Last week, the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education swiftly responded to a distressing incident at Ruwangwe Secondary School in Nyanga District. A viral video depicted four female students mercilessly assaulting a defenceless classmate.
The disturbing video captured the four assailants attempting to strip the hapless victim naked while relentlessly kicking and slapping her.
Fortunately, the timely intervention of two men on a motorcycle managed to break up the violent altercation.
In an interview with The Manica Post last week, the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education’s spokesperson, Taungana Ndoro, said that the Ministry dispatched a team to the school to investigate the incident and also to provide guidance and counselling to both the perpetrators and the victim. Ndoro said:
When the video circulated, we immediately intervened as the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education. We promptly dispatched our team to Ruwangwe Secondary School in Nyanga District to get to the bottom of that very unfortunate incident.
The team went there, not only for investigations, but it also comprised of professional counsellors to provide guidance and counselling to both the perpetrators and the victim.
We established that the incident was triggered by a social misunderstanding among the learners involved.
Everything has since been resolved and the school head was instructed to institute stringent measures to prevent similar cases from happening in the future since the incident occurred outside the school premises.
He said the victim did not sustain any serious injuries during the attack, but just some minor bruises.
Ndoro said the Ministry does not condone bullying, adding that communities should also be involved in preventing social deviance. He said:
As a matter of policy, all the 10 600 schools across Zimbabwe are required to have anti-bullying teaching that is delivered to every learner to sensitise them about the scourge.
Learning institutions also have guidance and counselling lessons tackling bullying. This forms part of schools’ regulations.
When such unfortunate incidents happen, corrective or disciplinary measures rather than punitive punishment are taken to address and redress bullying.
To complement what is being taught in schools about bullying through guidance and counselling lessons, awareness is also being raised in communities so that parents and guardians are involved too.
Society cannot just watch while children plunge into deviance epitomised by bullying, but have to intervene and prevent the vice.
Parents and guardians also have a role to play by ensuring that their children are neither perpetrators nor victims. No one is safe until we all are involved in addressing this issue.
Bullying in schools has been a problematic issue, affecting students’ safety and academic achievement.
A study at a Zimbabwean co-ed rural boarding school revealed that bullying was rife. School prefects sometimes used their positions to bully other students.
Causes of bullying included intrinsic factors, inherent hatred, home background status, teacher favouritism, jealousy, unreported previous cases, complacency of teachers, and a lack of concrete structures to address bullying.
More: Pindula News