Educational Review

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Corporal Punishment: The brutal face of

Botswana's authoritarian schools

Elmon M. Tafa

To cite this article: Elmon M. Tafa (2002) Corporal Punishment: The brutal face of Botswana's
authoritarian schools, Educational Review, 54:1, 17-26, DOI: 10.1080/00131910120110848

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Educational Review, Vol. 54, No. 1, 2002

Corporal Punishment: the brutal face of

Botswana’s authoritarian schools

ELMON M. TAFA, Tonota College of Education, Botswana

ABSTRACT Corporal punishment is part of the penal system in Botswana, however,

in schools the regulations governing its use are honoured more in breach than
observance. This article uses qualitative research methods to explore the prevalence
of caning in the teaching methods of seven new teachers, neophytes, in Ž ve junior
secondary schools. The neophytes’ espoused and enacted beliefs about caning are
examined in the context of socialisation at their homes, during their own schooling,
at colleges of education and their new workplaces. Contrary to the teachers’ beliefs
that caning is inherent in ‘African culture’, this article argues that it is part of a
historically embedded cycle of authoritarian coping strategies of teaching, from
schools to colleges of education and back to schools, bequeathed to the country by
colonialism.

Introduction
This article is based on a larger on-going multi-case study of the teaching methods
of seven new Botswana junior secondary school teachers. The study explores their
beliefs about corporal punishment in terms of socialisation at home, in their own
schools, pre-service training and their teaching schools. Corporal punishment is
legalised in Botswana but, despite widespread infringement of the law in its use,
there is no evidence of enforcement. Although justiŽ ed as ‘African culture’ by
teachers, caning is a historically embedded copy strategy. Both parents and students
have been socialised into accepting this form of punishment.
Caning in Botswana has only been  eetingly addressed by other researchers. From
their ‘observation protocol’ Marope and Amey (1995s: p. 21) in a survey study did
not Ž nd evidence of corporal punishment. However, from ‘the students’ guided
discussions’ students complained about,
… being beaten anywhere the teacher pleases … for no … reason, with …
sticks, ‘sjamboks’, board dusters, … sprayed with doom, … sent to clean
teachers’ houses, … to banks, stores and to wash teachers’ cars during
lessons.
Their two contradictory Ž ndings re ect the limitation of quantitative research in
trying to capture the realities of school life. Prophet (1995) also refers to, ‘the regular
use of corporal punishment in class’ in passing but does not develop the point.
Caning has its origins in the country’s colonically imposed authoritarian system of
schooling (Tabulawa, 1995; Prophet, 1995; Marope & Amey, 1995). Vanqa (1998s
p. 162) refers to a lawsuit against a teacher who ‘savagely’ in icted ‘Ž fteen cuts’ on
a pupil during colonialism and this: ‘… common belief that those who exceeded the
ISSN 0013–1911 print; 1465–3397 online/02/010017-1 0 Ó 2002 Educational Review
DOI:10.1080/00131910120110848
18 E. M. Tafa

limits of corporal punishment’ believed that ‘… if one spared the rod one would
spoil the child’.

Research Methodology
The principal research question of the study was; ‘How are the teaching perceptions
and practices of the new teachers in Botswana junior secondary schools affected by
their Ž rst four months of school and classroom life?’ It was important to try and
understand the meanings of the teachers’ behaviours from their own point of view
and in their natural setting over a period of time for a fuller appreciation of the
interface between their teaching philosophies and school socialisation (Yin, 1994;
Maxwell, 1996; Cresswell, 1998). Data were collected through observations, inter-
views and document analysis using Ž ve case study schools—one urban [Sepelete
CJSS (Community Junior Secondary School)] and the rest rural. Fictional names of
the teachers and schools are used in this paper (Opelang and Magwa at Labuda,
Makhekhe at Jakalas, Tsogang at Sepelete, Jabu and Polokano at Shakani and Thepe
at Chandapiwa CJSS). Over 130 interviews and recorded discussions took place,
over 60 lessons were observed over a period of 4 months and a wide range of
documents were analysed.
Neophytes wrote autobiographical narratives on the teaching/training methods and
the discipline they experienced at home, in their schools and colleges of education.
They also drew their ideal classroom arrangement based on their teaching metaphors
(Knowels, 1993).

