KEETMANSHOOP – Top on the agenda of the teachers’ conference that starts today in //Karas Region is alleged satanism at schools and pupils possessed by demons.
The unending reports of learners being possessed by demons and practices of witchcraft at schools have prompted //Karas educationalists to include the item on the agenda of the regional teachers’ conference.
Surprisingly though, the Minister of Education Dr David Namwandi and senior education officials informed New Era that often the alleged “demon possessed learners” are the outcomes of inexperienced teachers not knowing how to handle the curious minds of developing children.
Namwandi nevertheless said no school principal or regional education director had yet contacted the minister’s office with allegations of demonism at schools. “I want directors to inform me through the permanent secretary that they have demons in their schools and that they are overwhelmed and need intervention from us,” he said. About inexperienced teachers not knowing how to deal with social crises at schools, Namwandi said such teachers would be recalled and sent back to college. The acting director in the educational directorate in the //Karas Region Jacqueline Rukamba referred to an investigation of alleged satanic practices at a Karasburg school that found children were merely testing the existence of God in their interaction with the teacher and not necessarily joining the “illuminati” or necessarily being devil worshippers. The investigation was launched following allegations of a satanic cult at the school, which implicated a teacher.
“I saw that [children] had browsed these [satanic] websites simply because they wanted to know more about the things they heard and wanted to test whether there is a God. We could also sense they wanted to tempt their pastors,” Rukamba said, adding that the children used the school library and the Karasburg public library to research “satanism and the illuminati”.
Last year a Grade 10 learner at the Theresa Junior Secondary School in Tses in the //Karas Region claimed to have vomited pieces of wood after being attacked by demons. A number of other pupils allegedly also screamed, vomited, cried and shouted random names during their demonic possession.
At a primary school in the region, a learner claimed to have been cut by an “invisible person”. The same person, the learner claimed, called her names and made others believe she was insane.
These so-called demonic incidents, however, are not unique to //Karas and have also been reported in the Hardap Region, where a secondary schoolgirl is believed to have offered her mother to the Devil during a satanic ritual. The girl’s mother allegdly died in a motor accident two days after the ritual while travelling from Windhoek to Rehoboth.
Earlier this year angry parents at the Mvula Junior Secondary School in the Oshana Region demanded prayer sessions at the school after 26 learners were reportedly possessed by demonic spirits.
The director of education in the region, Awebahe //Hoeseb at the time responded to these attacks saying they were just “figments of the learners’ imagination”.
By Jemima Beukes