School dropouts should be educated by force

Western Cape Community Safety MEC Patrick McKenzie has endorsed ANC President Jacob Zuma's assertion that school dropouts should be educated by force and that school girls who fell pregnant should be separated from their babies until they had completed their schooling.

Zuma repeated the call at public meetings in the province at the weekend.

"Let me immediately say that the president is right because a month ago I was called by the community in Bishop Lavis. I went there and had a meeting with the school principals and the community.

"I was shocked when one of the principals said to me that 50 children in his school were pregnant. The other principal who was sitting next to him said: "If you think that is a lot, I have 60 in my school". That is two high schools next to each other.

"That community itself has about four high schools. I went away so shocked because once these schoolgirls are pregnant - if a matriculant is pregnant her whole future is taken away from her and her aspirations are gone.

"She then becomes dependent on the state because she can't go for further education. I really want to encourage people to go and further their education and then become women in their own right," he said.

McKenzie was approached for his views on the matter shortly after his department's first dialogue session on crime- related matters in Cape Town on Monday.

Asked about concerns that the rights of children could be infringed if they are forced back to the desk, he said: "Let me tell you what rights we have. We have rights not in a vacuum. We have rights within a Constitution, and a child, as far as I'm concerned, must be forced to go to school as that is the right that the child has."

During the discussions earlier, his department's director for safety and security, Zelda Holtzman, said while civil society had a crucial role to keep the government accountable and uphold the rule of law, there were no proper mechanisms in place to do so.

"Where they (mechanisms) are in place, they are not effective," she said.