New Teachers’ Perceptions of Caning

While the study set out to investigate new teachers as described above, one issue
which occurred again and again was corporal punishment. This article therefore
explores the prevalence of physical punishment in Botswana schools.
Their initial views on their preferred discipline methods were expressed as
disclaimers regarding caning, even before the question referred to it, for example,
‘Talking to them rather than using a stick’ (Thepe). Clearly, the neophytes knew that
the Ž rst ‘battle’ would be over ‘student control’ (Connell, 1985) and would be
associated with caning, with which they had a Ž xation. However, the initial attitude
was one of tentative rejection, ‘There is a belief that using a stick is African, but
most of the time I will Ž rst talk to them’ (Thepe). ‘No, I won’t use a stick’
(Makhekhe).
By the end of the term, however, Ms Magwa and Ms Thepe used light canes. Ms
Jabu, used it only once. Ms Opelang had come full circle—Ž rst trying other
techniques, then switching to the cane only to abandon it because ‘it does not work’.
Some big boys in her class were refusing to be beaten. Ms Makhekhe also wavered
before caning and referring deŽ ant boys to the deputy head. Likewise Messrs
Tsogang and Polokano hesitated before caning and justifying it as ‘African culture’.

New Teachers’ Pre-training Experiences of Caning

The new teachers were unanimous about widespread caning and the transmission
model of teaching during their own schooling; ‘… students were considered …
empty bags … My teacher at primary used to carry a cane in her bag’ (Jabu). The
Corporal Punishment 19

teacher was, ‘… the fountain of knowledge … delivering the knowledge’ (Tsogang),

‘… a preacher … preaching to his congregation’ (Jabu), ‘… dispenser of all
knowledge’ (Magwa).
SigniŽ cantly, however, only Polokano and Makhekhe were frequently beaten at
home. Clearly, trainees brought strong beliefs about caning to colleges of education
primarily from their schools rather than their homes.

Pre-service Training and Caning

Lecturers at the teacher training colleges blamed the problem of new teachers using
the cane on school ‘wash-out effect’ of what had been learnt in college, though some
admitted that ‘… students are hearing mixed messages … To some lecturers …
negative reinforcement means … using a stick (HoD, Education, College B).
However, the messages from my chance encounter with Ž ve lecturers at College B
were far from ‘mixed’. They defended birching as ‘our culture’ which is ‘indispens-
able’ for the maintenance of ‘law and order’. ‘I am a lecturer, thanks to the cane—the
best motivator for students’, one of them claimed. One Ugandan lecturer claimed that
abolition would not work in his country, adding that a headmaster recently beat a
pupil to death.
During the interviews the lecturers explained that, ‘Students’ argue that ‘African
kids understand this language’ (Lecturer, College B). Students are ‘… always
complaining that they are not allowed to beat … saying “rona” (we) were beaten and
we behaved’ (HoD, College B). ‘I don’t think corporal punishment is the best …
umm the issue is still debatable’ (HoD, Social Studies, College A).
The views of the college lecturers suggests that rather than a ‘school wash-out
effect’, it is more a case of the ‘myth of the liberal college’ (Bartholomew, 1976)
with the colleges reinforcing existing attitudes towards caning instead of challenging
them. Having survived college training the neophytes’ beliefs about corporal punish-
ment easily ‘follow them into the classroom practica’ (Kagan, 1992).

Socialisation into the ‘Culture’ of Caning in Schools

The cane is the most tangible symbol of an authoritarian school regime. This section
describes the routinisation of birching in schools in Botswana. The Ž eldnotes
repeatedly refer to the ubiquitous canes, beatings witnessed, numbers of canes,
teachers using canes as teaching aids, occasional staffroom debates on birching, as
well as graphic teachers’ stories about caning. The highest number of canes counted
in a school (Labuda) in one day was 12. Almost invariably, when dealing with the
entire student body, i.e. monitoring study, feeding, punctuality and conducting
morning assemblies teachers were wielding, and often using canes.
Caning is administered by all and sundry in the school—students, untrained
teachers, students teachers and porters. The Shakani Punishment Record Book, refers
to three cases of boys who were found at the girls’ hostels at night and were
consequently ‘beaten by the night-watchman’. This is the only school offering
boarding for 60–70% of its intake. Head-girls helping to supervise breakfast at
Labuda were also wielding canes.
The deputy head is usually the ‘iron man’. On my very Ž rst day at Jakalas nine
boys were hauled before the deputy’s ofŽ ce in the morning and given three strokes
each on their buttocks for an offence I could not establish. By the end of the day I
20 E. M. Tafa

