Interventions and Strategies to Address School Violence in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Region: A Scoping Review
Gift Khumalo 
, Nosipho Faith Makhakhe & Bokang Nephtali Lipholo
Issue: Vol.6 No.9 Article 10 pp.1880 -1903
DOI: https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.20256910 | Published online 22nd August, 2025
© 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
School violence is a global public health issue that has an impact on the well-being of children and teachers and their overall psychosocial experiences. It also affects the children’s academic performance and prospects. To address school violence, member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have developed the Care and Support for Teaching and Learning (CSTL) policy framework, which emphasizes the need for comprehensive approaches at both the school and community levels. Therefore, this current scoping review study aimed to understand the interventions and strategies employed to address school violence in the SADC region. The literature search, conducted on Web of Science, ProQuest, Academic Search Ultimate, Medline Ultimate, PubMed, and PsycINFO, led to the inclusion of 17 articles reporting interventions and strategies used in different schools across the SADC region. The findings were categorised under two themes with subthemes: i) interventions (teacher training on violence management, curriculum-aligned interventions, community-based and peer-driven interventions), ii) strategies (school and teacher-initiated approaches, school policies and codes of conduct, and physical surveillance and security measures). These different interventions and strategies were found to contribute to safer school environments and were aligned with the outlined CSTL approaches. While these interventions and strategies were found to be effective, there exist issues with teachers using corporal or physical punishment to discipline learners, therefore signifying the need for better approaches. The study calls for further research to be conducted on approaches addressing school violence and advocates for the CSTL policy framework to be used as a practice roadmap for schools in the SADC region.
Keywords: School Violence, Strategies, Interventions, SADC
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Gift Khumalo is a Lecturer at the Centre for General Education at the Durban University of Technology. He teaches general education modules in Restorative Justice, and Violence and Non-Violence. As a researcher, his research interests are in school social work, adolescents, psychosocial support, and violence. He is currently completing his PhD in Social Work at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
Dr. Nosipho Faith Makhakhe is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for General Education at the Durban University of Technology, South Africa. She is a health promotion specialist whose research interests are exploring HIV prevention strategies amongst female sex workers, long-distance truck drivers, and men who have sex with men. She is passionate about community-based intervention development and qualitative research methods.
Bokang Nephtali Lipholo is a PhD candidate in Social Work at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, with a strong background in Gender-Based Violence (GBV) mitigation programming. Passionate about social and inclusive justice, he is also a Canon Collins Scholar whose work focuses on advancing the rights and wellbeing of vulnerable groups within broader human rights and social protection frameworks.
Khumalo, Gift, Nosipho Faith Makhakhe, and Bokang Nephtali Lipholo. “Interventions and Strategies to Address School Violence in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Region: A Scoping Review,” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 6, no. 9 (2025): 1880 -1903, https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.20256910.
© 2025 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Journals. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
