Laszlo's story

 

 

flevente@yahoo.co.uk

September-October 2001:   five students at Tvind's KwaZulu Natal Experimental College in Durban, South Africa, complained to the police about their treatment at the college and their inability to get money back.        South African police arrested and questioned the Dutch school principal and considered fraud charges.

The case was  dropped after three weeks, for 'lack of evidence'.

Here is Lazlo's story to Tvind Alert:

We have asked the investigators (Captain Chatty and Inspector Govender) at Pinetown`s Police Station,
Commercial Fraud Unit if we can tell you our experiences and everything we know about the case.
They agreed on it. It also means that they must know much more about the things that were going on or are
going on at Kwa-Zulu Natal Experimental College.

The following story is a draft of what happened, we have tried to summarize the things.

Currently there are five state witnesses Robert Westendorp (Holland), Elza Pavsic (Slovenia), Wan-Li
Jia "Nicky" (China), Laszlo Fazekas (Hungary), Adrienne Fulep Fazekasne (Hungary). There were two
more people with us but they made an agreement with Humana so that they drop the charges. Actually this
does not mean anything in this criminal case, even if they made an agreement it can only mean that they have
no further towards the school whatever the court decision may be.

The director is Ester Boere (Holland), and the school`s address is 5/11 Richmond Rd. Pinetown-Durban.

Our group started the programme on the 6th August, originally we were 16, then two more people came. It
did not take long for us to realize that there wasn`t a constructive organisation at KNEC.

We had to attend long and meaningless meetings about  unrelevant topics and we experienced a great lack of organisation.

We did have a few lectures in the beginning during which occasions we were introduced to the school`s
budget. The largest amount of it was the rental costs of the school: They pay R 20,000 a month.  We found it quite strange to pay such a huge amount of money given the fact that usual rental costs in S.A. are much lower and that it seemed unreasonable to rent such a huge complex of buildings for some forty people.  We asked several times who the owner of the building  was and we were answered that it was a private company.

Later one of our teachers - accidentally in a heated conversation - let us know that the owner of that
company was a group called "The Teachers` Group".The remaining lectures were not worth of mentioning.
Many people were quite surprised when they had to learn that KNEC was never a College, it is registered
as a private Company, it is more like a driving school making it actually illegal for them to ask S.A.
Embassies to give study permits for its students, which they by the way did.

The building complex of the school stands of 12 bigger buildings and several other buildings as well, like
offices, huge garages, kitchens etc. altogether about 20-22 buildings. The teachers and the Director live in a separate building up on a hill where they have their private kitchen and showers. In one of the buildings you can even find a perfect but deserted auditorium, we never used it. There is a common male and a common female shower for the students. The room that we used for classroom was above the laundry on the first floor, it was quite strange to see that at the end of the stairs there was no railing making it very dangerous.

When we asked for the internet to the surprise of most of us we found that all the students can use only one
computer between 9.30-11.30 p.m.  It was very strange, since in their brochure there was a photo of a computer room with lots of computers.    In August the school`s phone bill came out to be (according to the Dirctor) R 16.000 (US$ 2000), which they didn't pay, so the telephone company switched off the line from 3Sept. From then even our limited internet was gone and we couldn't keep in touch with the outside.
The director on a group meeting suggested that the bill was so much because of the students, however none
of us had any access to the school's phone.

Our team was the 3rd team at the school, it was called the August Team.  Since the previous Team, the April Team leaves in the second half of October, we had plenty of opportunities to talk with them. They told us that when they arrived in April they all had to live in the same room for six weeks and the only activity they were doing was painting the building, which we found very unusual, since at the time we already knew that the school
didn't own the buildings but rent them from a private company. After they finished with the painting and repairing work they started fundraising for the school, however they were never informed what the money they collected was spent on.

Just to remind you some of these people had to pay US$ 2500 to participate in this programme.

So what is fundraising in S.A. if you study at KNEC?  First you yourself have to apply for a fundraising
permit, which is essential if you want to perfom street collection. If you have it, you`ll have to arrange transport to the place where you have the permission to, transport, possibly for free.   Once you are there you must stay there and fundraise  for the whole week, sometimes for two weeks in a row.  What else do you need ?
You don't need to worry about food, because you get  R15 (US$ 1.70) for a day from the school provided you
keep the receipts. And if you need to eat too much,  you can still go to shops and "clunse" or in another
word beg for it.

