
The Western Cape education department has launched an investigation after a video showed a teacher slapping a pupil in a classroom at one of Cape Town’s leading schools.
In the video, shot this week, the Sans Souci Girls’ High School teacher can be seen and heard embroiled in an argument with a grade 9 girl over a book.
What seems to have angered the teacher was something the girl said in a “different language”. The female teacher exclaimed: “Are you swearing at me?”
The school was in the news in 2016 when pupils accused it of victimising them for speaking languages such as Xhosa.
In this week’s viral video, the female teacher can be heard shouting at the pupil: "You must have a book like this, please take this as evidence. This is a disciplinary hearing now. Your phone shouldn’t have been in your hand. You shouldn’t have a phone. You wanna challenge me?"
The teacher goes on to say: "My dear, you gonna get last. I have been where you are. I have two degrees, working on the third one. You don’t even have a book in grade 9."
The teacher then takes a piece of paper and says: "You know what it says about phones. You should obey that. Why don’t you have a book?"
The pupil then claims that the teacher swore at her. The teacher responds: "What did I swear? What did I say to you?"
The pupil says: "Everybody heard you."
The teacher then says: "Come, out my class."
The learner says something inaudible and the teacher replies: "Are you swearing at me? You are speaking a different language in my class?"
The teacher then switches to Afrikaans, pushes the desk towards the pupil and gets close to the pupil’s face. The pupil pushes the desk back towards the teacher and gets up.
The teacher shouts: "Are you hitting me?" She then slaps the pupil and says: "You push me, you swear at me."
People are justifying the teacher's violence by the student's ''disobedience''.

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