The DA will lay criminal charges against South African Council for Educators (SACE) CEO, Ella Mokgalane, its Chairperson, Mabutho Cele, and any other SACE board members who may have known about SACE’s failure to adequately vet teachers in terms of Section 47 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act.
This continued failure is astounding especially while the country marks Child Protection Week. It appears that SACE, which is mandated to ensure all teachers are fit to work with children, may have granted sex pests access to children.
This follows the admission by SACE, in a reply to a DA Parliamentary question, that for at least the last ten years they had not vetted teachers against the Sexual Offenders Register or Child Protection Register before issuing licences, as is required by law.
In failing to check the Sexual Offenders Register, SACE appears to have breached the law.
Section 47 (1) of the Act states that:
“A licensing authority may not grant a licence to or approve the management or operation of any entity, business concern or trade in relation to the supervision over or care of a child or a person who is mentally disabled without having determined, by way of an application to the Registrar for a prescribed certificate, whether or not the particulars of such person have been recorded in the Register.”
Furthermore, Section 47 (3) of the Act states that:
“Any licensing authority or person who intentionally contravenes any provision of this section, is guilty of an offence and liable on conviction to a fine or to imprisonment for a period not exceeding seven years or to both a fine and such imprisonment.”
The above requirement has been present in all forms of the Act from 2007 and the fact that SACE has neglected to vet teachers against the Sexual Offenders Register for a decade shows that the government does not care about learners’ safety.
It is quite clear that Mokgalane and Cele, as senior officials of SACE, have committed an offence by failing to halt the issuing of teacher licences until teachers were adequately vetted.
Furthermore, on Sunday the Department of Basic Education (DBE) stated that SACE did not in fact have to work through the DBE to gain access to the Register. This does not absolve Minister Angie Motshekga from responsibility, as SACE is an entity of the DBE and her department should have ensured that they were not breaking the law.
The DA, through its #SafeSchools campaign, has repeatedly urged President Cyril Ramaphosa to end the pandemic of sexual and physical violence through a collaborative effort by the national Police, Basic Education, Social Development and Justice Departments, together with provincial departments of education.
It is high time that Minister Motshekga puts politics aside and supports our call to prioritise the safety of all learners.
Ensuring that children are safe at schools is vital if they are to achieve their full potential. This however cannot be attained when children are forced to study in an unsafe environment.