Learners, all mayors within the region, SAPS Cluster Commander General Johan Bean, sector departments, community leaders and interested groups gathered at Gamohaan Middle School on June 15, 2018 and marched all the way to Batlharos police station where they handed a memorandum to the Station Commander, demanding action against gangsterism, drug abuse, rape and other social ills haunting learners.

This comes after an ugly wave of illegalities never experienced in a learning environment before. Recently learners have been fighting within school premises mostly over mere trivia. In the event of intervention by the educators, the educators were threatened by the learners, brandishing the likes of machetes and other lethal objects.

In the memorandum, a strongly worded appeal was issued that both parents and the school governing boards ought to take leading roles by mobilising the community to stem out learners who emerge as rotten potatoes in the basket, aimed at disrupting the learning processes.

It also stated that a framework that makes it clear that learners found wanting must face the wrath of the law uncompromisingly, must be implemented, just as schools operate within a legal framework to maintain their image as centres of par excellence in any learning environment.

As the call for sanity in schools has reached a crescendo from the broader John Taolo Gaetsewe district, the community gave the police the authority to raid, search and confiscate dangerous weapons at the schools. Also, the deployment, maintenance and monitoring of the adopt-a-cop principle in all high schools.

The police was also requested to intensify its intelligence unit to close the “drug net” believed by all and sundry as the main cause of learner intransigency.