The Programme Director, Mr. Chris Faya; His Worship the Mayor of Ethekwini Municipality, Mr. Obed Mlaba; Councillors and officials of the Municipality; the Rev. Magwaza; Pastor Mzimela and other spiritual leaders; the young evangelists present; distinguished guests; ladies and gentlemen.

We are gathered today as different organizations, individuals and communities to say: 'Enough with violence and lawlessness in our schools.'

By our presence we are showing that we as government and civil society are tired of seeing schools disrupted and not moving forward with the aim of Education: that of leading children to responsible adulthood. As parents, communities and leaders we need to nurture and secure the learner so that the goal of responsible adulthood becomes a reality.

I am deeply troubled by the levels of crime and lawlessness in some of our schools. Almost daily, our children, learners and teachers face the risks posed by knife-wielding and gun-wielding hooligans who invade schools with impunity to rob them of their hard-earned belongings. Daily, I say, learners and teachers fall prey to harassment and threats from some knife-wielding and gun-wielding learners and teachers who have lost all sense of ubuntu.

And the problem is getting steadily worse. Slowly criminals and their cohorts are usurping control of our centres of learning and turning them into hells of fear and death.

Yes as a Department we are committed to ensuring the safety of our learners within the limits of the law and budget. As an example, I am advocating for schools to become firearm free zones in accordance with the Firearms Control Act (Act 60 of 2000), which makes provisions for firearm free zones. This step is paving a good way of making our schools safe places of learning again.

I also have called for police to be authorized to conduct random searches in schools and to show no mercy to those found carrying dangerous weapons. In fact this is the message I am taking to the Council of Education Ministers.

In addition, the Hon. Inkosi NJ Ngubane, Provincial Minister of Safety and Security and I are convening a meeting of stakeholders towards the end of June to seriously look at this question and come out with practical steps to combat violence.

These are some of the programmes that we are involved in, as a Department.

But we cannot succeed if learners, teachers, parents and communities do not want to play their roles.

Hence, I am today saying to learners and the youth: Do not allow centres of learning where your future and that of the nation is being shaped up, to be taken over by criminals. For the sake of all young people who paid the ultimate price for our freedom, do not connive with evil but work with all law-enforcement agencies to uproot it from our midst. Let us reclaim our schools as centres of learning, excellence and discipline. 

I say to you: if you allow criminals to destroy your future by disrupting education, you may as well resign yourselves to forever being unskilled servants and workers who will remain at the bottom of the ladder of progress with no hope whatsoever to climb to the top.

Regretfully, it is not the youth alone that carry guns and other dangerous weapons into schools. In fact the whole country is awash with firearms and other dangerous weapons which are at the hands of adults. I argue that schools are a microcosm of society. What manifests itself in schools is a mirror of a cancer that threatens to destroy the fabric of the whole society.

Unfortunately, we live in a society where parents are, by and large, failing to shoulder their responsibilities. Something is seriously wrong within our society.

I therefore say to parents: Stand up and root out criminals from among our midst. In fact nurturing, protecting and teaching a child is a parental responsibility first and foremost. Parents must not therefore abdicate their responsibilities and leave teachers alone to face the risks. In a society where parents abdicate their responsibilities of leadership, there is bound to be anarchy.

I treat with contempt any parent who abdicates their responsibilities leaving teachers alone to risk their lives. It is shameful that some parents regard schools as dumping grounds where they dump children whom they think are troublesome. Indeed some parents do not even bother to attend school meetings to discuss about the future of their children. You must not be a parent unless and until you are ready to shoulder responsibilities thereof.

Ladies and gentlemen, Above everything else, this situation calls for us to return to our roots. It calls for a moral, cultural and spiritual revolution. Unless we intensify the campaign to revive respect for our ways of life and human values we are doomed.