• The Cyberculture Foundation and Vuma will be hosting the Anti-Bullying Awareness Roadshow in Gauteng this week.
• The roadshow hopes to engage parents, educators and learners to address and combat bullying in schools.
• As many as 3.2 million South Africa learners are bullied annually.

Here is an interesting morsel of information, bullying, breaches at least six of the clauses set out in South Africa’s Bill of Rights. While some may wave it off as kids being kids, the number of children who experience bullying is alarming.

More than 3.2 million learners are bullied annually in South Africa with 90 percent of that bullying being done by a learner’s peers. It can have alarming consequences not only on the mental health of a learner, but their education as well. Learners are more prone to dropping out or bunking school if they are the target of bullies.

Clearly something needs to be done to address this problem and to that end, Vuma has partnered with anti-bullying experts at The Cyberculture Foundation. This week, the pair will visit a series of Gauteng schools as part of the Anti-Bullying Awareness Roadshow.

Learners, educators and parents from Wendywood Primary School, Northcliff High School, and Meadowlands High School will be able to attend the roadshow and engage in activities and conversations about bullying. This includes one-on-one discussions with learners that aim to help them identify bullying and how to safely report incidents.

“Our purpose as an organisation is to foster digital wellness and responsible online behaviour. Having observed the alarming incidents of bullying across schools and the devastating consequences, we wanted to be able to take a targeted and tangible approach towards addressing this problem,” says Vuyiseka Klaas, co-founder of The Cyberculture Foundation.

When it comes to bullying, one of the more pressing problems at the moment is cyberbullying. Children have been bullied by others online for decades at this point, but with the advent of generative artificial intelligence and deepfake technology, instances of this harassment are becoming increasingly malicious.

In the US, AI has been used to generative sexual images of girls as young as 14 by their male school peers. As this technology becomes more accessible and children become more tech savvy than the grown-ups, this problem will surely only get worse.

Initiatives such as the Anti-Bullying Awareness Roadshow go a long way to helping victims, but also highlighting the dangers of bullying to all school children in order to help in reporting of incidents.

“Having witnessed bullying in my community and school, I feel compelled to take action and create positive change,” says Tshenolo Khoza, an aspiring attorney who has been part of previous roadshows. “I believe that everyone deserves to be treated with respect and dignity, and through my involvement with the foundation, I hope to inspire others to join the movement and create a more just and equitable society.”

According to the co-founder of the foundation, Klaas, the roadshow was rather successful in Polokwane and hopefully that success is repeated here in Gauteng.