“This one time, during break, a child who was much bigger than mine in size, decided to sit on my son, trying to suffocate him. I was fuming and it was only the fear of God that stopped me from strangling that child and going to jail.”
This is the agony and frustration of Precious Ledwaba, a parent, as she described the trauma she and her son endured because of bullying when he was in Grades 4 and 5. She says she felt like her son was an easy target and that it reminded her of what she had experienced at the same school when she was young.
Ledwaba, when explaining how she noticed a change in behaviour when her usually bubbly, playful son who was always full of jokes, was now always crying, moody and reserved when he got home. His nanny was the first person he confided in before he was open with his mom, but eventually he started to narrate his experiences to his mom.
“At first, he was not open about it. When I asked, he would just dismiss it and make it seem as if it’s just something that happened at school. I really had to probe and sit him down and try to dig into what was going on. He said kids on the sports fields would call him names and that when they played soccer, they’d call him a bad soccer player, tease him and swear at him. Instead of kicking the ball, they would kick him and in class they would isolate him and make him feel as if he does not belong there,” Ledwaba explained.
In Ledwaba’s experience, however, the school was more dismissive than supportive at first when she reported the incidents that happened to her son. She reported everything her son told her, she emailed the call, called the class teacher who claimed ignorance and even spoke to the sports coaches at the school. They all denied the accusations and acted as if nothing serious was happening.
“I don’t know the number of times I went to that school, demanding to see the principal and Head of Department. Many times, I had to leave work and go and camp at that school. I told them that I was also bullied here and maybe the reaction to me was different because my parents had money as my father was a renowned businessman,” Ledwaba explained.
Her courage paid off, because now her son is in Grade 7 and the bullying has stopped. In fact, it stopped towards the end of Grade 5. Her son learned how to stand up for himself and he was encouraged by seeing his mom’s involvement in finding solutions remedy the situation. He was taken to an education psychologist to help him through the trauma of his experiences, and he also recorded a song expressing his feelings.
According to Ledwaba, the school upon seeing how she would probe, demanding answers and consequences, slowly started taking action as well. They introduced real monitoring systems; had anti-bullying campaigns and incorporated anti-bullying in their learning material. Slowly there was change.
“The interventions they made were not the things that helped my son. It was him seeing me actively involved in getting things solved that gave him courage. In those two years I had to fight because that was the only thing that gave my child reprieve. If I had to act out of emotion and take the child out of the school, he would not have learned anything. He would have just seen that he can always escape and not become stronger. It was a must for me to fight the culture of bullying at the school,” Ledwaba said.
She feels the school, based in Pretoria East, should not be named as they have taken steps to ensure bullying does not take place there anymore.
Bullying entails the involvement of one or more persons singling out the victim and deliberately hurting him or her physically, mentally or emotionally. The Department of Basic Education continues to urge education stakeholders to stand in unity against bullying in schools so that a conducive learning environment is created.