OP-ED: AN ACTIVIST’S PERSPECTIVE ON SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION
“The failure of South African non-fee-paying schools to meet the norms and standards set forth by the government has led to unsafe conditions and at least two student deaths. It is quite evident that the inequality gap will continue to widen in South Africa if the norms and standards are not met.”
OVERVIEW
This article is part of our series featuring the voices on the front lines of democracy. This article, An Activist’s Perspective on South African Education, comes to us from Lawrence Manaka, Founding Director & CEO of LesediLtP, and the views expressed therein are his own. LesediLtP is a member of the Democracy Moves coalition, and we stand with Manaka in LesediLtP’s fight for a more democratic future in South African communities.
LesediLtP is a nonprofit founded by high-school student members and young adult members. LesediLtP works to depreciate poverty in their community of Ivory Park based in Gauteng, South Africa. They’ve formed a movement that aims to fight against poverty through advocacy and act as the South African government's watchdogs.
AN ACTIVIST’S PERSPECTIVE ON SOUTH AFRICAN EDUCATION
By Lawrence Manaka, Founding Director & CEO of LesediLtP
You can say without a shadow of a doubt that South Africa has one of the best, most equitable constitutions in the world. And yet, it is one of the most unequal countries. This is evidenced by South Africa’s massive youth unemployment rate of 55.75 percent in 2020. When you count discouraged job seekers, the overall unemployment rate is 42 percent.
In addition to the daily struggle to get jobs, South Africa has also recorded an alarming 3 million job losses since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. The threat to working-class livelihoods has never been greater. Research suggests that at least 15% of children go to bed hungry and almost half of all households run out of money for food during the course of the month.
Education plays a critical role in alleviating poverty in South Africa as the majority of children go to non-fee-paying schools that provide them with a minimum of two meals per day. However, South African education is struggling financially, and hovering on the edge of a crash despite advocacy attempts to rescue it.
In November 2013, the government did create binding norms and standards, the first of their kind in South Africa. They set forth a guide for required physical resources for schools with clear guidelines and timeframes about how to achieve them. Education officials set a deadline of 17 years for all schools to meet these norms and standards. Unfortunately, the country is falling behind. As of June 2016, 171 schools in the country did not have access to a clean water supply, 569 were without electricity, and 68 were without school toilets.
The schools’ response towards adopting the norms and standards is alarmingly slow as the government missed a 2020 deadline. It was not the first, and I am sorry to say I do not think it will be the last. The failure of schools to meet the norms and standards has led to the deaths of 2 young kids who literally drowned in human feces: Michael Komape in the Limpopo province and Lumka Mkhethwa in the Eastern Cape province. The government has failed to take responsibility for their preventable deaths. To this day, there are still schools that use pit latrine toilets in the Eastern Cape.
Another issue of ongoing injustice is the issue of scholar transport. Some students must walk at least 10 km each day to get to school, and the government is still not doing enough to address the issue.
Furthermore, the government's response to COVID-19 in schools is cause for concern. Private schools were more well-equipped to respond to the regulations to counteract the widespread of COVID-19 than were the public schools. The government put the non-paying schools at a disadvantage when they closed schools for at least 4 months and failed to provide any solid alternatives that would have enabled all learners to get access to education, their basic human right. The virtual learning plans that were put in place favoured l children who lived in the cities with a proper internet connection. In fact, the pandemic regulations didn’t disrupt the model C schools’ curriculum at all, given they are highly equipped with the tools they need for their students. Only schools with proper equipment and resources were able to continue educating remotely despite the national lockdown.
Despite all the challenges highlighted, the National Treasury decided to further de-invest in education, reasoning that donors could make up for the rest of the budget. As a result, they de-invested over R2.1 Million from the education department.
It is quite evident that the inequality gap will continue to widen in South Africa as long as the norms and standards aren’t met and as long as the government deprioritizes equality in all schools, defunds the education department, and remains too slow to close it.
STAY INFORMED
LesediLtP is leading the way to fight for school equality so that these preventable problems in the South African education system can finally be solved and every child has a chance at an education. Learn more about LesediLtP’s work on Twitter @LesediLtPN.