Hayibo.com - Ermelo school board in chaos over "political prosecution"

Ermelo school board in chaos over "political prosecution"

ERMELO. The school board of Ermelo's St Eustace of the Sacred Circumcision Primary School is reportedly in "crisis meetings" after Katie Visagie, 7, made sensational claims earlier in the week that her detention for stealing a classmate's Miley Cyrus ruler was "politically motivated". Visagie had been on track to be elected the class's window monitor.

Visagie's claims have sent a shockwave through the small Mpumalanga town best know for its annual Sakkie Festival – a celebration of the Afrikaans word for small bags – and experts believe the crisis could have repercussions in other spheres of youth governance.

Teachers across the province have already expressed doubt over the legality of this week's detention lists, choosing in many cases to give children a severe reprimand instead of outright detention, while the Piet Retief Boy Scouts have issued a call for all disciplinary proceedings to be suspended "pending a review".

The Boy Scouts Veterans Association, staffed by boys in their late teens, this morning threatened "militant action", including tying extremely complex knots in people's shoelaces, starting fires in woodland clearings without proper supervision, and helping elderly women half-way across busy roads before abandoning them to the traffic.

'Visagiegate', as the Ermelo Gazette has dubbed the crisis at St Eustace of the Sacred Circumcision, began last week when Grade 1 teacher Ellie Fudd was forced to intervene in a dispute between Visagie and classmate Sarah Maverick, 6, when the accused jammed a ball of Play Dough into Maverick's mouth. Fudd then ascertained that Visagie was in possession of a 30-centimeter ruler that Maverick claimed was hers.

Sources close to the parties have confirmed that during an extramural in camera hearing, Maverick produced evidence that this ruler was in fact hers.

This included a photograph on Maverick's cellphone of a failed attempt on March 16 to force the ruler up her left nostril, and circumstantial evidence that her name had been written on the ruler in TippEx.

But sensational allegations emerged this week that, during a Big Break discussion in the staff room, Fudd had discussed the Visagie case with headmaster Bulelani Msebisi.

Speaking at a press conference this morning, Visagie's parents claimed that they were in possession of signed statements from the teacher in charge of discipline, Mr Ivan "The Terrible" Poggenpoel, confirming that Fudd and Msebisi had timed Visagie's detention to ensure that it took place after school when the other children had gone home.

"If this isn't proof that the detention has been manipulated to serve the interests of the 'big man' in the headmasters office, we don't know what is," said her father, Ace.

"Two weeks ago our little girl was going to be the first window monitor this family as ever produced. Now her reputation and her future in the janitorial industry are in tatters."

Education Minister Naledi Pandor has refused to discuss the merits of the case, saying that she currently has her hands full trying to explain to new Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande that Higher Education starts after Grade 12, and not, as he thought, in Grade 7.