‘A minor can never consent to sex,' warns expert amid alarming spike in sexual abuse by teachers

Schools are meant to be safe spaces, nurturing young minds and futures. Yet, South Africa’s classrooms are grappling with a disturbing surge in sexual misconduct by teachers. More than 100 cases were reported in 2024/2025 alone, painting a stark picture of a system failing its children.

Between 2021 and 2025, 176 teachers were found guilty of sexual misconduct, involving harassment of both girls and boys. Out of 211 reported cases, only 35 teachers were acquitted.

This disturbing trend has spurred urgent parliamentary action, with the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education spearheading a comprehensive inquiry into statutory rape and sexual abuse within schools. The inquiry shines a harsh light on systemic issues such as inadequate vetting of educators, inconsistent reporting practices and loopholes that enable offenders to evade justice and sometimes even return to teaching roles.

Disturbing rise in sexual abuse of young learners

Joy Maimela, the chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education, explained that despite the elaborate legal clarity of what constitutes statutory rape, there is a distressing rise in cases where learners, some as young as 10 or 12, become victims of sexual violation and coercive relationships with older men, peers or even individuals in positions of trust.

“The problem is multifaceted. It cuts across social, economic and cultural lines, reflecting deep-rooted structural inequalities and moral failures in our society. As the analyses from recent departmental and civil society presentations indicate, statutory rape is not an isolated legal offence but a symptom of systemic poverty, gender inequality and cultural silence. These conditions perpetuate environments where abuse is normalised and victims are silenced,” said Maimela.

In KwaZulu-Natal, two recent incidents of sexual abuse involving educational staff have sent shockwaves through the province. At Gxalingenwa Primary School, a teacher stands accused of raping an 11-year-old pupil, while at Adams College, another educator reportedly violated an 18-year-old student by inserting a finger into her private parts.

These deeply disturbing cases were revealed by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education during a national parliamentary enquiry into statutory rape in schools held on 11 November.

KwaZulu-Natal is not alone in this crisis. Across South Africa, the latest 2024-2025 data on sexual misconduct by teachers and school staff paints a grim and troubling national picture, highlighting an epidemic of abuse.

Sexual offenders resign and reapply

The committee expressed grave concern that of South Africa’s approximately 405,000 educators, only 42,650 have been vetted against the National Register for Sex Offenders (NSRO). Established in 2009, the NRSO includes the records of people found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment for sexual offences against children and the vulnerable. The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development maintains the database.

The vetting of teachers against the NRSO and the National Child Protection Register (NCPR) began as a mandatory process in 2023 and is ongoing. However, the pace has been hindered by delays largely attributed to capacity constraints at police stations and in the Department of Justice. This bottleneck has slowed the issuance of clearance certificates necessary to identify educators with past sexual offences. To address this, the Department of Basic Education is seeking court permission to directly access the NRSO, aiming to conduct vetting internally and accelerate the process.

Data from across SA reveal a disturbing and widespread pattern of teachers with criminal records and sexual offences slipping through vetting processes, putting learners at continued risk.

The Minister of Basic Education, Siviwe Gwarube, said the department was not proud of the statistics of statutory rape cases in schools, and highlighted weaknesses in the system that allow teachers charged with sexual misconduct to resign and reapply somewhere else.

“This is a complex issue. One of the biggest challenges in the sector is that we need to make sure the reports lead to convictions; the key to ridding our schools of sexual offenders is having them in jail,” she said.

“While we acknowledge gaps in the system, we have taken steps to strengthen reporting, terminate and prevent reemployment of persons found guilty of statutory rape. Our schools must be places of safety and learning, not for abuse and harassment of learners.”

Barriers to reporting abuse in schools

Lee-Anne Germanos, a founding director of The Embrace Project, shared her expert insights with Daily Maverick on the vital issue of educator sexual violence and the legal protections for children in South Africa.

Discussing sexual offences involving educators, Germanos acknowledged the discomfort with terms like “statutory rape”, emphasising that while legally correct, they may underestimate the gravity of the offence.

“I understand the disdain for the use of the word ‘statutory rape’, because it sounds like it almost takes away from the brutality of what has happened there,” she said.

“There is more than likely a lack of consent. Not just because of the law but also because of the authority and trust placed in educators. It is definitely rape in many different forms—a violation that affronts our morality and the social fabric because someone meant to protect children instead causes trauma."

