Source: Minister backs corporal punishment – DailyNews Live
Bridget Mananavire 21 July 2017
HARARE – Primary and Secondary Education deputy minister Paul Mavhima has
said schools and parents must continue administering corporal punishment
on pupils but employ proportionate disciplinary techniques.
This comes after High Court judges have ruled that the use of corporal
punishment on children at school and in the home is illegal – though the
Constitutional Court still has to confirm the ruling.
Speaking at the presentation of a science laboratory at St Killian High
School in Rusape on Tuesday, Mavhima said corporal punishment was
necessary.
“Parents, what we only don’t want is for you to kill the children, but
punish them. Teachers, punish them and rebuke them for this country to
remain in good hands,” Mavhima said.
“We are now old, we want to leave this country in the hands of a
generation that will better this country, and this is the generation that
we hope is now going to transform this country economically and
industrialise it. So, they should be punished, they should be reprimanded
for them to be a good generation that we will pass responsibility to.”
The recent ruling by Justice Esther Muremba outlawing corporal punishment
on children as was previously permitted by the Criminal Procedure and
Evidence Act has raised a storm among the Zimbabwean populace with those
in the child rights sector mainly applauding the ruling while others in
the general public and some sections of the education sector bemoaning the
outright ban as unsuitable for the local context.
The ban was in fact simply an interpretation of the Constitution which in
Section 53 outlaws the subjecting of any person, which includes children,
to physical (corporal punishment) or psychological torture or to cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
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