Cape Town - Curro Holdings has dismissed racism claims by the Congress of South African Students (Cosas) at the company's Somerset West high school as misinformation.
Cosas’s information was not an accurate reflection of Curro and the situation, said Curro Spokesperson, Natasha Mkhize.
Cosas had claimed that the Grade 9 learner was physically and cyber bullied by a fellow white learner at the school. But it has since emerged that the incident involved two pupils from the same race. But Cosas maintained that they have reports that are under investigation about the alleged victim being previously racially abused at the school.
Mkhize said: “The group’s privacy policies prevent its schools from providing exact details of any incident involving any of its learners. The protection of its learners, their privacy, and their best interest remain a top priority. Curro can however confirm that there was an isolated incident between two female students of the same race. One learner issued threatening voice notes to another after school hours.”
Speaking on behalf of the family of the learner, Unathi Mbebe of Mbebe Fuba Marais Attorneys, said no race-related incident was reported to her by her client.
“All I know is that the parent reported the matter to the school during the week of May 11. The headmaster promised to deal with this manner in a very stern manner but that never happened because the perpetrator continued to play netball. Now it became an allegation because the child says that the perpetrator hit her hand during netball practice, hence the child resorted to staying away from school because she was scared. The school did offer some form of counselling because the child was traumatised and surprisingly they did offer the victim to attend private classes in the afternoon while the perpetrator attends normal classes and continues with life as normal,” said Mbebe.
Cape Times