had counted a total of nine canes in the school (four of them in the deputy’s ofŽ ce).
This number could be an underestimate as some teachers keep their ‘weapons’ in the
storerooms or sent students to forage for canes in the nearest mophane forest during
lessons.
‘Every so often there is a blitz on discipline’ (Connell, 1985, p. 112) for late
coming, noise making, Ž ghting, missing Saturday study and other adolescent acts of
misdemeanour. Typically, after morning assembly at Jakalas CJSS a teacher comes
to the staffroom followed by six boys. The boys wait outside the staffroom, while the
teacher proceeds to the headmaster’s and the deputy’s ofŽ ces and comes out with
two canes. The boys are ushered into the patio adjoining the staffroom and given
three strokes each on the buttocks. Other than Makhekhe’s rhetorical question, ‘who
is shooting guns this side’—a reference to the echo produced by birching. The rest
of the staff, whom the teacher immediately rejoins, continue working normally.
In what had become a regular pattern at Chandapiwa, at the end of morning
assembly a teacher brandishing a cane orders students who missed Saturday study to
see him. He threatens; ‘I am not going to listen to any excuses, I am going to beat
you’. That the causes of the offence will not be entertained was a worrisome norm.
In effect it means that, contrary even to the Roman Dutch law on which the country
is governed, pupils are presumed to be guilty until they exculpate themselves, but
given the frosty student–teacher relationships and the pressure of the immediacy of
the decisions that are made, even the opportunity for this burden of proof is often
denied. The same notion is captured in this common draconian school rule; ‘If you
think you are being treated unfairly, … take punishment Ž rst (usually caning) and
complain later’.
In the Chandapiwa incident, as staff walked back to the staffroom after assembly
followed by the offending students, the teacher stretched his hands and joked; ‘ke a
ba jimela’, meaning, ‘I am exercising in preparation for them’. The eight students
were summarily given three strokes each on their palms. On a different day the
culprits are beaten by the headmaster who afterwards says to me, ‘Mr Tafa, “nna”
(I) think I will quit my job, I can’t afford to beat students every day. I doubt if I will
go to heaven’.
In the Jakalas staffroom a teacher makes an emotional outburst, ‘I feel like beating
students today’. Except for Makhekhe’ response, ‘why? You will scare us’, staff are
unmoved. Minutes later, another teacher has interrupted his lesson to come and
collect a cane, and vows as he takes it; ‘ke batla go setla banayana ba’, (‘I want to
thump these kids’). Meanwhile, after beating a student another teacher threatens; ‘tell
Otsetswe that if I have to follow him at the classroom I am going to kill him’. The
deputy, who was within earshot, remarks, ‘you have declared war on the students’—
as he proceeds to his class. Later during staffroom gossip one teacher asserts; ‘I have
instructed my class that they must cover their books or else they will be beaten’
while another says he threatened to re-possess uncovered books.
At Labuda CJSS socialisation into the culture of beating started on day one by
diktat from on high. New teachers reported being told by the headmaster that ‘pupils
… are very naughty and because they are Batswana they must be caned’ and that
there was no need to record the punishment. The school did not keep a Punishment
Record Book.
On at least nine classroom bulletin boards at Labuda CJSS was a newspaper
clipping from the Government Daily News (November 1999) depicting school boys
lying on the  oor face-down being publicly walloped by a policeman on their bare
Corporal Punishment 21

backs at a kgotla (court) for misbehaving. The message to the neophytes conveyed
by this obnoxious teaching aid on otherwise bare bulletin boards, was loud and clear.
Teachers were pressurised to maintain a united front on discipline by ‘not being
afraid of administering corporal punishment’ (Headmaster, Jakalas CJSS). The cliché
was ‘uniformity’ and ‘consistency’, with this warning, ‘… some teachers want to be
taken to be good with students and he warned such teachers that they will never
survive the type of student we have’ (Staff minutes, Chandapiwa Headmaster’s
remarks, 15 April 1999).
Asked how the new teachers coped while on duty the Co-ordinator of English at
Jakalas stated; ‘They used corporal punishment, which is common when children are
making noise … and which they (students) enjoy most’.

