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Dagga plants mushroom at school

WEED FOR ALL: One of the dagga plants at Boitumelong Senior Secondary School in Tembisa on the East Rand . Photo: Antonio Muchave
WEED FOR ALL: One of the dagga plants at Boitumelong Senior Secondary School in Tembisa on the East Rand . Photo: Antonio Muchave

FOUR years after police and education officials destroyed a dagga plantation on a school premises in Tembisa, it's back to square one.

Police first uprooted the plants at Boitumelong Senior Secondary School in the presence of the media in 2008. The police then said the plants were worth more than a million rand in street value.

The police uprooted the plants again in 2009.

Sowetan visited the school yesterday and found that the plants have grown in large numbers again. The plants have grown in patches in an area bigger than a soccer field. Some of the plants are about 3-metres high.

The plants grow in the school's backyard next to basketball and netball courts. The fence that the school has erected around the field is riddled with holes.

Police spokesman Constable Tebogo Sesing said: "I am surprised that the plants are still there. We have uprooted and burned them several times."

He said they handed the area back to the school when it said it would start a vegetable garden there.

Ralph Magashule, who lives near the school, said: "The police have tried to remove the plants but they grow again during rainy seasons. Everybody knows that people get dagga for free here."

Gauteng education department spokesman Charles Phahlane has denied that the area where the dagga grows is on the school's grounds. "The school has two fenced-off areas. The one area is where the school is located. There is no dagga within that area.

"The second area was supposed to be a sports field. It is also fenced and learners have no access to the field as it is rough and there is a stream running through it. That is why plans for a sports field were abandoned. This is considered an area 'outside' of the school, even though it is fenced," he said. "The fence has holes and one corner is used as a dumping site."

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