The School Corridor Tatler

Learners pledging their commitment to uphold the anti-bully code   Term 2 of this year has started just two days ago. And so has the shooting between two rival gangs in the Lavender Hill area. This morning was no different. In the Lavender Hill township, learning, looking for employment and dodging bullets are par for the course.   At about eight o clock this morning, while the learners were walking to school, gunshots were fired from one block of flats to another block of flats further north. Only an open field of about 500m separates these blocks of flats. This very field is the one that the learners of the primary schools of Levana and Hillwood and Lavender Hill High school use to get to school on time. Between the three schools the learner pedestrian traffic is in the region of 3 600 learners. When the children leave their homes in the morning, they become moving targets, already at risk less than 500m from home or school.     When I arrived at Hillwood Primary ...

Watching how the drill squad is taken through their paces While I was at Chrysallis Academy, the venue for our RCL conference, I heard the drumbeat and the regular sound of marching coming from the other side of the hilly road. I stopped and waited for the drill group to appear. The drumming became louder and the marching clipped the air with its rhythmic heal beat. Then the blue column with their beige hats appeared on the hilltop.   The marching column was being taken through their paces by two trainers. The one trainer was at the back and the other more animated one ran ahead of the drill team. The members of the column kept a stoic look while they were marching. Now and then I could hear the commands barked out by the trainers. Down the road the blue column came with remarkable bearing, posture, in unison.   Even though the drill team was marching downhill, they kept their formation and stared straight ahead, as if the ground was level. When the marching column came close...

Sinazo, champion learner Sinazo was hitch-hiking to her school, Masiphumelele High school that is situated in the sprawling informal settlement of Masiphumelele, just south of the middle-class suburb of Fish Hoek. Sinazo lives in Westlake, another poverty- stricken area hidden between the upmarket Stonehurst residential area, Westlake Business park that resembles a cosy, intimate space and then of course, the Westlake golf course with lush greens and stoic golf players. She usually waits there at the foot of Ou Kaapse Weg for someone to give her a ride to her school about 15 kilometers from her home.   Our conversation flowed easily as we snaked around the bends of this mountain pass. I was the one posing the questions and Sinazo was only too happy to respond.   I asked her to tell me which primary school she attended and why she had chosen to attend Masi, given the distance she had to cover every day. "I attended Thomas Wilscutt Primary school in Retreat and then I we...