CHAPTER 7 LEARNER- ON- LEARNER VIOLENCE
7.3 Bullying 173
7.3.1 Types of bullying 173
measures as suspension of learners from the school in an effort to maintain discipline among learners. The members of the committee seemed to be unaware that as leaders they could exert influence on learners so that such learners could understand that fighting was not a good option for solving problems.
We have also discovered that some learners exploit the younger learners because we have a feeding scheme. They sometimes take food from the young learners in Grade 8. They get too hungry because they smoke dagga and that is why they end up taking younger learners’ food (HTersee 3).
I observed that THS provided lunch for learners. The learners had a chance to eat during lunch break. At lunch break time, most learners ran to the kitchen where food was served. The cooks handed food to learners. The situation was chaotic because learners pushed each other. Some boys who looked stronger would just stand at the back of a crowded group of learners and take food from girls or younger boys. Sometimes the stronger boys took more than one plate full of food. The learners whose food was taken would go back to the cooks to collect food again. Sometimes some learners found food finished. This situation was a daily occurrence until the prefects for each class started collecting food from the kitchen and learners were served food in their respective classrooms.
HTersee 4 described bullying as a crisis and pointed out that the victims of bullying were new and younger learners:
Bullying is a major crisis. Learners bully each other and those who suffer most are the new learners in the school. They take other learners’ belongings by force.
You find that a learner who is older in the class will just take stationery of a learner who is younger by force and he knows that the younger learner cannot do anything. Sometimes they take the food or money from younger learners.
The acts of bullying at THS did not only involve taking of other learners’ food, but they also involved taking of money and bags. In relation to these acts, two teachers had this to say:
Some learners take the food or money from younger learners (Turner 2).
Two Grade 11 learners went to Grade 8 learners and demanded money from them almost every day. They took the school bags of those who did not have money (TTurner 3).
Bullying among learners at THS was reported by one learner from a focus group discussion as a way in which some stronger learners forcefully expropriated other learners’ possessions:
There are some incidents going on in the school where you find that there are those boys who are bigger than us. They force us to write their homework. They kind of force everything on us. We cannot do anything about this because they are older than us. They will beat you up, take your bag, take your books and copy the home work (Girls focus group THS).
For DMax bullying at MHS took forms which he expressed as ‘normal’: “The kind of violence among learners is just your normal bullying where they intimidate other small learners by demanding their lunch.”
Sometimes bullying at MHS involved groups of learners who threatened an individual learner in order to make him to surrender his money. However, this case was reported to school managers who addressed it:
There is bullying. I had an incident about a week ago where a Black male learner came to tell me that a Coloured boy had stolen his umbrella and eventually the coloured boy approached the black boy and demanded money in exchange for the umbrella. The friends of a coloured boy, who are also coloured, surrounded and threatened this black boy. We had to talk to them and said this is not on. You can’t get your friends to surround another learner. It is wrong. If it happens again we will be calling parents and if there is a need to suspend you we will do so. We had to make it sound very serious. But they were friends. They spoke to each other and promised us that it won’t happen again. I haven’t heard anything since then and I am hoping that everything is O.K. (DMiller1)
Bullying in the form of plundering provided immediate benefits to the perpetrators who appropriated the possessions of the victims. The findings also revealed that the victims occupied a position of weakness because the instigators were either older learners or boys who victimise girls.
7.3.1.2 Cyber bullying
While some acts of bullying were similar in the two participant schools, cyber bullying was also reported by MHS participants. In this regard, the MHS principal had this to say:
There is bullying on the phone. This is cyber bullying and issues of violence there.
Girls in particular use this kind of bullying. For example, one girl writes a long list of other girls and refers to this list as the names of bitches or prostitutes in this school. We then prohibited the use of cell phones in this school. We had cases of cyber bullying and we called parents to explain this problem. We had taken from learners some cell phones and showed the messages to the parents. We banned the use of cell phones at the school. We encourage parents not to buy their children cell phones (PMaster).
Although learners were prohibited to use cell phones at MHS, I saw many learners in possession of cell phones. Some of them used their cell phones to make calls during break. I also observed some learners holding their cell phones pressing buttons. Some participants in a focus group of girls at MHS talked about cyber bullying:
There are lots of insults among learners like this thing called the list. On this list it is like they will write the names of other learners and bad things about them and then circulate the information. They write messages on the cell phones and send it to as many people as possible. They will write that so and so is like this even if it is not true. Sometimes, they send it to people who are not in the school. For example, they can even send it to people in Johannesburg (Girls focus group MHS).
It seemed that cell phones provided a vehicle which could be used by some MHS learners to circulate messages intended to humiliate and harm others. However, this form of bullying appeared to be complex since cell phones were small devices which learners carried to school even though they were prohibited to do so. Cell phones also could be used without the supervision of any adult, either the teachers or parents and as such learners could easily misuse them.