JOHANNESBURG (AP) –
A school principal in South Africa was accused of child abuse after placing an 11-year-old student in a latrine to look for the officer’s cell phone, according to local reports.
The director of Luthuthu Junior High School in Eastern Cape Province, Lubeko Mgandela, appeared in court and was released on bail on Wednesday. He was suspended from office while officers investigated the incident before taking him to a disciplinary hearing. There are also requests for your educator’s license to be withdrawn.
The incident happened earlier this month after Mgandela accidentally dropped his cell phone in the school’s latrine.
It is alleged that he then used a thick rope to arrest the boy, who cannot be identified, and placed him in the latrine to search for the phone with his hands. The boy couldn’t find the phone and when he was pulled back he was covered in feces.
The classmates made fun of him so much that the embarrassed boy did not return to study, according to his family.
He apparently received Rand 50 ($ 3) for his efforts, although the director promised to pay Rand 200 ($ 13) if he found the phone.
The boy’s grandmother told the South African news agency GroundUp that she is happy that the matter is being investigated.
“It has been difficult for my grandson to go to school because other students laughed at him,” she told GroundUp.
The incident highlighted the failure of the South African government to eradicate pit latrines in its schools, many of which are located in the country’s poor rural areas.
At least two students fell into the school’s latrines and drowned, one in 2014 and the other in 2018.
President Cyril Ramaphosa was so shocked by the deaths and poor sanitation facilities in many schools in South Africa that he swore that all schools would have adequate bathrooms in two years. But today, more than 3,800 schools across the country still use pit latrines, according to official figures.