What does it take to get the Eastern Cape Department of Education to fix a school?
Nearly three years later, a school damaged in a storm remains broken
In 2014 a strong storm at Zanokhanyo Junior Secondary School in Butterworth damaged classrooms. The former school principal reported the matter to the district office, whose staff promised a new school. However three years later no classrooms have been replaced.
The new school principal, Mveleli Ncwadi, who started in 2015, said he has also contacted the district office several times seeking answers with no luck.
This school is made of ten prefab and two brick classrooms with 268 learners from grade R to grade nine. All the prefab classrooms have broken windows. No classrooms have electricity, though the staffroom, recently built with funds from the Motsepe Foundation, does have electricity.
Learners and teachers use pit toilets. None of the learners’ toilets have doors, and the teachers’ toilets have broken doors. Anyone can see you while you are inside the toilet.
Ncwadi said it has been empty promise after empty promise from the Eastern Cape Department of Education.
When GroundUp visited the school a week ago, along with Equal Education, learners complained about the cold because of the broken windows. Ncwadi said after a long wait for the department they decided to use some school funds to patch the broken walls. However there is not enough money to fix all the classrooms.
Now with the expected rainy and windy weather of winter, the school staff and learners fear losing more classrooms. “We are doing what we can but it will never be enough until the department comes with a better solution. For instance now we are trying to fix only walls. Then we will remain with broken windows,” said Ncwadi.
Grade eight learner Viwe Ngxola, who sits next to a broken door, said that when it is cold she wishes not to come to school but she forces herself. Ngxola does not only sit next to a broken door; there’s a hole in the wall next to her desk.
Department spokesperson Malibongwe Mtima confirmed that the school reported the incident. However he said that it was reported to the circuit office not the district one. He said after receiving questions from GroundUp he contacted the district to investigate the matter. “As we speak the Infrastructure and Disaster Department are looking into this matter,” he said.
However Ncwadi said he reported the matter to the district office, since there’s no circuit office in Butterworth and he has not received any call from the Infrastructure Department.
Last month Equal Education called upon the department to build proper schools in the Eastern Cape. A report titled Planning to Fail by Equal Education said that a principal has to report a disaster to the district director. The district director must then report it to the provincial infrastructure unit, which will send an implementation agent to assess the situation. Funds are then allocated to the implementation agent. The report criticises the government for fixing infrastructure damaged in disasters too slowly.
Recent GroundUp stories on school infrastructure problems in the Eastern Cape
The school where children kneel on the floor and use chairs as desksÂ
Over 1,000 learners shut down PE school
Systematic failure in Eastern Cape education
The learners who cross a lake with hippos in it to get to school
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Letters
Dear Editor
Every time this type of thing happens we are informed that it is a result of Apartheid, this has been going on now for 23 years.
So lets get the record straight, Apartheid made some mistakes, so lets blame the Apartheid government for those mistakes. Then ANC took power, up to the moment the ANC took power, no further blame can be attached to the Apartheid government. Why? Because any decisions that were now being made were made by the ANC, if Apartheid got it wrong, then decisions by the ANC should correct that situation. If the ANC failed to make proper decisions to correct Apartheid mistakes, then the ANC becomes responsible for not doing this.
Since the revolution, there have been two ANC governments that we need to take into account, the Mbeki ANC and the ZUMA ANC.
Well the Mbeki ANC not only did not correct Apartheid mistakes, they made more mistakes themselves, and when the ZUMA ANC took over they did not correct the mistakes of the Apartheid Government, for if they had corrected them, we would not be in the mess we are today, and besides not correcting the mistakes of Apartheid, but made serious mistakes themselves, following the Mbeki ANC came the ZUMA ANC, this version of the ANC not only has not corrected the mistakes of Apartheid, but has also not corrected all the mistakes of the Mbeki ANC, they have certainly made mistakes of their own, and are continuing to make mistakes.
What does this mean it means that the current government cannot blame the previous governments for the mess the country is in, they can only blame themselves, because they have all the power and authority to fix the mistakes of the past. This they are required to do.
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