DIEGO SARMIENTO DE ACUÑA: MECENAS Y ERUDITO

The findings revealed that, gangsterism promotes physical violence in school-based physical violence. Educators and community leaders shared their experiences on the topic.

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The findings of the study revealed that the physical violence that is taking place in the school translated to the emergence of gangsters in the school. These gangsters usually gang up amid the verbal fights. Basically, an individual will be involved in an argument with someone else and that particular individual who would have lost the argument would then summon his friends and fight their ‘opponent’. It happens that other learners who stay around the individual who would have been victimized then regroup and square up to the other group. The study revealed that the formation of these gangs is based on the area or sections from which the members hail, and also the number of potential gangsters. In the interviews conducted with the leaders of the community, it emerged that these kinds of fights that involve groups do happen in the community. A community leader (participant number 3) mentioned the following;

During the construction that was taking place in the area, some people were complaining arguing that more people were hired from some areas at the expense of others. The argument then sparked violence between two groups of people demanding that no construction should proceed without justice being done. Attacks and counter- attacks involving concerned sections ensued during work time.

Such group behaviour is supported by one of the guiding theories of this study which is the Self-Categorization Theory. The theory stresses that in a group situation, individuals create a ‘prototype’ - either recalled from memory or constructed according to the range of the in-group and out-group individuals who are present – to represent their social category (Leigh, 2009). This gangsterism that has emerged in the school was affecting the learners in a way that they could not function well without the presence of their gang mates.

Educators

The educators shared that they experienced the gangsterism in their school by attending to the violent cases and also by coming across group violence. The study showed that as individual learners fight in a group, it is the presence of others that motivates them to do better when they are fighting with others. This finding is supported by the Social Facilitation Theory. This theory asserts that there is a tendency for people to be aroused into better performance on simple tasks, well-learned tasks or ones which people perform automatically, when they are in the presence of others (Hogg and Vaughan, 2002). The educators shared that when physical violence involving gangs occur, the only option they have to stop it from going further is to let the learners go home early.. Of the five (n= 5), educators from one-on-one interviews, one educator (participant number 2) stated the following:

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There was a time where the school management team needed to try to stop a fight between groups of learners and it became a problem to us which lead to a decision to let the learners to go home early because the groups were uncontrollable and very violent. To us, it was a one of our safety precaution.

The findings revealed that gangsterism create an image of educators as people who are scared of learners. Yet educators are often thinking about the future of their families and seek to avoid the risk of falling victims to violent behavior that can be fatal.

Learners

The learners shared that as individuals, they were not condoning the gangsterism occurring in their school. The findings revealed that when gang violence occurs, learners are scared and they do not know where to stand safe because violent learners will be all over the school yard. One learner (participant number 24) shared that she gets scared whenever there is violence because the gangs carry knifes and they are often very brutal. Masuku (2018) reported that two pupils were stabbed to death during a fight at KwaMakhutha High School. The findings revealed that when gang violence occurs, learners only rely on the protection of the educators. It emerged that identifying the groups involved in the fight is easy since there are uniforms that gangs members have created to be distinct themselves from their opponents. For example, the wear certain hats, chains and rings and other they carry a similar brand of ‘the’ backpack.

There is this gang in this school and it has created the opportunity for them to do whatever they please, even if they are individual at the toilets they manage to cause havoc to other learners because they know they have a backup from their gang/groups. One learner (participant number 2) shared the following;

I was directly victimized through the use of violence, one of the learners from the gang pulled his knife thinking that I will be scared but I did not became scared I was brave enough to face him because he wanted to take my new school backpack (school bag).When he realized that I was not scared he started to stab me in the shoulder slightly and I gave him my bag.

The findings revealed that if this gang’s violence takes place, there will be external gang members who will manage to gain access to the school to support their friends and their

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presence in school often make the fight to escalate to another level because they will be coming in with very dangerous weapons.