The following is an open letter written by the DA Shadow Minister of Basic Education, Nomsa Marchesi MP, to the Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga.
Dear Me Motshekga
Last week, Lumka Mkhetwa went to use the toilet while at school. With no teacher supervising her class at the time, she went alone. When she didn’t return to class, her absence wasn’t noticed. It had not been noticed for hours.
In fact, it was only when the driver commissioned to transport learners home arrived at the end of the school day, and couldn’t find her, that a search got underway. It was discovered that she had drowned in one of the school’s pit toilets.
It is horrific that in 2018, a toilet at a school attended by young children is so dangerous that it can kill a learner.
The Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI), which was supposed to address the very conditions that led to her death, has stopped due to maladministration and delays. Out of 259 schools that were supposed to be provided with sanitation in the 2016/17 year, only nine have.
In the Eastern Cape, where Lumka died, R415 million was taken away from the provincial ASIDI allocation because the projects were not implemented. Your Department has many excuses for the shocking performance, blaming everything from shady contractors and mismanagement by Implementing Agents like the Independent Development Trust (IDT), to bad weather and paperwork delays.
It took the tragic death of a five-year-old for President Cyril Ramaphosa to demand an action plan from you. There is currently no action plan to back the President’s promises on ASIDI and school infrastructure.
Mere days after his State of the Nation Address, in which he promised that all ASIDI projects would be complete by March 2019, the budget cut was announced and your Department was quick to roll back expectations, claiming that the promise was essentially a speech editing error.
Bear in mind this is the same president who stood by while R3.6 billion was taken from crucial school infrastructure in the new national budget for 2018/19. That money could have built 90 new schools.
The government has sacrificed fixing collapsing schools to fund the former President Zuma’s blatantly political promise to pay university fees. Lumka Mkhetwa will, however, never go to university.
School children are desperate for the basic education that they are constitutionally promised. They walk many kilometers each day just to have a shot at passing matric. Despite this, the likelihood of receiving post-school education for many pupils is completely undermined by the fact that they attend schools where the condition of the buildings and services poses a threat to their health and safety.
Because of this, their voices seem to have no chance at influencing the political agenda. That is why I am part of a campaign to push our new president to think a little more about the children in our schools and a little less about the ANC’s party politics.
I hope you feel the same way and will sign our letter to the President, at protectourchildren.co.za – everyone needs to work together to keep our children safe at school. The inaction from government is criminal and must come to an end.