Matla A bana is very excited to let people know that that they have secured funding to host an anti-bully school program in the Eastern Cape. This is the same program they hosted at schools in the Nieu Bethesda and Graff Reinet in March last year. This show is a 30 to 40 minutes long and currently is presented in Afrikaans and English, the focus of the show is on bullying as well as teaching children about perpetrators and how they trap children.
Regan from Matla A Bana said “Matla A Bana works in hand with the police, helping the police with children who are being raped and being assaulted and all those kind of things and me and my co-actress we doing primary schools teaching children about what kind of bullies they are and how to deal with them. This campaign has been happening for a long time if I’m not mistaken it has been 21 years already and this is my 4th year with Matla A Bana we always do a circle tour from Johannesburg to Cape Town and this is our first time in the Eastern Cape. We decided to do it in an acting manner because small children focus is not so long and now when they see pictures and certain things they can relate to that and keep them awake so that they would focus more”. He carried on saying they want this teaching to be fun and interesting rather than doing it by talking to them.
Mluleki Mbi who is a SAPS spoke person in the Buffalo City District said “today we have embarked on an anti-bully program on a primary school as we now at Inner City Primary School after we have invited by an organization Matla A Bana they approached us early this week for us to be part of the program. It’s unfortunate that we cannot take them to rural areas because they only target schools doing Afrikaans and English”. He carried on saying he wish there are other NGO’s like this but who cater also Xhosa because there are high cases of bulism in these schools.
OBukwayo Sigcawu a learner at Inner City Primary, said she feel encouraged because some of the learners hit each other at break time and some of them came to them as prefects so she thinks it encourages them to stop bullying others and she believes this initiative will bring change in her school. Casey Plaatjies the principal of the school said “today it was indeed a great and amazing day for our learners to be exposed to things that they deal with every day, at the end of the day it was informative for learners and I hope that they take something from this opportunity that was created for them and thank you very much for making our school part of this and I really wish you well for the future”.