Germanos cautioned against euphemistic phrases like “sexual activity with a minor”, which she described as “highly problematic”, warning they imply a possibility of consent where none exists.

“A minor can never consent to sex, and when it’s an educator involved, it’s not sexual activity — it is always rape or sexual assault,” she stressed.

Discussing barriers to reporting sexual violence, Germanos identified extreme underreporting as a serious issue.

“Children are scared to report abuse by authority figures. Sometimes families are threatened or bribed by educators to keep silent,” she said.

She described South Africa’s socioeconomic challenges as compounding the problem: “If an educator offers money to a family in need, often families decide that money is more important than justice.”

Germanos stressed the broader societal context driving these abuses: “Schools reflect society’s trauma. With South Africa having one of the highest rates of gender-based violence in the world, it’s no surprise that children suffer this violation in schools.”

On schools’ readiness to address sexual violence, she was frank: “Schools are mostly poorly equipped. Public schools have complex bureaucracies, and principals must rely on School Governing Bodies [SGBs] to act. Some SGBs are even corrupt and might facilitate predators.” She emphasised the need for a universal, enforced policy across all schools on sexual violence, bullying, and harassment.

To encourage victims to come forward, Germanos advocated for a cultural shift and structural trust.

A culture of silence and passive bystanding

The current statutory rape definition in South Africa, under section 15 of the Sexual Offences Act, criminalises “consensual” sexual intercourse between adults (or 16- to 17-year-olds who are more than two years older) and children under 16.

Daniel Peter Al-Naddaf, a legal researcher at the Equal Education Law Centre, described this as “an outdated product of our historical common law”, where rape was narrowly defined as requiring active refusal of consent rather than recognising the absence of consent.

He emphasised that “the Act repealed the common law offence of rape”, so all sexual offences are statutory, and section 15 indeed aligns with the broader legal definition of rape as “sexual penetration without consent — no child can consent to their abuse by an adult or older child”.

However, Al-Naddaf warned that using the term outside very specific contexts “risks perpetuating a hierarchy of offences in public discourse and obscuring the child sexual abuse which it describes”.

He highlighted a serious gap in school discipline regulations, noting that in KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Cape, a learner who has a sexual relationship with an educator is considered guilty of serious misconduct and liable to suspension or expulsion, rather than as having faced sexual abuse.

This, he says, “seriously reduces the likelihood that a survivor would disclose their abuse, for fear of punishment and exclusion”.

Moreover, laws like the Children’s Act and the South African Schools Act are heavily response-based, with “far more duties to respond to sexual abuse than to prevent it”. Consequently, very little funding is made available each year to address the driving factors of child sexual abuse, such as harmful social attitudes and acute child poverty.

He noted that South African child protection laws “are designed for an environment where child abuse is an exception — not the norm, as it is in South Africa”.

Al-Naddaf explained that a major challenge was the lack of funding and mandates for effective prevention programming, resulting in schools mostly responding after abuse occurs rather than preventing it. This is compounded by the strained capacity of social workers, low rates of reporting and the practice of perpetrator educators evading liability by resigning before internal investigations are complete.

He pointed to a culture of “passive bystanding” where people witness or have suspicions of inappropriate behaviour but do not challenge or report it, believing it is not their “role” to do so. This allows harmful behaviour to go unchallenged and many abuses to remain unreported despite mandatory reporting laws.

Moreover, survivors face “enormous stigma and exclusion, including discrimination by schools against pregnant learners”, which “severely inhibits the confidence of survivors to seek support”. Al-Naddaf called for collective responsibility, urging that inappropriate “jokes” and harassment must be called out, witnessed or suspected child abuse must be reported, and parents to enquire from their school and education district about what prevention programming, if any, is in place.

To encourage victims to come forward, Germanos advocated for a cultural shift and structural trust.

“Kids need a safe space where they can trust someone, maybe a life orientation teacher or an anonymous helpline. Trust is crucial because when a teacher violates a child, that trust breaks down, and it can take years of consistent justice to rebuild it.” She lamented how many offending educators escape consequences by resigning and moving to other schools, often without any disciplinary or criminal records.

Germanos also highlighted the importance of community education.

“Most South African communities get education about these issues from community leaders like religious and traditional leaders — not government campaigns.” She argued that public education must leverage these trusted structures to change social norms and better protect children. DM