{"id":712686,"date":"2023-08-22T11:11:43","date_gmt":"2023-08-22T09:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=712686"},"modified":"2023-08-22T11:28:50","modified_gmt":"2023-08-22T09:28:50","slug":"school-bullies-could-soon-face-jail-time-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/712686\/school-bullies-could-soon-face-jail-time-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"School bullies could soon face jail time in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Bullied school children could soon apply for a protection order against a peer without the involvement of parents or guardians. This means bullies could be jailed or put through social service programmes for bullying under certain circumstances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bullying has long been a prevalent and well-contested issue in South African schools, and currently, there are several Acts aimed at protecting children from bullying in South African law, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The South African Schools Act;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Cyber Crime Act 2020; <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Protection of Harassment Act 2008; and<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The Child Justice Act 2011.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite these Acts, the government continues to see a rise in cases of bullying in schools, with the Department of Basic Education having noted a rise in children committing suicide as a result of persistent bullying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;It is clear that South Africa has a huge problem when it comes to bullying, especially among those of school-going age,&#8221; said Basic Education spokesperson Elijah Mhlanga.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The government is currently looking into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8luI1msXeHs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">establishing new laws<\/a> that would allow school children to get a protection order against another, with the potential of jail time if the bully is in contravention of the order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A Protection Order is an order issued by a court ordering a person (the respondent) to stop the abuse. It\u2019s a legal document that specifies the conditions that an abuser must adhere to, as specified by the courts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mhlanga noted that &#8211; where age allows &#8211; there will be a part to play by correctional services; however, in cases where the bully is as young as 10 years, social services would then get involved and put them through programmes designed to &#8220;correct them&#8221; and teach them the impact of their actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;This new law won&#8217;t solve all our problems, but it would go a long way in putting together measures required to eradicate bullying in our schools,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Issues with the new law proposal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Criminal law experts have<strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kIvS7vViNpM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">shared some criticism<\/a><\/strong> over the new law, noting that a child &#8211; especially those as young as 10 years old &#8211; might not have the capacity to fully understand right and wrong and appreciate the processes of the court. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;One must consider this issue of capacity. Having a child on their own applying for any kind of order against somebody is problematic,&#8221; said Criminal law expert William Booth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Parents have to get involved. Regarding bullying at school, authorities at the school &#8211; such as the teachers, counsellors, or headmasters &#8211; should also be involved,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Booth also noted an issue with the protection order itself and said monitoring the guidelines ordered by the court &#8211; such as maintaining a certain distance away from the victim &#8211; would be an administrative nightmare for schools.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Bullying at schools has been a problem for a long, long time, and school departments, the education department, and parents must come up with a better plan to deal with this issue and how to stop the problem before we jump to a legal offence,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Booth added it&#8217;s a difficult subject to tackle, but parents, communities, and schools need to hash it out before need laws have to come into play. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/712610\/controversial-new-laws-for-schools-in-south-africa-a-step-closer-to-reality\/\">Controversial new laws for schools in South Africa a step closer to reality<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Department of Basic Education is looking into new laws that would put school bullies at risk of facing jail time. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":641951,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[18404,9335,853],"class_list":["post-712686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","tag-bullying","tag-department-of-education","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712686"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":712766,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712686\/revisions\/712766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}