Washington Post, 14 November 2005

School Beatings Draw New Scrutiny in Africa

By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service

(extracts)

Kapurunje Uirab, 13, is shown in the middle of a group of threeboys on a poster his mother, Rita Uirab, had made to publicizehis plight. (Photos By Emily Wax -- The Washington Post)

KATUTURA, Namibia -- When Kapurunje Uirab, 13, was accused ofstealing a classmate's cell phone, his sixth-grade teacher beathim with a heavy metal pipe until he could barely walk. Hisfamily took him to a clinic where he was treated for lacerationsand sore kidneys, according to medical records.

"It really hurt to move my legs," said Kapurunje,speaking by phone from the distant town of Rundu, where he nowattends a different school.

"He had bleeding welts on his back and more on hislegs," said his mother, Rita Uirab, 40, a housekeeper."And his face, it had changed from a boy's face to a seriousface of a man. We had to do something."

Corporal punishment was far from unusual at Olof Palme primaryschool, where most classrooms had a metal pipe, goatskin whip orwooden paddle leaning in one corner. If students got a mathproblem wrong or arrived late, they could be beaten.

Recently, this long-accepted tool of classroom discipline hascome under unprecedented scrutiny, in part because of cases likeKapurunje's, in which the teacher was convicted of assault aftertheboy's mother filed charges.

Corporal punishment is practiced across much of Africa. And asKapurunje's case illustrates, tradition remains a powerful forcein determining what educators, officials and parents view as theproper way to raise and control children.

In many African societies, authority is rarely questioned,wife-beating is permitted, and women and children have lowstatus. Underpaid teachers with little training -- many of whomwere once beaten by colonial schoolmasters -- must handleclassrooms with as many as 100 students.

"I wasn't doing anything wrong or that other teachers orparents hadn't done," said Kapurunje's sixth-grade teacher,Aaron Tjatindi, 34. A wiry man with glasses and a neat mustache,he said he only pinched and hit the boy lightly. "There area lot of teachers who think our professions are no longersafe," he said.

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Many educators staunchly defend the tradition. After the caseof Kapurunje Uirab was decided against Tjatindi, who was finedone year's salary, worth $8,330, the local teachers' union heldprotests, saying some beatings were justified. Other teachers'groups have suggested rules that would at least permit them tostrike unruly students on the palms.

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Accusations of Theft

On a sunny October morning in 2004, the students at Olof Palmeassembled around the flagpole in the courtyard, according toteachers and students. The school, named after a slain Swedishprime minister, is the largest in Katutura, a township of 200,000outside the capital, Windhoek.

Dressed in blue uniforms, the students stood in perfect rowsfor the daily ritual, they recalled. The teachers, as they dideach morning, led the singing of the national anthem, madeannouncements and ordered disciplinary measures against studentswho had broken the rules.

On this day, a female student was hysterical over her missingcell phone. In front of the assembly, she accused Kapurunje andhis friend Leslie Urikhole, 15, of taking it.

Tjatindi later said he was embarrassed to hear that two of hisstudents were stealing. He had beaten both boys before, but notseverely. This time, he said, he lost patience. He called themfrom the assembly and led them to his classroom while the otherstudents watched.

"I brought the two boys in front of the class anddemanded to know if they took the phone," Tjatindi said inan interview, his voice hoarse. "They said they didn't takeit. They had to be taught right from wrong."

What happened next is the subject of dispute. Tjatindi said hepinched the boys on the arms and hit them lightly, but he deniedin court that he had hurt them. Students in the class said hestruck the boys with the pipe for several minutes. Teachers saidthey noticed both boys limping later that day. Both boys saidthey were clubbed repeatedly.

"I said nothing and just focused on trying not to cry,because I knew the other kids would laugh if I did,"Kapurunje said in the telephone interview. "We didn't takethe cell phone. So I thought this truth would be found outsoon."

In school the next day, the girl complained again, saying herparents would beat her if she didn't find the phone.

Tjatindi punished the boys a second time, taking them outsideto be whipped. Some of their classmates came out to watch,cringing at the sound.

"In front of everyone, I started to cry," Kapurunjesaid. "I couldn't stop, because it felt like fire on mylegs."

Afterward, both boys went home. When Kapurunje arrived, saidhis sister Maria, 22, she noticed that his legs were dragging andhis back was bent.

"I asked him . . . 'Why are you walking all wobbly?'" she recalled. "Then I looked at his back, and I wasshocked. I made him lie down."

That night, said his mother, Rita, Kapurunje cried out in hissleep, "Please don't hit me!" After her employer urgedher to get help, she took the boy to a clinic, where his injurieswere photographed. In the pictures, later used as evidence, hislegs and back were covered with thick red welts.

"I hated being beaten like that," Kapurunje saidfrom Rundu. "The teacher never listened to us when we saidwe didn't steal. He just hit us."

Later, it emerged that the girl had lost her phone and wasafraid to admit it.

'No More Violence'

Julia Hangula, the principal of Olof Palme, is a lively,petite woman of 45 with frosted gray hair. She once lived in NewYork and is addicted to "Oprah." She thinks of herselfas modern and says she opposes "teaching with the rod."

But during five "painful" hours of testimony inKapurunje's case before the High Court of Namibia, she said, sheadmitted that she knew some teachers were practicing corporalpunishment. Both embarrassed and enraged by the publiccontroversy, she called a staff meeting.

"We are no longer hitting at this school," Hangulasaid she told the teachers. "We must find other ways topunish the students." The next morning, she warned studentsthat they would still be punished if they misbehaved -- by havingto clean the school grounds or weed the garden.

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Rudolph A. Kamburona, 52, a retired educator and formerlegislator from Katutura, said many teachers were forced toendure beatings by colonial schoolmasters and are simply passingon a tradition of strictness. "It's a hard reform to make,because the older generation believes that today's children arespoiled," he said.

Kamburona, who once taught Tjatindi, said the teacher was nota bad man. But he added that he was not surprised by whathappened, "because I beat him in my class, just like thewhite teachers beat me. They would say, 'You must learn by theleather strap.' "

One group missing from the corporal punishment debate has beenparents. The families of Katutura are working-class poor --housemaids, ranch hands, cement mixers at construction sites.Many are afraid to question school authorities or are embarrassedto expose their own illiteracy.

In her 20 years as an educator, Hangula said, she has rarelymet with a parent. Even when she requested meetings to discuss astudent's problems, she said, the parents rarely attended.

"The parents worry that they can't read well enough"to help with homework, Hangula said. "This adds to thediscipline problem. The teacher is in full responsibility toenforce rules with the child. There isn't a history or culturehere of involving the parents."

Rita Uirab, whose children all attended Olof Palme, said shehad always been afraid to visit and had never made a complaintuntil Kapurunje's beating.

"I never went to the school because I didn't want todisturb the teachers," she said. "None of the parentsgo. We don't feel it's our right."

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