About 20 students of the Gaborone Senior Secondary School in the capital of Botswana have been arrested in the past weeks for threatening to kill teachers and burn down the school.

Local media, The Botswana Gazzette reports that the students had been harrassing teachers and fellow students since the beginning of the term despite the suspension of many of them.

“Things took the wrong turn a week ago when the gangs started to threaten to kill some teachers. Some were reported to have been planning to burn schools down and we couldn’t take that lightly,” Ray Phozah, a worker at the school said.

This reign of gang terror has left students scared to go to the school while teachers lock themselves in offices when there are disturbances. One incident is cited where a fight broke out between two students when a maths teacher was late; the said teacher was threatened by a student gang vowing to take revenge, the paper said.

The school authorities were forced to organise an emergency meeting with parents and teachers where they revealed that the students were a violent gang engaged in drug and alcohol abuse thereby intimidating students and teachers.

A teacher at the school confirmed to the paper that the students don’t attend classes anymore but take money from other students and beat them.

“There is nothing physically we can do to stop them. Even when they are suspended, they wait for other learners at the bus rank where they are beaten senselessly and their money and other belongings taken from them,” he said.

Police are reported to have started patrolling the school after arresting the students. They however did not comment on the arrest when the paper contacted them.

Meanwhile, police in the southwest of the capital is investigating the death of a secondary school student who was murdered and dumped on Sunday morning.