How many more lives must be lost?

THE callous and “barbaric” murder of the 53-year-old Buyani Primary School principal, Lazarous(corr) Baloyi right in the school yard, is but a sign that we have now descended into the pits of a murderous, lawless society. The sanctity of life is no longer sacred and criminals have become bolder and no longer fear being arrested and jailed.

Baloyi was shot several times on the school’s driveway in Finetown, South of Joburg on Friday morning.

It is said that Baloyi was a Sadtu leader and is the third school head to be killed in the area in what the Gauteng MEC for Education Panyaza Lesufi has called a “hit” after viewing the footage of the shooting.

Lesufi has promised to share the video footage with the police to help them in their investigation but questions have to be asked how this “assassin” was able to brazenly walk into the school yard, fire a number of shots at the principal, and then walkout without being detected or stopped.

What security measures have been put in place in seeing that three principals have now been murdered in the area, to protect teachers and the children in these schools?

It is unacceptable that a law-abiding school principal gets mowed down in broad daylight in front of school children as if he was a common criminal. Something is very wrong with our society.

Schools are the places where parents send their children to be educated and to learn good values and to be protected from the dangers of the streets.

There must be an outrage that a person can just walk boldly into the school yard and shoot the head of the school in cold blood.

The perpetrators of this heinous crime must be found and put behind bars swiftly to show that acts of violence against law-abiding citizens won’t be tolerated. Sadly, it has to take another death for the issue of schools safety and security to be raised. Had security personnel been deployed at the school? Our schools have become so violent and dangerous that there have been many instances of pupils turning against each other or against teachers that by now we should have had the electronic scanners in place to detect dangerous weapons.

Is it too much to ask that some of the money that was budgeted to “sanitise” schools can be diverted to upgrade security measures at our public schools so that the tragic killing of Baloyi, can never happen to any teacher or pupil at school inside a school yard.