The KwaZulu-Natal Education Department is investigating circumstances that led to the suicide of 15-year-old Thando Ngcobo from Mbambangwe Secondary School.
Ngcobo took his life on Friday the 26th of January 2024 – only a week after the 2024 academic year commenced.
According to his mother, Nokulunga Ngcobo, Thando told her he was denied entry into the Science classroom and sat outside for the duration of the period.
“When I asked him why he didn’t take the general subject stream, he told me he wanted to be an engineer and therefore wanted to do Science as a subject” says Nokulunga Ngcobo.
“I asked if he was sure he would handle the workload with the stream of subjects he wanted to take and he assured me that he would,” added Ngcobo.
On Thursday the 25th of January 2024, Ngcobo says her son came back home teary but did not want to tell her what was wrong, but she persuaded him to speak out.
Ngcobo says her son told her he no longer wanted to be in the Science class and that he wanted to study drama because he was going to fail.
“I then asked him what changed his mind, and he said it was nothing, then went to bed crying. I asked him what was wrong, and he continued to say he did not want to do science anymore,” Ngcobo said.
Ngcobo says Thando woke up in the morning of the fateful day and prepared for school, then went outside where he would normally go to polish his school shoes.
“At 5 AM I expected a knock on the door from my son to tell me he was going to school, only to receive a knock from his grandmother that Thando hung himself in the toilet,” she said.
Ngcobo says after Thando’s passing, fellow learners came to pay their respects and she asked what happened at school.
“One of the learner’s told me that Thando’s science teacher told him in front of other learners in class that he was not man enough to stand up for himself and lets his mother handle his issues” says Ngcobo.
Ngcobo says that during the funeral, the school principal asked pupils behind the tent to tear up placards she made, which were calling for justice for her only child.
Reacting on the matter, KZN education department’s spokesperson, Muzi Mahlambi, says an investigation is underway following allegations that a science teacher at the school told Thando that based on his grade 9 marks he was never going to make it through to the end of the year.
“It’s a difficult situation to work on because there’s now going to be one side of the story, because I don’t see learners that came forward being brave enough to speak in front of the teacher, says Mahlambi”.
Mahlambi says pupils get easily scared to speak out.