Talk:Sandringham High School, Johannesburg

Silent Victims

Each South African school had a general policy with regard to corporal punishment. In some schools the average boy would be caned several times a year, in others, several times a month, and in others only the most uncontrollable boys were punished at all. As acts of child abuse, justice has never been served on the perpetrators of these crimes, on the legislators who condoned it, or on the many idle bystanders who are guilty through negligence or outright approval.

The child, in these circumstances, was affronted on all sides by inhumanity. Parents by-and-large approved of canings if they even knew, continuing to give school donations above fees, as well as sit in PTA meetings without a single sigh of opposition to brutality playing out under their noses. Teachers who did not approve simply ignored what was going on, even to the point of continuing a class while the sounds of whipping echoed through the walls from an adjacent classroom.

Pupils were coerced using fear to not speak of these things to parents, often using manipulative language.

Where there was opposition, parents moved their children to another, possibly private, school, where civil liberties were adhered to.

Because this is South Africa, Apartheid crimes overshadowed crimes of child abuse. No one shows interest in crimes of corporal punishment when ample crimes of a more serious nature require reconciliation.

However the effect of this abuse is rampant. Most pupils have a story to tell. When discussing their school years they are want to lower their voice and hint at a pain they secretly hide by asking an indirect leading question. Between the words the question reads: "How can I get back what has been taken? Will you go back with me to punish the evil? Is there something wrong with me that I fear the night?"

The official procedure (when adhered to) was that a teacher who had caning rights had to log the caning in a book at the time it was administered. One teacher had such a log book an inch thick.

How can any person, who has tortured thousands of boys, be allowed to walk the streets a free man, without a finger ever being pointed at him.