Students’ Attitudes to Caning

Teachers think they are vindicated in their frequent use of corporal punishment
because students and parents condone caning. Parents are often summoned to school
to cane their children. Finding some of his students still at their lockers Tsogang
asked ‘How do we stop this, it is happening everyday?’ Half the class replied; ‘By
beating’. He later justiŽ ed caning by saying ‘… even students go to the extent of
telling you that “this behaviour has been recurring, … the best solution should be
beating” ’. Similarly, Polokano asked his class; ‘If people do not want to listen what
should I do with them?’ and the chorus response was; ‘Beat them’.

Punishment Record Books

MOE (Ministry of Education) regulations require schools to keep Punishment
Record Books. However, only three of the Ž ve schools had poorly kept records,
apparently never checked by MOE. Of the 98 punishment cases recorded at
Chandapiwa CJSS 75.5% were dealt with by caning. Teachers believe in ‘punish-
ment on the spot’ because, ‘… maybe you ask a student to remain in class as a way
of disciplining him and the student enjoys that’ (Tsogang) or ‘that is exactly what he
may be looking for’ (Headmaster, Jakalas CJSS).
At Chandapiwa 28.5% of the caning cases received the maximum Ž ve strokes
sometimes with manual labour or suspension. Only 17.3% were resolved by ‘coun-
selling’ which in the light of the authoritarian school relationships was often a
euphemism for verbal abuse. Offences and the punishment meted out were inconsist-
ent—two to Ž ve strokes for ‘Ž ghting’ and three to Ž ve strokes for ‘insulting’,
sometimes with manual labour.
Consequently new teachers rapidly settled into and defended the ‘culture’ of
caning,
Our children do not believe in just being talked to … that … should be
reinforced by … a stick … I knew how Batswana pupils are, because I was
once a temporary teacher and I went for teaching practice twice … Pupils
will only respect those teachers who beat them. (Tsogang)
‘I have changed drastically … to follow the culture … in some classes
students are beaten when they have not done their work or when they fail,
… and if two homeworks are given, mine and that of a teacher who beats,
they will do that of the teacher who beats and not mine. (Polokano)
22 E. M. Tafa

Infringement of Rules on Caning

MOE regulations on caning are honoured more in breach than in observance. Caning
is supposed to be administered by ‘the headmaster, a teacher or boarding master or
matron or parent to whom authority … has been delegated by the headmaster’, yet
as we have seen, virtually everybody applied it.
Government Regulations state that ‘… lack of understanding or inability to do
school work or to do it properly shall in no circumstances constitute a breach of good
order or discipline by a pupil’ (Education Chapter 58:01, 1978) However, Tsogang
admitted that, ‘I … beat students who had done extremely well in the Ž rst test and
the next test … dropped by 20 or 40 marks’ (Tsogang). In one of his classes he was
told that Ž ve absentees had failed a Setswana test and were afraid of being beaten.
‘I used to beat them when they failed my tests because most of them fail’ (Opelang).
Polokano beats them for not doing homework. Often when students failed to answer
questions Thepe asked, ‘Do you want to be warmed up with a stick?’ Threatening,
‘I will do that … when Mr Tafa is not here’.
The regulation was violated even by supervisors of the new teachers,
‘… students discuss among themselves that “so and so does not beat” so
they relax … some teachers who are … beating students … are the ones
whose subjects are being passed. Students used to think that I don’t beat
then I gave them a test and haaa! they failed. I gave them a good beating.’
(Co-ordinator of English, Shakani CJSS)
Clearly, according to teachers failing is punishable by birching. Indeed, some
teachers took canes to classrooms when they returned examination scripts.
Corporal punishment shall be … reasonable … administered only on the
palms of the hands or across the buttocks with a light cane not longer than
1 m long, at the thickest end not more than 1 cm in diameter … No male
teacher, except the headmaster shall in ict corporal punishment upon a
female pupil. (MOE regulations, 1978)
Canes in schools came in all shapes and sizes. Male teachers beat female students on
their buttocks. In Francistown a girl was ordered to lie face-down on the  oor and
a male teacher whipped her with a thick cane on the buttocks, more than Ž ve times
for allegedly indulging in love affairs. The headmaster at Sepelete CJSS often held
the late comers’ heads with his left hand tilted them to the left and whacked their
right cheeks three times each. In all schools late comers were ‘punished on the spot’,
including students at Jakalas who walked over 15 km to school each day.
Most intriguing is not so much the teachers’  agrant violation of the rules, but the
MOE’s failure to enforce its own law. Ironically, an expatriate teacher was deported
for deprecating caning as ‘barbaric’ in the 1990s. Occasionally the irregular Ministry
inspection reports refer to ‘abusive use of corporal punishment’ and ‘unsavoury
language’ and the Daily News (26 February 2001) carries stories reminding teachers
to use light canes. What is lacking is data on action taken against teachers who
violate the law with impunity.