You also need accommodation for you and your group.  For free of course and for a week. If you do not have
one, you will have to sleep in the streets or in a park, in South Africa, where crime rates are one of
the highests in the world.  Members of the April team were so desperate that they even tried to ask permissions from the Pietermaritzburg municipial prison to stay in a cell for a few nights. They were refused and never slept there. They also tried and asked churchers but they already had inmates, some local homeless people. Most often they stayed at summer cottages of friends, all in one room, once they were sleeping in an office (8 people) for a week, without having a shower.

So for us it seemed and this team justified that once you are here the only educational programme for you is
to beg for money, food and accommodation. On 21 August our team (18 people) was stuffed into two vans and was sent to Pietermaritzburg for fundraising.   We were given a T-shirt saying: "Kwa Zulu Natal Experimental College trains 100 volunteers to fight AIDS". Before we left we had a short lecture about how to fundraise well. We were informed that we had to each collect R2000 a month for six months in a row, totalling R12,000, otherwise you can't graduate from the college and you can't go to the college. We were also told that we should'nt talk with people who apparently do not have money. LAter we found this very unusal, since we all donned a T-shirt saying that we were fighting against AIDS and because of this many apparently poor people came to us to ask questions about the disease. (1/3 of the people in Kwa Zulu Natal have HIV, most of them don't have access to proper info about HIV/Aids). According to what we were told at the school, we shouldn't have talked to these people.

When we arrived in Pietermaritzburg, we had to firs tlook for accommodation, quickly for free, for 18 people. Fortunatelly one of our team mates had a cousin working for the Pietermaritzburg City Council , who told us that we could stay at a scout camp.    Another SA student had friends at a catering restaurant seeing that we were there for a noble reason offered us proper breakfast and dinner for ten Rand a day each. So we had 5 Rand for lunch (US$ 0.60). After we arranged these in the morning we went to the streets of Pietermaritzburg. We approached the passer-bys and asked for donations. We had no material to sell, all we had was our stories and a newsletter from the school to show. Most of the people were very kind and generous and since they beleived that we were collecting money for AIDS awereness programmes they gave us various amounts of donations.

The people here are not very rich, the average amount that you can get form the majority of the people is
between 50c-2R.If you are doing it all day, you can raise about 100R a day.( You have to make R2000 in a
month for six months to qualify as adevelopment instructor.)

After a few days most people in the area will know you, so they are not likely to give any more. This is
the time when you have to start the whole thing agan, asking for permissions, etc.

On the second day in Pietermaritzburg we realised that our fundraising permit never existed. The reason for
it was that our team was reluctant to ask for permissions and we told the school's director that if they want us to go fundraising then they should arrange the permit for us at least for the first time.  They applied for it and they got an application form and a cover letter from Pietermaritzburg City Council. They gave us a copy of the cover letter and persuaded us that it was the real PERMISSION.  They also gave us a fundraising number which either might have never existed or was an old one.  Fundraising in S.A. without a permit is an offence
against the law. Since the City Council provided us with accomodation they learnt very soon that we never
had a permission so they informed us that we should leave their Scout Camp immediately.

It was on a Friday morning, we removed our luggages to the catering restaurant and went back to fundraise
again. We arrived back to the school by midnight the same day, had to give the money we collected to a
teacher, the same we had to do every evening. The director used to phone every evening asked how
much we made and nothing else.

When we arrived back at school there was no water for the whole weekend, we couldn`t even have a shower. Our group was very furious and we wanted to have a meeting with the director which she refused saying that she was busy with more important issues.

At the school we had two teachers, two young men,one from Angola and another from Zimbabwe. They are very nice people but they themeselves acknowledged that they didn`t have the necessary education to teach
people. They also told us that they didn't have another choice but to work for Humana and do whatever
they are told. They also had to fundraise. They received no salary, only accommodation, food and S.A. visas.

The Zim. teacher (who was working on constructions before in Zimbabwe) had to teach us about HIV/Aids, he
could but rely on a thin TCE booklet, produced by Humana, a booklet which consists only of common
knowledge. He started to read the booklet and since he had not much experience in education whatsoever, he
wanted us to write down all of it, word by word.  The Angolan teacher, who was working with tree plantations before had to teach us Portugues without a coursebook or dictionaries. SA students from our group were requested to teach Zulu, without coursebooks, because it is better to fundraise if you have a basic
knowledge of that language.

This form of education was quite unusal but compared to the previous group's programmes it was still more
effective. That group is going to Mozambique in two weeks' time and they didn't even have one Portugues
lesson or any lessons whatever. Still you can't say that we were satasfied with those few lectures. Anyway
most of the time we were cooking, dishwashing, cleaning and shopping food or participating in
so-called Common Actions, e.g. preparing chairs, unpacking or moving furniture. 

