Protected by the KZN Department: Rogue Principal terrorising staff, endangering toddlers and looting Saphinda Full-Service School.

Despite a signed suspension letter issued two months ago, Principal Nightingale Bhengu remains firmly entrenched at Saphinda Full Service School, allegedly shielded by the KwaZulu Natal Department of Education.

This shocking revelation comes as The Public Dispatch exposes years of alleged corruption, child endangerment, financial looting, and bullying. According to sources this school have become a personal empire of impunity.

Saphinda Full-Service School was established to support learners with barriers to learning, children who require additional educational assistance and specialised interventions to succeed. But the school has allegedly become a danger zone for learners

Multiple sources describe a school where established procedures are allegedly ignored, where governance structures have been sidelined, where public funds are shielded from scrutiny, and where facilities intended to support vulnerable learners have been closed.

The Public Dispatch has seen evidence suggesting that many of these concerns were formally reported as far back as May 2021. Yet five years later, the same allegations continue to surface, the same questions remain unanswered and the same leadership remains firmly in place

The Principal at the gate while the school runs itself

At any functional school, the principal is in an office managing administration, or in classrooms evaluating curriculum delivery. Not at Saphinda.

"You will never find the principal in the classroom. Instead of standing in front of a chalkboard, she spends her school days stationed at the security gate, playing guard. She allocated all the grades and all subjects to her staff members so that leaves her with nothing to do. In fact she has never done any teaching in the school. Parents have repeatedly questioned what academic responsibilities she actually performs because she's never in the classroom," a source said.

Sources further alleged that the Principal switched off the school's water supply and forced them to use buckets in the toilets.

"The school has a borehole and it is not faulty but the Principal doesn't want them to use it. Her intention is to punish the staff members. She tells them to use buckets," a source said.

Half a million rand and a school in ruins

Saphinda Full-Service School is, by every account given to The Public Dispatch, a physical ruin. Facilities are dilapidated. Basic teaching tools are absent. Yet the school receives an annual allocation of approximately R500,000 from the Department.

"The money is there but it is not used for school needs. In fact nobody has access to the school funds except Bhengu and the Treasurer. Even the School Governing Body has no access to financial statements, Bhengu controls everything. As we speak, the teachers are sharing one laptop. Teachers are forced to purchase their own stationery from personal salaries because the school refused to provide basic materials required for teaching," a source said.

Saphinda is publicly listed as a no-fee public primary school. Its own Facebook page describes it as a non-paying Primary and Pre-Primary School, established 1966. However, The Public Dispatch received information that parents are being asked to pay R800 for Grade RR.

"Grade RR was officially phased out, yet Bhengu continues to run it as if the policy does not exist. Parents are being charged for a programme that should no longer be operating yet these kids are effectively part of the school, they are even fed from school. But the Principal is unduly collecting money from parents and she's not even disclosing it. There are serious concerns about where these funds ultimately end up and who is benefiting from them," the source asked.

Betraying the mandate: Starving the vulnerable

Saphinda’s designation as a full-service school is not a marketing gimmick or a decorative title.

It is a serious, heavily funded mandate conferred by the state. It means the school is legally obligated to accommodate, protect, and provide specialized clinical and academic support to learners with severe learning barriers and special educational needs, children for whom mainstream education is a dead end.

Yet, under Bhengu’s draconian rule, the specialized support center, the laboratory, and the library, the very organs meant to serve these fragile children have been shut down.

"The support centre, laboratory and library, facilities that lie at the very heart of a full-service school's mandate have been shut down, effectively stripping vulnerable learners of the support and resources they are entitled to receive. The school is no longer fulfilling the purpose for which it was designated a full-service institution,"

"Learners who require additional assistance, specialised interventions and individual attention have effectively been denied access to critical support structures. The very children the school is supposed to protect and uplift are being left behind," the source revealed.

Fear, humiliation and allegations of intimidation

The picture painted by sources is not merely one of administrative dysfunction but of a workplace allegedly governed through intimidation.

They said that, Educators who have the moral courage to show up for work are allegedly subjected to a barrage of vile, degrading homophobic and discriminatory insults from Bhengu.

"She openly calls them "izitabane" (people in the same sex relationshis) and "izidakwa" (drunkards). She constantly reminds them that their employment is favor granted by their 'gods'," the source continued.

Yet the allegations of intimidation do not end with insults and bullying. According to sources, the climate of fear at the school allegedly descends into something far more disturbing and difficult to comprehend.

Among the most harrowing and consistent complaints are claims that Bhengu conducts midnight excursions to local graveyards to perform dark spiritual rituals. According to multiple sources connected to the school, these rituals involve digging into cemetery soil to physically bury written lists of teachers' names who have dared to challenge her authority.

While these midnight activities are impossible to independently verify, their widespread, terrified circulation among the staff speaks volumes. Whether viewed as literal spiritual warfare or a highly effective, calculated strategy of psychological terror, it reveals the paralyzing atmosphere of anxiety, dread, and cult-like intimidation that Bhengu has cultivated inside this public institution.

Five years of complaints. Five Years of inaction.

The Public Dispatch is in possession of a memorandum of grievances from signed in Umlazi during May 2021 and submitted to then Umlazi Circuit Manager. The memorandum was directed against Bhengu and Head of Department

On 1 June 2021, staff wrote again after an undertaking by the Circuit Manager to provide feedback allegedly went unfulfilled. On 15 June 2021, the matter was escalated further to the MEC, the Head of Department, the Minister and the Deputy Minister. The final memorandum ended with a warning that now reads as a devastating indictment of official inaction:

"Evil thrives when good men do nothing."

Five years later, there has been no intervention and the same institution remains under the same leadership, Bhengu.

The shield of complicity: A Suspension Ignored

The rot goes all the way to the top.

Highly reliable sources within the Department have confirmed to The Public Dispatch that an official suspension letter against Bhengu was drafted, finalized, and signed approximately two months ago.

Yet, she is still sitting at the gate. She is still in her post. She is still terrorizing staff.

Sources explicitly allege that Bhengu is being protected by highly placed, corrupt elements within the Department of Education who are far more invested in shielding a rogue loyalist than they are in defending the constitutional rights of vulnerable learners and traumatized educators.

This protective umbrella explains why the Department's spokesperson, Muzi Mahlambi can confidently make public promises about infrastructure visits that he knows will never take place.

This is no longer a case of administrative oversight or bureaucratic sluggishness. This is active, criminal complicity.

The Public Dispatch submitted detailed questions to the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education. The publication also afforded Bhengu a full and unconditional opportunity to respond to every allegation raised by sources.

Neither the Department nor Bhengu had provided substantive responses at the time of publication.

For now, the defenseless children of Saphinda Full-Service School remain trapped in a living nightmare of fear and dysfunction, while the bureaucrats paid to protect them look the other way.