Caning—a Historically Embedded Coping Strategy

Although teachers in the schools claimed that caning is ‘African culture’, only two
of the new teachers regularly experienced it at their homes. Tabulawa’s (1995)
Corporal Punishment 23

argument, based on Alverson (1978), that indigenous Tswana education, was as

authoritarian as colonial education, though not made in respect of corporal punish-
ment, is debatable in helping to explain the prevalence of corporal punishment.
Admittedly, failure of Tswana education to inculcate a questioning attitude in the
youth, may have been ‘authoritarian’ but this single aspect is not sufŽ cient
justiŽ cation for the conclusions made. Besides, it is unlikely that an average Tswana
household will have up to 12 canes stowed away for the most trivial misbehaviour.
The problem is compounded by the dearth of research on the teaching methods,
assessment and, importantly, the disciplining procedures of pre-colonial indigenous
education.
However, exponents of ‘situated learning’ in pre-colonial ‘third world’ societies
argue that motivation was intrinsic with realistic praise and criticism (Mead, 1975;
von Borstel, 1994). von Borstel’s attempts to reconstruct African education as
‘education for humanity … for living’ based on ‘a learning curriculum’ rather than
the ‘teaching curriculum’ of formal education and imperceptibly interwoven with the
people’s daily activities. There were no examinations, no ‘teachers’, no authoritarian
centralised bureaucracies, in short, no institutions called schools, as learning was an
integral part of community life. Achievement was measured in terms of one’s sense
of community, ‘self-worth’ and self-reliance. There is no evidence to suggest that
children were  ogged every step of the way. This holistic view of indigenous
education, calls into question its simple characterisation as ‘authoritarian’.
While there was no coupling of traditional African education and caning the same
cannot be said of colonially imposed formal schooling which was historically
twinned with corporal punishment. When Zambia recently abolished caning it was
described as ‘inhuman, … degrading’ and a ‘brutal relic of British rule’ (Botswana
Guardian, 12 May 2000). From the 1700s to the early 1900s corporal punishment
was part of the penal and educational system in England, Wales and Scotland and it
was then exported to the colonies (Home OfŽ ce, 1938). Caning became ingrained in
the popular minds as critical to school discipline hence the common refrain that its
abolition equals classroom disorder and failure. The result is a cycle of caning
transmitted from one generation to another and justiŽ ed on the basis of experience
and sentiment.
According to Connell (1985), teachers’ ‘… disciplinary responses … are intelligi-
ble … responses to situations … over which they have limited control’. In a class of
35–40 authoritarianism is a means of orchestrating ‘mob control’ (Britzman, 1986).
‘Instant’ punishment and military-style morning parades typical of Botswana schools
are all about ‘social control’. Teachers are saddled with systemic constraints of large
and mixed class sizes for which no extra resources were made available.
The teachers’ stories about their own ‘savage’ punishment while at school testiŽ ed
to the embedded nature of caning. Such stories were told with a sense of stoicism
rather than bitterness—as if birching at school was a rite of passage. Calls for
humane forms of discipline are frowned upon as ‘so-called children’s rights …
During our days if you were beaten at school and went home to report you were
immediately beaten again because parents felt that the mere fact that you were beaten
at school meant that you are naughty’ (Staffroom gossip, Sepelete CJSS). Yet there
was actually some tension between teachers and the more enlightened parents over
caning at this urban school.
‘A successful school does not Ž ght battles over chewing gum … out of school
behaviour that it knows it cannot win, … does not use high rates of physical
24 E. M. Tafa

