25th August 2011

Cops called to deal with drunk pupil

It was business as usual at the Jabulani police station in Soweto. Then suddenly officers darted towards a bakkie after it hurtled into the station’s courtyard. It was carrying a pupil in school uniform.

Lying in the back of the van in a drunken stupor, he could barely speak.

Quizzed by the police, the 16-year-old Grade 11 pupil at the nearby Jabulani Technical High School mumbled he had been drinking with his friends.

Unfazed, the handcuffed pupil confronted the police as to why they had “tied him like cows while my friends are free”.

Asked what he and his friends had drank, the pupil replied incoherently in street lingo: “First Watch (whisky). I sponged (mixed) it with Sprite.”

Asked who his friends were, he mumbled three names. “We contributed R25 each. (One friend) topped it with R15.”

According to school principal Thobile Manana, an official from the Gauteng Department of Education had noticed that the pupil was “hopelessly drunk” during a visit on Wednesday and took him to the principal’s office.

“He tried to sit on a chair, but he was struggling. Eventually he just lay sprawled on the floor,” she said