MALAIKA MAHLATSI | Pupils who seek better performance have no community protection

Three things happened in the month of May that seem to have no direct link, but are, in fact, strongly intertwined. Two weeks ago, the report of the latest Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study (Pirls) 2021 reading results was released. According to the results of the study, South African Grade 4 pupils perform the worst of all participating countries when it comes to reading for comprehension. The percentage of Grade 4 learners who cannot read in any language increased to 81% in 2021, from 78% in 2016.

The Covid-19 pandemic had a devastating effect on learning outcomes across the world, but more so in SA, where a decade of progress was completely wiped out. Comparative countries such as Brazil also suffered the impact of the pandemic, but the percentage of Grade 4 learners who cannot read in any language is more than two times less than that of SA – at 39%. The average Grade 4 child in our country is three years behind their Brazilian counterpart.

Two weeks after the Pirls report was released, the body of a 17-year-old Grade 12 pupil, Palesa Malatji, was found next to a school in Soshanguve. The pupil from Ntsako secondary school had suffered a brutal sexual assault. It is reported that she had been walking home from school after attending extra classes. Palesa’s brutal murder caused uproar in the Pretoria township and across the country, and was aptly called “an unspeakable crime” by the Gauteng education MEC.

But just days after Palesa’s murder, the South African Police Service (SAPS) released the 2022/2023 Quarter 4 crime statistics. This is the official record of crimes reported and recorded between January and March 2023. According to the statistics, most violent crimes showed increases. These include murder, attempted murder, assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and robbery with aggravating circumstances. However, there was a decline in rape cases, with 10,512 recorded rape cases compared to over 11,000 in the previous quarter. About 70 of the recorded rapes were committed on school premises. Gauteng leads with the most rape cases, and is second only to KwaZulu-Natal with the highest number of murders.

The link between these three things is clear: pupils who are performing poorly in our schools owing to a weak educational foundation (and the lingering effects of the pandemic) and who as a result must seek extra lessons from their teachers, cannot be guaranteed protection in their own communities. The levels of crime in our country have long passed pandemic proportions. And while we often shout about how education is the key to success, the death of Palesa is evidence that in SA where education is desperately needed, those who seek it do so at great risk to their very lives. Palesa is one of many pupils who have been failed by a government and society that is losing the war on crime.

A country with a crime rate as out-of-control as SA's, is a danger to itself and to the future of its children. When we cannot protect pupils in our schools, when a pupils cannot take extra lessons to better her chances of doing well in matric so that she can access higher education and have a fighting chance to plough back to her working-class community, then parameters for genocide have been set. And with that, the descent into the pits of hell has begun.

May Palesa Malatji rest in eternal peace.