South African headteachers told to give government a list of gay and lesbian pupils

[FlyJ]

Headteachers in South Africa have been told to send the names of all their LGBT+ students to the government.

Schools in the Eastern Cape province, which is home to six million people, received an email on October 16 from the department’s special programmes unit (SPU) which told them to hand over the names of their queer pupils by the end of the day, according to City News.

The message stated that the SPU head office would be “conducting a workshop to raise awareness on the rights of the LGBTI community and to ensure that their lives, morals and integrity are respected.”

“This will allow the district office to have a database of these learners and 10 of these learners will be attending the scheduled workshop.”

Edmund van Vuuren, the education spokesperson for the country’s opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, wrote a letter to the SPU head condemning the email. The department subsequently said queer students no longer had to attend the workshop “due to exams.”

In his letter, van Vuuren wrote that identifying LGBT+ students was “discriminatory, unconstitutional and may lead to verbal, mental and even physical abuse.”

He said that “in a climate where ‘corrective rape’ and assault based on sexual preference are commonplace, we cannot afford to expose members of this community to further risk and discrimination.”

Eastern Cape Department of Education spokesperson Malibongwe Mtima has denied that the department is creating a list of LGBT+ pupils, adding that the email was sent without permission.

“There is no activity or instruction to district coordinators to create a database for the LGBTI group,” said Mtima.

“The alleged email purporting to be coming from the head office has not been sanctioned by those concerned and the SPU office.”

Mtima added that the department had “started an internal investigation and is working hard to get the source of this email, which distorted the activities and objectives of the department’s programmes.”

In August, a South African private Christian boarding school in Durban, in the southeast province of KwaZulu-Natal, expelled two girls after seminary officials said they were caught kissing for 20 minutes.

Source

[kimi]

Loooool. Na wa. Absolutely Ridiculous. 

[VINA]

Van is right, it is not safe to identify these kids. These government people should think and sample opinions from stakeholders before coming up with their bull abeg. 

[M2DD]

Africa has finally lost it. The whole continent, don’t we have other issues to deal with? 

[Isee]

This is so so wrong.. I don't even know what to say. Like seriously.. 

 

[dequeen]

On 11/1/2018 at 10:43 AM, minini said:

Africa has finally lost it. The whole continent, don’t we have other issues to deal with? 

Naaaa, we don't have any other issues to deal with....