Neo Obakeng Tshatsinde is a young woman from Dube that is striving to promote moral regeneration back into her society.
Concerned with pupils in high schools and their behaviour problems has been one of the driving forces that gave birth to this cause.
Tshatsinde says it worries her that daily at about 8am she finds pupils from various schools in her area still filtering to schools and it seems like adults are not getting involved to solve this issue.
“I have realised that this is a problem everywhere in Soweto, and my issue is not so much with the schools but with us as communities as we are not taking action. We should be the ones pushing these pupils to get to school on time,” she says.
Tshatsinde says she recently had an encounter with a pupil because they were smoking instead of being at school, but when she went to the school to report the matter, she was brushed off by the staff.
This made her question what the schools, School Governing Bodies and the community are doing to call such children to order.
As an ex-convict and working as a community development worker for an NGO named Helper, Tshatsinde does motivational talks at schools.
She says: “I have realised that what happens in families children act out. When I speak to them, I find out there are certain underlying issues with them they don’t know how to deal with.”
Tshatsinde says she is passionate about the youth because she too was in high school when her life took a turn for the worst.
“I was in Grade 11 and was one of the best pupils in the school, but because I had problems at home I became rebellious as I couldn’t cope with my parent. I lashed out at school, got expelled from various institutes and didn’t know what trouble that would bring, all I was doing was crying out for help,” she says.
Sadly Tshatsinde got involved in drugs and because she needed to maintain her habit, she ended up involved in robbery which led her to end up arrested as a teenager.
She says she however, doesn’t “blame my parent or myself for this.”
What remains in her thoughts is that maybe if she had more support from home and if schools had taken real interest in her instead of expelling her that could have helped.
In her words of encouragement, Tshatsinde says to young people just because she did wrong, it doesn’t mean it’s right for them to do the same.
“Young people, get educated first then you can do what you want afterwards, and as communities let’s do something about problems we see in our communities instead of keeping quiet. Parents notice your child and look at change in their behaviour especially in high school. As communities let’s go back to basics and bring up our children together as one nation and in a proper manner,” she says.
