A difficult juggling act for school authorities

THE case of an East London boy subjected to continual bullying at school by another child once again throws into sharp focus the balance required in exercising the rights enshrined in the Constitution and for the need to support this with interventions that seek to ensure incidents of this nature are dealt with in a sensitive manner that has due regard for the rights of both parties.

It would be comfortable to adopt a purist approach that would require the offender to be expelled or order that he be removed to some kind of reformatory – institutions that all too often have proved to be nothing other than incubators for criminals.

But that it not what a rights-based society demands.

It demands, on the one hand, that the right of the bullied boy to attend school in a safe and secure atmosphere be protected, and on the other that – even if he is guilty of anti-social behaviour – the right to an education of the child accused of bullying is not removed.

How to achieve that becomes the challenge. It is made no easier by the fact that the moral fibre that should underpin our society has been damaged by the barbarity of a past where respect for life and property, for the welfare of others and the good of the nation as a whole were brushed aside in the pursuit for a racially-based ideal.

While there can be no argument that children should be allowed to attend school without fear of being bullied, we do not believe that the offender in this case should simply be cast aside and so further alienated.

The unfortunate issue raises the question whether schools have the staff equipped to deal with anti-social behaviour, whether the parents have been counselled about the child‘s conduct, and whether faith-based organisations have been requested to assist.

It is surely critical that while protecting the rights of individual pupils or the majority, we do not fail to make every effort to correct anti-social behaviour rather than push a wayward child towards the arena of criminality.

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Political meddling a danger to sport

AS unwelcome as it is to many, politics has been a way of life in South African sport for many decades. As such it is certainly not unique to the ANC government.

However, with the advent of democracy one would have hoped that those newly-appointed to power would have looked back at the horrendous mistakes of the apartheid regime and decided those errors would not be repeated in a free South Africa.

Sadly, this is not the case and political meddling in sport is, if anything, worse than it was during apartheid. There is now a very real danger that our sporting teams are facing a particularly destabilising time as power-hungry politicians try to wrest control of various sporting codes.

Rugby is very much in the firing line at the moment with Springbok coach Jake White the man in the sights of meddling politicians like Butana Kompela, chairman of Parliament’s portfolio committee on sports.

Despite White’s highly successful Test record it is clear Kompela and his cronies are determined to get rid of White – a man who has done more to introduce players of colour into the Bok team than any other coach before him.

It is nothing less than a disgraceful witch-hunt against a man whose only apparent sin is ignoring the claims of a politically-connected player like Luke Watson.

How the world must snigger at this arrogant abuse of power.