By Nomfundo Manyathi

Students at a no-fee, rural school in Limpopo have beaten teams from 35 other schools to win the second annual national schools moot court competition. Knowledge Dzumba and Rohula Bilankulu from Thengwe High School were the victors of the competition, which took place from 27 to 29 April at the Constitutional Court.

Grade 10 and 11 learners from all secondary schools in South Africa were invited to enter a team of two learners, preferably one male and one female, to participate in the competition. A fictional problem involving a constitutional issue was set and learners wrote two essays setting out the opposing sides of the case. The essays were evaluated and the best nine submissions in each of the provinces were chosen. The selected learners participated in provincial oral rounds in the nine provinces.

Thirty-six schools, four from each province, participated in the semi-final rounds, which took place at the University of Pretoria. The two winning teams, Thengwe High School and Springfield Convent School in Cape Town, competed against each other during the finals held at the Constitutional Court.

Ms Bilankulu also won the best oralist award, while the best essays were received from Selenki Lesemela and Teboho Khuele from Ficksburg High School in the Free State.

Ms Bilankulu, who is 14-years-old, told De Rebus that the competition was a ‘great experience’, adding that being the youngest participant was a ‘big challenge’. She said that participating in the competition was an experience that she was proud of.

Ms Bilankulu said that there were a lot of pupils at her school and that she had struggled to be in the ‘top ten’ in her class, adding that winning the competition had proven that she could achieve ‘anything that she put her mind to’. She added that she would like to become an attorney when she was older as she ‘loved to talk a lot’.

Mr Dzumba (17) said that he was ‘very happy’ that his team had won. He said that he would enter more competitions of this nature in future, adding that the competition had improved his self-esteem. Mr Dzumba said that when he finished school he would like to become either a lawyer or an engineer.

Thengwe High School teacher Thabiso Mokoena said that she was ‘very proud’ of her students, adding that she had a feeling that the audience was at first not convinced that her school was ‘good enough’ to be in the final. She felt that the audience thought that her school made it to the final because they had been ‘pitied for being a no-fee school’.

Ms Mokoena said that she was extremely proud of the way her team handled the questions put to them by the judges, and that it was during the answering of these questions that the audience realised that the school did not get there by chance, but deserved to be there.

The judges in the final round of the competition were Constitutional Court Justices Bess Nkabinde and Edwin Cameron; director of the Foundation for Human Rights, Yasmin Sooka; chairperson of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, Zonke Majodina; and director of the Centre for Child Law, Professor Ann Skelton.

The annual competition is a joint venture of the Universities of Pretoria, Venda and the Western Cape; the South African Constitutional Literacy and Service Initiative at the Democratic Governance and Rights Unit at the University of Cape Town; the Departments of Justice and Constitutional Development and Basic Education; the South African Human Rights Commission and the Foundation for Human Rights.

The organiser of the competition, Cherryl Botterill, told De Rebus that the teams in the final round were ‘absolutely amazing’ and that the audience was ‘clapping without end’ after the winning team made its presentation. She added that the aim of the competition was to give children like those from Thengwe High School a dream and to give them hope, and that this was achieved.

According to a press release, the Deputy Minister of Basic Education, Enver Surty, who addressed the audience at the opening of the competition, said: ‘The moot court competition places learning at the forefront by creating the opportunity to enhance the learners’ ability to think critically, improve their analytical skills and increase their negotiation and communication skills.’ He added that the competition helped to embed human rights into the curriculum.

Nomfundo Manyathi, nomfundo@derebus.org.za

This article was first published in De Rebus in 2012 (June) DR 7.