SCHOOL HEAD PUBLICLY FLOGS ADULTS

 

A megalomaniac school principal in Swaziland has been giving out public floggings to adults who date girls from his school.

The men are forced to attend in front of the entire school, lie down on a bench and receive a whipping. The girls are also flogged.

Edward Khayoni, principal at Elangeni High School, says that if in the usual course of events his pupils are subjected to corporal punishment, why shouldn’t the adults?

Khayoni is annoyed that some female pupils at his school are having ‘love affairs’ with men, according to a report in the Weekend Observer newspaper.

The ages of the pupils involved are not disclosed, but in Swaziland it is common for people to still be attending school in their late teens and twenties.

Khayoni says that if the men dubbed ‘Romeos’ by the newspaper refuse to take their whipping, he threatens to tell the man’s wife about the affair.

‘The idea is to humiliate them so that they are discouraged. We do not have any law to engage effectively in discouraging love affairs with the girls. Girls nowadays are after money to buy petty things such as lunches. We have not had a case of proven sexual intercourse so far and we hope our method will be very effective in preventing such cases from happening,’ Khayoni told the Observer.

Khayoni said when the man is asked why he was going out with a girl he apologises and admits it is wrong.

Then he is told that the school applies corporal punishment to pupils who break rules in this fashion and such punishment is meted by lying on a bench and be whipped in front of everybody.

Khayoni told the newspaper he could not remember how many cases have been handled this way because in the past there were many, but since schools opened this year there had been only one case.

As published on Swazi Media Commentary, 19 February 2011.

 

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