Pretoria - A tragic accident more than six years ago during a school trip to a farm in the North West, during which three pupils died after they went canoeing, will cost the education MEC of that province dearly.
The Mahikeng High Court ordered that the education authority had to pay the parents and guardians of the three children R375 000 in damages each. The department at the time paid each family R50 000 towards the funeral costs.
Three learners drowned while on an official school excursion organised by the Rustenburg Technical High School in March 2016.
At Farm Modderfontein, two of the pupils drowned when their canoe capsized, while the circumstances surrounding the death of the third pupil remains shrouded in uncertainty.
The court, however, said evidence indicated that the third pupil drowned while trying to save the others.
The parents and guardians held teacher Linda Conradie responsible for their deaths, as she, as their supervisor, allowed them to canoe on the dam.
It was said that water activities were not on the programme and that she had no idea of the children’s abilities to swim before she allowed them to go canoeing.
Conradie, who had accompanied the pupils on the official school trip, took the pupils on a walkabout on the farm owned by her husband.
As they passed a dam on the farm estimated to be about 100 square metres, which had filled about 50% as a result of rain the previous evening, the pupils unrelentingly begged Conradie to allow them to use canoes on the dam.
Only about six of the pupils confirmed that they could swim.
The learners who could not swim were instructed to remain close to Conradie.
She maintained that she monitored the pupils who were within her sight during the water activities. All went well until she called it a day.
Three pupils asked whether they could take a last round when tragedy struck. The canoe in which they were capsized.
She noticed that two of the boys, only identified as R and N in the judgment, needed assistance and she jumped in to help them. She tried to bring them to safety, but she kept on sinking herself as one of the boys clutched her around her neck.
She called out to the pupils who were standing on the dam wall to find a stick and form a human chain to assist her in getting out of the dam with the two boys. By then some of the pupils had run off to call for assistance.
When Conradie and the boys were eventually extracted from the dam, the two boys had drowned.
She could not explain how the third boy had died. His body was only recovered much later. Conradie told the court that she experienced flashbacks where she appears to see him at the front of the human chain she had called for.
Judge Andre Peterson said the steps taken by Conradie to establish which of the pupils could swim, did not suffice in the circumstances which prevailed at the spur of the moment at the dam. Nor did she know exactly how deep the dam was and no life jackets were available.
“Conradie, as the only teacher or adult providing supervision, undoubtedly fell shy of ensuring reasonable supervision to prevent any harm, which should have been foreseen or anticipated,” the judge said.
Pretoria News