New TRC enquiry needed: “corporal punishment” in SA schools

In South African schools “corporal punishment” was not only allowed, it was encouraged. The term is a euphemism filled with denial. The reality was beating the living daylights out of bewildered male children and violating their vulnerable, private space in a sensual manner that bordered on rape.

As a result I lived much of my childhood and adulthood in fear.

I know I speak for many other South African boys – now men – when I recount the following.

My psychological boundaries were completely confused by the countless thrashings I unjustly received from the age of 7 to the age of 16.

It certainly instilled in me a deep fear of life, which only now in my forties is no longer a concern.

This is because I have at long last learned to trust the life process. Life is no longer a terrifying tsunami about to engulf me; it is a river filled with wonderful possibilities. This is because I have benefited marvelously from meditation and am now able to meaningfully look back on rich life experiences.

Continually writing (six books in manuscript form so far) has opened up in me a sense of humour long after my traumatic, “corporal punishment” youth.

I used to write melancholic, candle-guttering poetry. I never knew I had a sense of humour when it came to writing. Humour keeps things in a healthy perspective. Living in China has greatly contributed to my new sense of clownishness. People here can be downright dotty.

“Corporal punishment” in the various schools I attended in South Africa, had nothing to do with education. It had more to do with a complete violation of a child’s rights, which instills deep insecurity, which, in turn, haunts the child in adulthood.

In Chinese schools, corporal punishment and humiliation of children are expressly forbidden. Teachers will lose their jobs if they break those rules. It is written into our contracts. I heartily agree with the ruling.

I had my first taste of “corporal punishment” at boarding school at the tender age of seven.

The whole of the Junior School at the boarding school in Bloemfontein I attended was punished because some boy had his pocket money stolen. And no one would own up. So we all got assaulted by the housemaster. Of course this confused my boundaries. Those “cuts” hurt enormously and I had done nothing to deserve them.

It was my first “hiding” and all the boys were waiting outside to see if I cried. I put on a brave smile with a “tough oke” look, opened the housemaster’s door after the assault on my body, and walked through the gauntlet of boys with a false grin on my face and was valued by my peers as a tough oke (for foreign readers, oke is bloke).

I wasn’t a tough oke.

I was a sensitive little boy who often had his nose in a book (Famous Five, Secret Seven), who could not understand why I had to be assaulted. I learned quickly to become to other people what they wanted to see. They wanted to see tough. I don’t call it “caning”, which sounds like a way of making a roof out of cane wood.

I call it what it is: an assault or a serious act of violence on a child.

As I grew up, the dark, sexual side to the assaults on my body confused my entire identity.

There is probably nothing more darkly enticing or titillating to a heterosexual man or a teenager throbbing with hormones than a naked woman bent over, buttocks displayed to the assaulter (or a man who has been given sexual consent by her), because of the image’s rich overtures of enslavement or subjugation.

On that note, once, at the same boarding school, the housemaster caught me running down the corridors after having a shower, wearing only a towel. Sure, it was against the rules to run on the corridors and I deserved some kind of punishment. He took me to his office and asked me to take my towel off.

In my innocence (was it that?) I knew at the time what he wanted even though I could not put it into words. I can now put that into words. He wanted to assault me and watch me bent over naked so that he could see the red welts enticingly appear on my buttocks. He wanted to see the results of his violence. I refused. I eventually got the assault, but with the towel on.

In high school at that boarding school we once all got violated again for some minor misdemeanor for which no one else would own up. When I went into the housemaster’s office (let’s call him Mr. Cronje) one of his friends was there, another teacher (let’s call him Mr. Booth). Booth was sitting with one leg crossed over the other, one of his shoes in the air.

Cronje asked me to touch Booth’s dangling shoe while he assaulted me. Booth had a neat, puzzling grin (because it was sensual, I much later realised) on his face while I went through the humiliation of being violated.

Matric prefects had their way too. I am not sure if they were allowed to violate us but they did. You could not say no to their sexual “caning” pleasures because – if you did not – you were “marked”. That is to say, the prefect would go out of his way to make your life miserable and he most certainly had that power if you refused him his lust. The prefects at that boarding school in Bloemfontein used rubber pipes and cricket bats to assault us. I refuse to use the euphemistic word “caning”.

And often the misdemeanours were just ridiculous excuses to violate children. A bit of dust on one’s shoes at morning inspection resulted in an assault. Once, exhausted, I fell asleep at night on my dormitory bed without getting under the covers. I was woken up by Booth in the middle of the night and he made me get under the covers.

The next day my little, unprotected body was assaulted after lunch time by Cronje for an offence (not getting under the bedding) that made no sense to a frightened, confused child. Booth and Cronje worked together as a good team.

There were untold numbers of children like me who got assaulted before corporal punishment was banned in South Africa. It was banned during a healthy period of banning (like police sjamboks) when many evils were prohibited, or later exposed during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

But that shadowy, sexually imbued assault glossed over as “caning” or “corporal punishment” on countless South African children of all races has never seen the light of justice and reconciliation in an official, nationwide enquiry as far as I know.

There is a lot of anger and fear in South Africa. It is expressed in road rage, wife-beating and the general, wholesale, unspeakable abuse of women.

Why? If violence is what a person is brought up with then that is all that person knows when he expresses himself in the world, and his way of coping with life in general.

The suppressed anger, shame and humiliation of all those children violated through “corporal punishment” eventually had to become vented in a simmering, white-hot rage. Sure, “corporal punishment” was only one factor that contributed to the current expressions of violence in South Africa. Apartheid remains the supreme factor.

But “corporal punishment” has made a definite contribution to the male psyche of rage and hatred covering up deep insecurities because of ceaseless acts of violation done to the male child – euphemised as “corporal punishment”.

I believe there should be a Truth and Reconciliation Enquiry into corporal punishment in schools, but there probably won’t be.

I am not a religious person, but one of the things I have learned from the wisdom literature I have studied, and through meditation, is forgiveness.

As many of the books in the wisdom literature tell us (take your pick, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism) resentment and unforgiveness are like picking up a hot coal to hurl at the abuser, only to burn one’s own hand. The abused thus only does harm to himself. It is a gall whose bitterness consumes the offended and would spill over as poison into the lives of others: namely my wife and the wonderful Chinese children I have the privilege of teaching.

No way.

I choose to let go of the many grievances and resentments.

Cronje, Booth and all the rest of you – and there were many – I let it all go now. For many years I went through a life of bitter humiliation, shame and confusion because of your violation of my child-body. It’s a tough one: but I forgive you. Go well.