Note to Editors: The following speech was delivered in Parliament today by DA Shadow Deputy Minister of Basic Education, Nomsa Marchesi MP, during the Budget Vote on Basic Education.
Chairperson,
I would like to dedicate this speech to the 18 learners who tragically lost their lives in a minibus taxi accident in Bronkhorstspruit in April this year.
As they say in Isi Xhosa: lala ngoxolo, akuhlanga kungahlanga.
Many children in this country are forced to travel vast distances to get to school.
Like the learners at Chief Nogonyama Technical School in Illembe district in KwaZulu-Natal – which we visited at the beginning of the year – who walk up to 10km a day to gain access to a basic education.
Chairperson, we need to speak honestly about providing education infrastructure in rural and township areas.
On Monday I visited Vuwani in Limpopo, a full year after 28 schools there were burned to the ground during protest action.
As I visited school after school, I quickly realised the Department had sent contractors and architects to assess the damage, but then disappeared. The mobile classrooms are still there, and buildings have not been mended.
My oversight ended at Vhafamadi Secondary School – a school that was burned to the ground. It now stands as a state-of-the-art school built in just three months by a donor – the Shandukani Foundation – together with the National Lottery.
In just three months, a quality learning environment is available to learners. But sadly not to all in the area.
Historically disadvantaged learners are not getting fair service delivery. Is this because they are not allocated enough funds? Shockingly, the fact is that the money allocated to improving these schools is not being spent.
In the 2015/16 financial year alone, R424 million was returned to National Treasury instead of being spent on infrastructure. Limpopo returned R86 million in that year, and in 2016/17 underspent on infrastructure by another R67 million.
Learners of Vhudzani Secondary School – another school burned during protests – has to this day, not received even one of their allocated literature books. They are forced, by an uncaring ANC government to make do with photocopies.
We learned last week that the Limpopo Department of Education has again failed to meet a deadline to deliver textbooks to schools. This is after the MEC promised they would be available by the end of March.
531 Limpopo schools are still waiting for crucial Maths and Science textbooks.
Education departments cannot continue to blame bad contractors and implementing agents.
The reality is, that when these problems with underspending and not delivering textbooks happen every year, it is time to take a long hard look at the leadership in that province who have been appointed by the ANC.
MECs who are repeat offenders must be taken to task, so should the Minister of Basic Education.
Minister Angie Motsekga is ultimately responsible and must be held to account – yet on the textbook issue she told us “I don’t do the plan”.
When protests flared in Vuwani again this year, disrupting the education of nearly 30 000 learners who missed 11 days of school, she simply said: “if they continue to burn schools, let it be”.
This is not leadership. This is passing the buck.
The ANC cannot be trusted to step up to the plate and achieve real change across this country.
The DA takes the commitment to a quality basic education for all learners very seriously. Where we govern, we work with, and not against, other stakeholders to achieve the best possible outcomes for our learners.
This is why the Minister last week confirmed that according to the new ‘inclusive basket of criteria’ for matric results, the Western Cape came out tops in 2016.
Is it not time that we see that kind of progress in other provinces too?
I thank you.