of 'action during riots'.
