South African safety fears force parents in Cape Town to seek former white-only schools

BBC News

a day ago

Fears of crime and gang violence in the notorious townships on the outskirts of South Africa's city of Cape Town are forcing some parents to make difficult decisions to send their children on long daily commutes to former white-only schools."Thugs would go into the school carrying guns threatening teachers, forcefully taking their laptops in front of the learners," Sibahle Mbasana told the BBC the about the school her sons used to attend in Khayelitsha, Cape Town's largest township."Imagine your child experiencing this regularly. There's hardly any security at the school and even if there is they are powerless to do anything about."It is more than three decades since the end of white-minority rule in South Africa, but there are still black students who have to endure the vast inequalities that were the bedrock of the racist system of apartheid.Mrs Mbasana feels her three children are the inheritors of this legacy - particularly affecting her oldest son Lifalethu who was at a township school between the ages of six and 10.One of the apartheid era's main laws was the Bantu Education Act of 1953, which aimed to prevent black children from reaching their full potential. This created segregated schools with less funding and fewer resources for those in poor areas, which to this day are overcrowded and often suffer from the fallout of high crime, drug use and violence.Mrs Mbasana, who grew up in Eastern Cape province and moved to Khayelitsha when she was 18, decided she had no choice but to transfer Lifalethu, who is now 12, and her other son Anele, 11, to a state school some 40km (25 miles) away in Simon's Town, situated on a picturesque bay on the Cape Peninsula which is famously home to South Africa's navy.The boys have been joined by their seven-year-old sister Buhle at the school, which has better facilities and smaller class sizes."I told myself [that] Buhle was not going to that [local] school because I already endured so many things with the two boys when they were at that school," the 34-year-old clothes designer.She and her husband would love to move their family away from Khayelitsha completely."We don't want to live in the township, but we have to live here because we can't afford to move out," she said."Speak to anyone in the township and they'll tell you they would move out at the first opportunity if they could."
There is no doubt that there are township schools, led by visionary principals and hard-working teachers, that have done wonders despite the obstacles of poor infrastructure and large class sizes.However, safety and security have proved insurmountable for some when, for example, gangs demand protection fees from teachers.The GroundUp news website has reported that teachers at Zanemfundo Primary School in the Philippi East, close to Khayelitsha, were allegedly told to pay 10% of their salaries to the extortionists who seemed to operate with impunity."It is not safe at all. We are in extreme danger," one teacher told GroundUp."These gangs come to the school gun-wielding. Our lives are at risk. Teachers at the school are asking for transfers because they don't feel safe."According to the Western Cape Education Department (WCED), a private security company is now to be stationed at the school and the police are patrolling nearby.But similar incidents have reportedly taken place at five other schools in the surrounding areas of Nyanga, Philippi and Samora Machel.
"My husband Sipho works in the navy in Simon's Town and he travels there so I thought it would be safer and more comfortable for my children to go to that school," said Mrs Mbasana.But longer commutes, often by bus or minibus taxi, to safer schools come with their own dangers and stresses."My children get up at around 4.30am and leave at 5.50am when Sipho is transporting them. When they go by bus, because Sipho may be working elsewhere, they leave by 5.30 and they get home by 4.30 in the afternoon," said Mrs Mbasana."They are always tired and want to sleep. They are strong because they do their homework, but they sleep much earlier than other kids would."Lifalethu made national headlines last year when there was a frantic search for him after he was forced to walk home from Simon's Town to Khayelitsha as the bus he regularly takes refused him entry as he could not find his ticket.The driver involved was subsequently suspended for contravening company policy, which requires employees to assist schoolchildren in uniform who have lost their tickets.With darkness falling, it was Mrs Mbasana's worst nightmare when Anele called to say his elder brother had not been allowed aboard.But a massive social media frenzy followed and by several strokes of good fortune he was found - at one stage the boy had been given a lift by a good Samaritan who dropped him off at a petrol station around 5km from his home.From there he was accompanied on foot by a security guard who lived in his area before being picked up and taken home to his relieved family by police officers who had joined the search for him.
His case highlighted the plight of thousands of pupils from townships some of whom do a round trip of up to 80km per day either on public transport or pre-arranged trips with minibus taxis to attend school in the city's suburban areas - which used to accept only white students in the apartheid era.Wealthier residents of these suburbs often opt for a private education for their offspring, meaning that the state schools there tend to have spaces for those coming from further afield.Donovan Williams, vice-principal of the state primary school in Observatory - a Bohemian area of the Cape Town, says about 85% of his school's intake of around 830 students come from the townships - many of whom are exhausted by their long days."Some parents work in the area while most spend lots of money on transport for their children to access schools with better infrastructure," he told the BBC."Sometimes they fall asleep in class."According to Amnesty International, South Africa has one of the most unequal school systems in the world - with a child's outcome very much dependent on their place of birth, wealth and colour of their skin."Children in the top 200 schools achieve more distinctions in mathematics than children in the next 6,600 schools combined. The playing field must be levelled," its 2020 report said.State schools are subsidised, but parents still have to pay school fees, which in the Western Cape can range from between $60 (£45) and $4,500 (£3,350) annually.Of the nearly 1,700 schools across the province, more than 100 are no-fee institutions as designated by the government for learners living in economically depressed areas.The province's education department explains that it often has to cover a shortfall in funding from the government - and schools in more middle-class areas turn to parents to cover the costs.Recently 2,407 teaching posts had been lost in the province as the government allocated only 64% of the cost of the nationally negotiated wage agreement with teachers, the WCED said.The reduction in posts has meant that some contract teachers were not reappointed when their contracts ended in December, while some permanent teachers have been asked to move schools."We are in an impossible position, and it is not of our making, and the Western Cape is not the only province affected," the WCED added.
The National Professional Teachers' Organisation of South Africa (Naptosa) says the decision has been particularly devastating for schools in impoverished and crime-ridden areas."The schools that are feeling the real impact of this is your typical township school. They can't afford to replace those teachers with governing-body appointments, which is the case with the better-resourced schools where parents can afford to pay extra fees to cover the costs to employ additional teachers," Naptosa executive director Basil Manuel told the BBC."They feel the cut, they will have the bigger class sizes, they will have the teachers that are more stressed out."The children, especially those who are not too academically inclined, will slip through the cracks."Experts blame the continuing educational disparities on the debt the African National Congress (ANC) government of Nelson Mandela inherited in 1994 from the apartheid regime."The ANC had to confront the fact that it couldn't deliver in the way it said it would," Aslam Fataar, research professor in higher education transformation at Stellenbosch University, told the BBC.Faced with fiscal austerity "poorer schools were never given a chance to develop a sustainable platform for teaching and learning", he said."The political interest in what happens in the township schools has been lost 20 years ago. When it comes to teacher expenditure and pupil-teacher ratios you can see how that sector has been neglected. The numbers of teachers in those schools continues to bear the brunt of cuts."Prof Fataar is equally bleak about the future: "I can't see, bar a miracle, how we can increase the finances for poor schools."Parents like the Mbasanas, stuck in the townships and often at the mercy of gangs, have run out of patience.
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