SAHRC calls for collaborative effort to ensure school safety
The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) says school safety should be a collaborative effort of government departments, communities and local municipalities.
This Commission launched its annual “State of Schools Report” in Johannesburg on Wednesday. The 2025 report highlighted systemic challenges such as school safety and pit latrines.
“The issue of school safety requires the collaboration of the Department of Police, the Department of Education, communities and local municipalities to work together towards ensuring that when learners and teachers arrive at school, there are security officers, when they arrive at school they do not bring in dangerous weapons and drugs,” says the Commission’s Acting Chief Operations Officer Eric Mokonyama.
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Meanwhile, Mokonyama says, although they are pleased with the decrease in the number of schools with pit toilets, they want total eradication.
“The expectation of the Human Rights Commission is that there should not be even one pit latrine system in our schools because even that one could be as dangerous as the ones that have previously taken our learners’ lives. There are improvements in provinces such as Mpumalanga, but in Limpopo and the Eastern Cape, we’re still having serious challenges with higher numbers of pit latrine systems. At least all pit latrines in public schools should be eradicated.”