Before we joined the school we were informed that our school fees included full medical insurence and
hospitalisation. At the school we realised that we would never have medical insurance, the school nevere
contacted any insurance company. Even if you wanted to buy simple and cheap medicines,you had to either
beg for the money or you had to go and buy it yourself. Finally your pain is your problem.  It happened that people got sick and nobody cared or looked after them for days. It is very starnge to understand that unless you sort it out for yourself, you will have to go to countries like Angola or Mozambique without any insurance.

The school has a separate building for library. To our surprise the majority of the books are old pulp
fictions and worthless romantic novels. The schools policy was that no money should be spent on books.
They asked second-hand shops to donate to the school the books that they couldn't sell to anyone.

KNEC is a boarding school. It means that you only need pocket money for stamps, toothpaste etc. because you get full board at the school. Every student receives R15 a day for food, they add all the money, do the
shopping and do the cookin for themselves. Obviously R15 for a person a day is not enough for a nutritious
diet. The students who do the shopping have to beg for the food money, it is never given automatically, on
time. Even when it is given, it is not the full amount, so you don't even get that ridiculous 15Rand a day. It happened many times that the whole school had to go on without any food for days. At the end of the
week due to the delays it turns out that your food money a day was about R10. The only constant and basic
feeling that you have there is hunger.

After a few weeks of this kind of starvation your brains can't make or reluctant to make the right deceisions. You don't feel like doing anything, going anywhere, reading anything, you just let things happen, give up
thinkiing about the future, and start living day by day. After a while you think it is normal to live like this, begging for money on the streets or working for nothing.  If you should realise that you want to change something, the best you can do is to go to a shop, buy food and eat. If you do this after a while you will fee like waking up from a bad dream.

Some people started thinking in our group. First a few people left, they tried to ask back their money, in vain.
Humana's number one policy is: We never pay. These people were from S.A. they didn't pay so much, so after shrugging their shoulders they left.   The problems came when the other people started saying they want to quit the programme and to get back their money. The director understood, however not completely that there were serious troubles going on. She made up a story that the minister of Education is to come so everybody should be working together for the occasion by participating in a grand Commmon Cleaning Action which would last for two days.

Some students went on a strike afterwards and decided to go to the beach instead, where they saw that the director , the school leading staff after announcing their commands simply went to the beach to have fun.  Anyway the preparationfor the Minister was going on, if you decided not to participate in it, according to the school policy it meant you were not participating in the school programme and thus must leave the school immediately. (without of course your money).

Later we learnt that the coming of the Minister was a Humana trick, which is applied for collapsing teams.
After all these most of the people decided to leave.   First was Henry from Cameroon, he was followed by
Lilian from S.A. Then Fany left ( swiss) and asked for her money several times, very vigorously. So she was
presented a cheque. Later in the bank she realised that her cheque was bounched. Soon Xolani (S.A) left
with Erica (Australia) and Kriya (USA). After them Tico left, when she asked for her money she was
ignored. She came back with her father and they were given a cheque as well. It was of the same kind of a
cheque of course.

A few days later Robert, Elza and Nicky decided to leave and they tried to ask back their money. The director was too busy to talk with Robert, but they offered R200 to Elza. She paid R12,000 four weeks before. When Nicky was summoned at 11 P.M. they decided to be tougher.He was told that he had two ways: he leaves the school tomorrow by seven, and he may get his money some day or " we'll make you leave tomorrow". He spent the whole night worrying and waiting for the security guards to come and throw him out.

The next morning one of the teachers told the remaining people that " some people decided to quit their programmes, the school policy is such that if you make this decision you must leave immediately, or
if you don't want to we must call the security guards and throw you out".   Then we were asked if anyone of us still wanted to quit the programme. The answer was negative.   Fortunatelly they could never have Nicky and the others thrown out of the school, because the next afternoon the director was arrested and taken to the
local prison.

It was a very unexpected and unpleasant accident for Humana. The next day the so-called Global Building
Weekend had to begin and they invited 50 volunteers from Jo'burg to participate in a huge construction
project on the school buildings. All the fifty volunteers arrived the next day so that they could help the development of the school of such an aimable charity organisation. The mystirios Teacher's Group
decided what works should be accomplished during the weekend. Some of these plans lacked common sense but neither the volunteers nor the students had a say about it. They were only employees.

