Violence is not a game

There has been an exponential increase in the rate of reported cases of violence in our schools of late and this time the focus is not on the violence brought about by drug dealing gangsters terrorizing our young ones with a promise of something rather ‘ighry to puff on or snort. No, the violence that has been reported is one learner distributing a beat-down on another. And as you can imagine, this is a huge problem for parents and society at large.

Whether this is just newsroom sensationalism propagated to sell more newspapers by whipping parents into a frothy frenzy over the safety of their offspring, or a genuine increase in the violence among learners and a growing brutality in that violence, remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, only time may have the answer to this apparently new phenomenon of kid on soft-kid can of whiplash unleashing. As a tiny tub of lard, I was also once in school and during the rather uncomfortable period of forceful fostering of the multi-racial education system for the first time in this country, along with the rest of the then new government’s integration agendas.

As you can imagine, it was a rather torrid time for the minority black students who were thrown into the lion’s den, as it were, and watched closely, a la those pigs from Guinea, for signs of strain and racial intolerance which were dealt with swiftly — expulsion being the punishment of choice and a weapon of the detractors of integration to use to display how the program to allow all races to interact and compete on an equal footing was flawed, and would only produce rotten fruit.

I’m happy to say that we persevered as the forerunners of this system, we suffered what really was racially fuelled brutality and violence, but we never gave up going to school or ever dreamt of it, well that is, most of us anyway. This was because tardiness was never an option for us even though a routine day at school when we were in the lower grades meant regular flinging against walls, slapping, punching and general moerings by the Matrics. We attended each day, I think, because the threat of violence from our parents far outweighed the toughest bullies at school — those yellow-bellied-good-for-nothing-except-rugby-types.

They were so pathetic — picking on little minority black kids for kicks, literally. But we never took it lying down, that was never in our nature, we fought back, as young and minority as we were, we fought back. Not in the physical sense in the lower grades -– that came later — no that was a foregone loss when we first got to high school, we fought back in little victories on the sports pitch, in learner representation counsels , in popularity stakes (although this credit was never outwardly acknowledged or voiced) and in excellent results in class, some of us anyway.

My favourite trick was to quite often obtain the highest marks in class in English First Language Higher Grade, and a good thing too, that white schools didn’t really care about spelling or grammar. Creativity and flair were deemed far superior than the common well placed comma for pace when expressing oneself.

I knew that Miss Guidy, our very passionate English teacher who has since sadly moved to the land of sheep counters and perpetual RWC chokers, loved announcing each student’s marks in ascending order whenever handing back test scripts or any work she had marked. So the thick rugby player types would be up first, she would tear into them about their crap performance and quote Bill (Shakespeare) in exasperation, and curse them all out as she quickly ran through the muck that is the lower grades. She would continue in this vein until she came to the top five students in class.

As she ran down the cream of the crop, she would raise the suspense with long pauses and dramatic increases in the pace of her voice, her breathing pattern, sighs and gushes of emotion, followed by inward contemplation and pleas to the heavens for forgiveness if she had made the wrong choice on who would receive the top honours.

Her bosom would rise and fall rhythmically and I’d be lost for a moment in the splendour of that visual, but would gather myself quickly (there would be enough time for perving during our one on one consultations) to watch the great theatrical masterpiece that was Miss Guidy handing out the results.

She would soon put some of the top five out of their misery by running down the fifth to third place losers. Then there would only be two left. Usually Angela, one of the very few girls in our school, a real hottie and smartest kid in school, and usually yours truly – the miniature Sumo.

Miss Guidy would then go into a lengthy discussion of our papers which ultimately led her to her final decision after what we were all sure was deep deliberation, with the heavy thumps of my heartbeats offering the drum-roll in my chest building up to the grand announcement. Fiona has nothing on that lady.

I would cross imaginary fingers (to maintain my cool and keep up the projected effortlessness of all my work). I would wait, breathless until she said the words: “The student with the top marks for this essay is…. Credo!” To wild applause from the majority of my classmates, who were boys who hated losing to a girl in anything, and especially at a technical High School.

Encore, my heart would plead as the feminine slickness that was my English teacher glided down the passage to hand me the paper at my desk. Winners did not need to stand up, that was Angela’s place for that day, but she would turn out to be a tough opponent in the future.

