LEBOGANG SEALE
N othing seemed unusual about the activity at the Jabulani police station in Soweto. It looked all too familiar.
Then suddenly police officers darted towards one of the vans after it had hurtled into the station’s courtyard, next to the holding cells. The open bakkie was carrying a pupil in full school uniform. Lying in the back of the van in a drunken stupor, he could barely speak.
Quizzed by the police, the 16-year-old Grade 11 pupil at the nearby Jabulani Technical High School muttered that he had been drinking with his friends, who he colloquially referred to as “my dogs”. Unfazed, the handcuffed pupil then confronted the police why they had “tied him like cows while my friends are free”.
Asked what he and his friends had drank, the pupil replied incoherently in street lingo: “First watch (whisky). I sponged (mixed) it with Sprite.”
Asked who his friends were, he mumbled three names. “We contributed R25 each. (One friend) topped it with R15,” he said.
According to school principal Thobile Manana, an official from the Gauteng Department of Education had noticed that the pupil was “hopelessly drunk” as she was entering the school during a visit early yesterday. Manana then took him to the principal’s office.
“He tried to sit on a chair, but he was struggling. Eventually he just lay sprawled on the floor,” she said.
Manana admitted that alcohol abuse was rife at the school, although yesterday’s case was “quite extreme”.
“It’s a shock. It means we might be having a lot more children like him because we do at times find empty whisky bottles like Johnnie Walker in the yard. I don’t know who smuggles alcohol in.”
She attributed the constant underperformance at the school to alcohol abuse.
“It could be the reason for the failure rate. Maybe they write the tests when they are not in sober senses,” she lamented, also not ruling out the possibility of drug abuse at the school.
In 2010, Jabulani High fared the worst in its district with a matric pass rate of 19 percent.
Manana added that the school has since formed a partnership with the local police to address the scourge, and that the pupil would undergo disciplinary measures in accordance with the school rules and regulations. She said he might also be referred to a rehabilitation centre.
Victoria Motaung, the director of the SA National Council on Alcoholism in Soweto, said yesterday that alcohol abuse was rampant in the township.
“It is a serious problem. Lots of factors like peer pressure, frustration and the breakdown of family structures may be responsible for that,” she said, adding that the centre treated an average of 15 cases of alcohol abuse a week.
Education department spokesman Charles Phahlane said it was unacceptable for pupils to come to school under the influence of alcohol.
“The principal acted correctly in calling the police to deal with such a disciplinary problem,” he said. He appealed to parents and community leaders to assist in helping curb the problem.
The pupil was released into the custody of his parents.