Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) commends Daily Maverick for raising an important issue in a story reporting about the Constitution Court protecting the rights of children at private schools. Daily Maverick is also commended for protecting the identities of the children involved.
The article for which MMA awards a GLAD[1] is titled, “Concourt defends rights of children at private schools” (Daily Maverick, 18/06/2020). According to the story by Ayanda Mthethwa, parents of the two children involved in this story took their children’s school to court for expelling the children because of a “fallout” between the school and the parents. It is reported that the children’s father accused the tennis coach of being “incompetent” and referred to the coach as “useless”. This and other incidences reportedly led to the school expelling the children using clause 9.3 of the contract signed between the parents and the school. The clause states that “the school has the right to cancel the contract at any time, for any reason provided that it gives you a full notice, in writing, of its decision to terminate the contract”.
The story reports that following the expelling of their children, the parents took the decision to challenge the school in the High Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA). After being unsuccessful in the two courts, the parents then reportedly brought the matter to the Constitutional Court where judgment favored the parent’s position. The ruling in the Constitutional Court was that “independent schools must, before terminating a contract entered into by parents on behalf of their children, offer the children and their parents an opportunity to say whether termination is in the best interest of the children concerned”.
According to the article, “Pridwin [name of school] , being bound by section 28(2) of the Constitution, was required to accord the best interests of DB and EB [the two boys], paramount importance…”
The journalist, Ayanda Mthethwa, withheld the identities of the children and goes an extra mile of stating in the story that “the parents, whose identity has been withheld in the interest of the children…”
MMA’s Editorial Guidelines and Principles for Reporting on Children in the Media[2] urge journalists on page two stating, “Even where you are trying to tell people about harm to children or another children’s issue or promote children’s rights, you always need to respect the best interests of the individual child.”
This adherence to ethics when dealing with identifying children in such stories and, the safeguarding of children’s best interests as supported by Section 28.2 of the Bill of Rights, is commendable. This is so because the children involved in the story need to be protected from potential harm such as victimisation or retribution.
We also commend the journalist for writing the story in such a way that it is informative and empowering to parents and children about the rights of children at private schools.
We encourage other journalists to emulate this and to continue highlighting such critical issues involving children. Well done Ayanda Mthethwa and Daily Maverick!
By Jacques Ndong
[1] A GLAD is awarded when journalists report positively on a child and respect the rights of that child
[2]http://54.217.43.239/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/mma_editorial_guideline.pdf