The end of the presentation song and dance would lead to my by then famous chorus, in hushed tones of course, to my classmates of European descent: “English?! You were annihilated in English by a dude who speaks it as a second language?! You allowed that to happen?! You okes are pathetic! If I was beaten into second by a non-Zulu at Zulu, I would be disowned by my family, my ancestors would turn in their graves wailing in shame at my failure and dishonour!” Yup, I was a mean little fat kid with a sharpish tongue to play with.

I believe Angie S got an A for English in Metric, I missed an A by two percent (probably because of my atrocious spelling), therefore in all fairness, hers was a sweet victory in the end, but I didn’t really care much by that year anymore, playing rugby for the top teams was far cooler than getting an A for English. I enjoyed it while it lasted though.

But I digress, lost deep into the fog that it my past and have neglected my point here. So apparently there is a crisis of catastrophic proportions with the growing violence in schools these days. They call it violence, not bullying or fighting — violence.

I believe that this growing violence in schools is congruent with the general freedom-intoxicated unruliness of kids today. I blame MTV, among other wonders of the modern world such as Playstation and new-age parenting. I truly do believe that kids today lack the discipline that can only be instilled by being raised in a close-knit community where hierarchies are kept, respected and protected by a system which employs pragmatism to keep order.

This means that children learn respect early and respect bigger, stronger, older and smarter people than themselves, setting them in good stead for the life in a community such as a school playground.
When I was growing up in Kwa-Mashu, hierarchies were set and tested on an ongoing basis among the kids. One knew where they stood on the playing field. Disputes were settled pragmatically and afterwards every one made peace and carried on playing amicably. But life presented all with equal opportunity, the not-so-gifted in physical combat were also allowed the opportunity to one-up the bigger, slower maybe less smart kids. This was presented in the form of ‘games’ which were based on pre-agreed contracts between the people engaging in them.

At the beginning of these games there was a contract which was pinky-sworn between the two kids who were agreeing to pit their wits against each other in an activity called Ukungquma. This was done after the contest and rules of the game were agreed upon, sometimes as many as four contracts of engagement were pinky-sworn on at the same time, which made life way more interesting. The most engaged upon contests in my time were: Thabo, Water, Hlwith’ and Stembu.

Thabo is a game which is very simple; there is only one rule — whenever you sat down you had to say the word ‘Thabo’ for your opponent to hear. If you sat down without saying ‘Thabo’, your opponent was allowed to give you as hard a slap across the face as he could muster. Obviously this game needed a certain level of deviousness with stalking your opponent in their own kitchen or living room as they sat down to eat for example, an accepted part of the game. Parents never approved of this game, but rarely ever interfered either.

So the smallest kids could go around perpetually klapping the crap out of bigger kids with no repercussions, as long as he was not caught sitting down without saying ‘Thabo’. This game gave a great deal of fulfillment for small kids everywhere and the rules of the jungle meant that the small kid was protected by the unwritten laws of the playground, from the wrath of the tearful bigger kid who had just been dealt a hard slap in the face in a full playground, which meant he would be laughed at for days or until he got his own back. What an equaliser!

I do not believe that today’s kids or adults for that matter really appreciate the level of maturity and understanding to engage in such practices. Being slapped by someone you know for sure you can beat down would lead to someone negating the contract and reaching for the ever-present firearms and unceremoniously and without much thought ending the life of another student.

We grew up in different times with different rules and a focus for our collective existence, and so did many generations before us. Nowadays people have no focus or cause except self-enrichment and self-gratification. They rip woman’s mini-skirts at taxi ranks, they burn poor foreign nationals for trying to build a better life for themselves and their children in our country, and they shoot each other on school playgrounds over petty squabbles, which I would guess, do not involve such noble quests like cheese and polony sandwiches and orange juice.

What I’m trying to say is that there is no place for violence in our society today, at any level, that time has surely passed, we hope. I am deeply troubled by the violence that is increasingly becoming the common choice of tool for conflict resolution nowadays. Things could spiral out of control very quickly, someone please shout ‘THABO!’, before we all live to regret it.

I rest — troubled.
The Sumo