Chaos broke out at Chamandu High School at Mapuve village near Giyani two weeks ago when parents stormed into the principal's office to hand over a memorandum saying that he should be fired.

The angry parents had gone to the school to have a meeting with the school management, during which the principal, Mr Thomas Manganyi, was to be given a memorandum of their grievances.

However, after the principal had not shown up at the meeting, angry parents then decided to stage a protest outside his office. The protest nearly erupted into a scuffle when the principal was advised by his colleagues not to accept the memorandum.

A compromise was then made when it was agreed that the principal would receive a copy of the memorandum while the original would be sent to the circuit office.

All this came after the school had failed to improve the performance of scholars to the parents' satisfaction, despite a warning by parents in January 2011. "We told them to improve the results, and nothing changed. Now we do not want the same principal anymore. We need a new principal at this school," said Mr Eric Makondo, who led the community during the protest.

The key issue in the memorandum was that the principal should “go immediately”. It was also stated in the memorandum that the old SGB should be disbanded and a new one be elected to lead the school. The community alleged that the teachers did not have discipline under the current principal.

"They come to classes at will and do not commit themselves to teaching our kids," Makondo said. According to him, they had 30 people monitoring the school during the course of last year. "Our findings confirmed exactly what the learners had been telling us about teachers coming late and sometimes not teaching at all,” he added.

However, other parents felt that all of the teachers should go because of their lack of commitment to teach the children. “The poor principal has little to do if these teachers do not have discipline themselves – all of them should go,” said Ms Anna Ngobeni, one of the parents.

Learners, on the other hand, were busy exploring avenues to seek alternative education elsewhere. Makondo, however, managed to stop the angry parents and said that they must just focus on removing the principal. He also averted what could have been a clash between the police and the learners, when some pupils closed the gate, trying to stop the police vans that were streaming in to control the situation at the school.

The principal couldn't comment in this regard and he only referred our reporter to the department.

Asked what powers parents had to fire a principal, the spokesperson for the Department of Education, Mr Pat Kgomo, said that parents did not have the power to fire the principal.

"If they have problems with the principal, they should approach us through the local circuit office. Then we will try to follow it up," he said, adding that the department discouraged parents from taking the matter into their own hands if something was wrong a a school.

The school got a 17% pass rate in the 2010 matric results which improved to 38% last year.