Madoosa it has taken me numerous tries to get myself to read your post because it keeps bringing me back to where we were with dd last year. Kindergarten was absolute misery for her. Nightmares, crying in her sleep, begging not to go to school. "Please Mommy I'll go to kindergarten anywhere else just please please don't make me go back in that room." It was awful -I really, REALLY feel your pain.
My dd totally shut down in this environment - she didn't work below her abilities she just shut down completely. I got her classroom changed but the damage had already been done. It was late January (halfway through the school year here) before she would even acknowledge that she knew her letters in school. One day she read 3 levels of books for the second teacher but never read for her again. I kept asking for interventions for a documented fine motor deficit and to figure out what was going on with her reading. The school kept refusing saying "She'll never qualify - she's too smart." It was an extremely punitive environment and by the end of the year my happy, outgoing little girl was totally disabled by anxiety. Once we finally got her screened it turned out she has major ld issue that this school would not only refuse to address but had been actively punishing her for.
I don't know what your system is like in South Africa. I can just tell you that I kick myself every day - and will continue to do so for a long, long time - for having kept her in that environment. Twice I actually pulled her out of her classroom with the intention of withdrawing her from school only to be convinced that the school would address the issues. Now that we are in a very supportive school environment dd is slowly coming around. She had a substitute teacher last fall who yelled and that seems to have been the "breakthrough trigger" to make her uncomfortable in this school too. Although she has MUCH less anxiety she started having headaches (daily for a while). It will take us years to overcome the damage caused by that bad school situation.
If I had my situation to do over again I would have pulled her in a heartbeat. I had a bad feeling about the teacher from the first time I met her. As soon as dd started shutting down I knew my feeling was correct. If you have the option to home school or can afford a private alternative I would most definitely look at it very seriously. I also would look at getting your ds into a play therapy situation - if he was enduring anything like my dd experienced last year he may need some help working through it.
Good luck! And I commend you for working to address it.