punishment’ (Reynolds quoted in Meighan, 1981, p. 115). And yet Jakalas CJSS
wanted to ban the chewing of gum and whistling on school premises—prompting
one the teachers to dub it, ‘turning the school into a prison’.
Hargreaves notes that,
… the differential effects of the hidden curriculum … for pupils of
working class backgrounds the result is the destruction of their dignity …
they must bear the scars of damaged dignity that goes with the … stigma
of being … written-off. (quoted in Meighan, 1981, pp. 58–60)
In Botswana the ‘damage to the dignity’ of the written-off slow learners also takes
the form of degrading physical pain. Routinised caning may be a function of the
‘cultural capital’ of working class and peasant children which is often at variance
with the dominant school culture, for example, the enforcement of school uniforms.
There is no caning in elite schools in Botswana (Tabulwa, 1995).
African respect for elders, the utilitarian view of education and the positivist idea
of teachers as infallible also facilitate an outward acceptance of their ‘right’ to cane
pupils. Teachers make a great play of the notion of their ‘in loco-parentis’ relation-
ship with pupils, interpreted to mean the ‘right’ to chastise them physically.
Pupils’ public support of caning is also rooted in the historical evolution of this
form of punishment and the way dominant social structures repress and invalidate the
consciousness of individuals. It is important to note in this regard that, ‘… the ways
in which people characterise their actions may be at variance with what they are
really doing … may be … rationalisations to obscure … reality’ (Carr & Kemmis,
1986). In fact, Morrell (1999) in a survey of school pupils in South Africa argues
that, while publicly endorsing caning, privately ‘… the emotional response to
beatings … were more striking … students feel anger, hurt, sadness and being
wronged’. It is likely that in Botswana students’ public statements of support for
corporal punishment are similarly at odds with their private reactions and feelings.
Ironically, in many ways teachers were authors of their own misfortunes. Many
so-called discipline problems stemmed from their rigid and punitive approach, harsh
and inconsistently applied school rules, lack of variation of learning styles, bare and
uninspiring classrooms, lack of respect for the self-esteem and self-worth of students
as individuals as well as poor school organisation and sense of purpose. Indeed
schools are run as if students are the enemy to be kept under surveillance and whose
views are never solicited.
Finally, birching must also be understood in the context of the country’s inherently
authoritarian and behaviourist teacher training model (Mannathoko, 1995). Indeed
while the trajectory of the neophytes’ attitudes to caning has its roots in the
sedimentation process of ‘apprentice-of-observation’ over their many years of
schooling (Lortie, 1977), lack of college ‘cognitive dissonance’ saw them graduating
with their authoritarian beliefs intact. State legitimated caning and its widespread use
in schools only compounded the problem.
Upon joining the teaching profession where there was no mentoring by experi-
enced staff, even behaviourism suffered rapid atrophication—lesson plans and
teaching aids were rapidly discarded. Although reinforcement techniques and the
step-by-step cumulative approach are retained an extraneous element is soon intro-
duced—caning is used instead of the ‘extinction’ of undesirable behaviour as per
Skinner’s behaviourist theory (Bigge, 1982s pp. 119–123). Teaching styles assume
a nineteenth century ‘mental-disciplinary’ approach of drilling students in the
Corporal Punishment 25

‘immutable’ ‘facts’ punctuated by threats and, use of caning for failing. In short,
while behaviourism withers away, an authoritarian and positivist outlook remains.

Conclusion
The use of state legitimated corporal punishment against children for even the most
negligible adolescent misdemeanours is degrading and testiŽ es to the limits of the
country’s brand of liberal democracy which has been dubbed ‘authoritarian liberal-
ism’ akin to the democracies of the ‘Asian Tigers’ such as Malaysia (Good, 1996).
Democracy and institutionalised violence as a means of con ict resolution are
strange bedfellows. Ramsburg (1997), argues that  ogging sends wrong signals to
children that beating ‘… is an acceptable way to solve problems’ and ‘that it is …
right for a big person to strike a small one’. Adding that it ‘has the potentially
harmful long-term effects such as increasing the chances of … violent or criminal
behaviour, impaired learning and depression’.
Botswana ratiŽ ed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as
recently as 1998, and pays little more than lip service to the convention. Our saving
grace may be the trend in the region which seems to be towards democratisation of
schools and concurrent ofŽ cial rejection of caning. Namibia and South Africa
outlawed caning because it is incompatible with the right of every citizen to not be
subjected to degrading punishment and with their learner-centred education (Harber,
2001, p. 22; Angula & Lewis, 1997). Zambia has followed suit. As recent experience
in these countries suggests, corporal punishment is not an integral part of ‘African
culture’ but a contested issue among Africans. It is time the debate over caning was
started in Botswana.

Correspondence: Dr Elmon M. Tafa, Tonota College of Education, Postbag T3,

Tonota, Botswana.

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26 E. M. Tafa

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