The work tasks were given in an imperative manner, the people who had just come from Denmark and the teachers were sitting at a table (apart from the director, who was still behind bars) monitoring the process of the work. At the end of the days each constructing groups had to give an account of their work. We were also told that if anyone from the group leaves for more that five minutes somebody from the group must go and find them and bring them back to work. The works done were tough, phisical ones. One group had to remove a huge wall, others had to move furniture all day, etc.

We all had a feeling that thse works were not performed for the student's interests. Of course it was very unpleasant for them that the director was in jail, but they comforted the volunteers and the students that it was only an accident, the police was overacting because of a minor misunderstanding and basically the whole thing was a civil case. (Ester was arrested for common law fraud, which is a criminal offence).

The following day they presented the director ( she was out on bail) saying it was all over, everything is
resolved, things are back in normal. Of course the two of us knew that they were lying, because after Ester
was arrested we went to the police station, asking what was going on. They told us that she was arrested
for commiting common law fraud. They also informed us that the whole department was investigating in Esters
and the school`s case and they told us that things were serious. At this moment we also decided to make
our statements and cancel our programmes.

By the news many impotant Humana people were sent so as to repair the damages. They offered us to go to another DRH school which we of course refused. We told them we didn`t want to be associated with such a company and we asked them to pay our damages and let us go.  Seven of us had a meeting with their attorney. They tried their best to set the whole case to a civil case, which of course would have been the end of the story for us. Then they were trying to make individual agreements so as to break up our group. In two cases they succeded but two other people Elza and Nicky, who were offered a bigger amount, refused accwepting it saying they either compensated all of us, or there was no agreement.

A few days after the meeting each of us received two letters, at dinner time, in front of the dining hall, so that all the other students could see and be intimidated not to make their statements.

One letter said: 

" Dear Sir,
State v. Ester Karen Boere 19 sept 2001
We act for Ester K. Boere.
The charges that you have laid with the police have no
foundations and are ill- conceived. Please be advised
that our client is considering institutuing an action
against you for malicious prosecution.
Yours faithfully;
Tamlyn Reid
Garlicke and Bousfield INC"

The other letter from the same company informed us that we had to move to another building on the school`s premises. We were no longer allowed to dine or enter the dining hall. From the meeeting with their attorney it was obvious for us that their attorney did not know Humana or its associated companies. They are also trying to emphasise that Ester wasn't the director of the school, they are saying she was only an employee. This is quite strange, given the fact, that until her arrest she had signed all the documents as the director of the school.

Currently we are staying in a seperate building, isolated from the rest of the students. As food allowances we are given R15 a day. (The bail condition says that they must provide us food and accommodation until the court decision).  However we have nice lodgings, we wre refused when we asked for a fridge , pans, stove or cooking facilities. We have to use open fire (barbecue) in the garden if we want to prepare hot food for ourselves.

This is the current sitution, we are waiting for the court decision and we hope for less rain.

Things are looking up, since we werw informed that the director's visa expires on the 4 October, which means
that after that date, unless they make an agreemant with us she will have to return to prison.   Our two teachers were degarded to students again. The students and the people from Denmark work from dawn to dusk to make the place look more like a school and less like a factory.  They have bought new computers, Portuguese coursebooks  and installed a lot of furniture. 

After the police dropped charges, Laszlo and the students wrote again:

The news is quite shocking. By the way I got to know the name of the local TG company, its name is "Argyl's
Property". But the building is still owned by the government, so they just have it from the government.
This is why it is not surprising that the whole thing have been turned down; Ester's visa expired on the 4
Oct, so they had a show-trial on the 3 October where the prosecutor suddenly realised that there is no
evidence for any criminal activity and the charges are provisionally withdrawn.

Ester went to Zim the next morning. It is very interesting to know that you can't just go to Zim, you need at least a few days to organise the tickets, etc. Let alone two days before the session they gave us food allowance for two days only, saying they would not need to provide us anything after the session anyway. I mean they had
known it before that the judge will drop the case, without listening to the witnesses or looking at the evidences. When you wrote about the ANC connection I did'nt believe, now I know it for sure. Even our consul, who is a well-known lawyer in SA said that it must take at least three months. He was wrong. 

We (my wife and me) left the building and trying to look for another possibility because we want to do
something anyway.

They have also started operating in Nigeria, the system is the following: 1. get into the government 2.
do what you want.

I still can't believe that the prosecutor dared to say that it is absolutally legal to rent a building from a
private company, advertise it as a whatever college or university, drag people from all over the world, ask
for (false) study permits from embassies, take their money, make them work like slaves and then throw them
to the streets. 

We are a bit sad.

Bye. Anyway we have started to write a book about our experiences. We have enough, believe me.

Laszlo Adrienne