Equal Education slams Gwarube over claim that 90% of schools now in a better condition
Basic education minister, Siviwe Gwarube. (Lefty Shivambu/Gallo)
Civil society movement Equal Education accused Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube of failing to understand the reality of public schools after she said last week that 90% of them are now in a better condition, according to her department's latest infrastructure assessments.
Gwarube's comments were not true, with some classrooms not having been renovated since 2008, said Equal Education's spokesperson, Ayanda Sishi Wigzell.
'I think the minister needs to visit more schools across the country. The infrastructure many children are exposed to is not safe at all.'
Gwarube told parliament that all mud and asbestos schools have been eradicated, marking what she called a 'major milestone in creating safer learning environments'.
But the minister said there was still an infrastructure backlog requiring about R129 billion, for the eradication of unsafe pit latrines, the replacement of dilapidated structures and provision of essential services such as water and electricity.
'Over 8 222 schools still require additional classrooms, and meeting that need would cost approximately R32 billion. While we're working closely with the provinces to find solutions, this remains a critical area of focus,' said Gwarube.
South Africa's public education system comprises 22 529 schools, according to the department of basic education. Recent data showed that the condition of 390 schools was categorised as 'very poor', 1 850 were identified as 'poor' and 53% of all schools were marked as 'good'.
The Eastern Cape has the highest number of schools in the 'poor' and 'very poor' categories, totalling 1 090. In contrast, the Western Cape stands out with no schools in these categories. The province has the highest percentage of schools in 'good' and 'excellent' condition.
Gwarube said 35 585 schools still required additional toilets to accommodate rising enrolment numbers, which would cost an estimated R14 billion.
According to the department, 93% of the 3 372 identified pit latrines at schools have been replaced with appropriate sanitation facilities.
The Sanitation Appropriate for Education initiative, introduced in 2018, targeted the elimination of unsafe pit toilets, but delays in its implementation have resulted in the death of children, the most recent being three-year-old Unecebo Mboteni, who fell into one such pit at a daycare centre in the Eastern Cape in 2023.
Equal Education, which has been advocating for the
'Pit latrines in schools do not inherently equal education; in fact, they pose significant barriers to a quality and equitable learning environment. The presence of pit latrines, particularly plain pit latrines, creates numerous problems that negatively impact student well-being and educational outcomes,' Wigzell said.
In May last year, new regulations were gazetted which stipulated that schools lacking basic services such as water, electricity, or sanitation must comply within 18 months. Schools constructed with unsuitable materials were given a 12-month compliance window.
'We cannot have learners in danger of drowning in pit toilets or learning in inappropriate structures, 30 years into our democracy,' Gwarube said.
According to a response by the minister to questions in parliament last November, 405 schools in the Eastern Cape were still using pit latrines, 170 in KwaZulu-Natal, 40 in Mpumalanga and 37 in Limpopo.
The department launched an app in partnership with Vodacom, which allows users to report unsafe toilets in schools, monitor progress on their removal and provide real-time feedback on infrastructure improvements.
'Far too many learners still face daily risks to their health and safety because of inadequate school infrastructure,' Gwarube conceded.
According to the National Professional Teachers' Organisation of South Africa, provinces such as KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape face significant hurdles because of high infrastructure needs and budgetary constraints.
'These provinces host some of the most rural and under-resourced communities in the country, where schools often lack basic infrastructure like safe sanitation, reliable electricity, and adequate classroom space,' said the organisation's spokesperson, Basil Manuel.
Parliament's portfolio committee on basic education said in February that 80% of the KwaZulu-Natal department of education's budget had been allocated to
The department has introduced a 10-point strategy aimed at enhancing infrastructure planning, delivery, maintenance and monitoring at the provincial level.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mail & Guardian
an hour ago
- Mail & Guardian
Water and sanitation department ramping up reforms, interventions to avoid water crisis
Water and sanitation minister, Pemmy Majodina. (DWS/X) The department of water and sanitation (DWS) is intensifying infrastructure development, municipal support and institutional reform to avert a worsening national water crisis, it told parliament's standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) on Tuesday. The department's director general Sean Phillips said, although national raw water supply remained broadly in balance with demand, infrastructure strain, municipal dysfunction, corruption and high water losses had placed critical pressure on service delivery, particularly in Gauteng and Phillips said, according to the department's asset register, 81% of the national water resource infrastructure was either in 'a fair condition, good condition or very good condition and we are raising finance for investment in new water infrastructure'. At a 'Generally speaking, municipal water and sanitation infrastructure is not at all in a good condition. Water services have 'It's also about municipalities not hiring people with the right skills to properly manage and operate the water infrastructure.' Last week, the auditor general told Scopa that the water and sanitation department and its associated entities were incurring billions of rand in losses because of pervasive poor planning and project delays. Deputy Minister David Mahlobo told the committee on Tuesday that non-revenue water losses stood at 52% in Gauteng and 62% in eThekwini. Of the 144 water services authorities in municipalities in the country, 105 were performing 'dismally', Minister She said her department formed part of an inter-ministerial committee that would send teams to the 'top 20' worst affected municipalities to intervene. Several structural reforms had been implemented, said Phillips. These include amendments to the Water Services Act that aim to separate the roles of Water Services Authorities and Water Services Providers; ring-fencing revenue collected from water tariffs for use in water services only and the introduction of single-point accountability for service delivery. The reforms are supported by the treasury's Reform of Metropolitan Trading Services Programme and Phase 2 of South Africa ranks among the 30 most water-scarce countries in the world, yet the average per capita consumption remains well above the global average. Phillips said that to ensure raw water security in the future, three things were needed: more dams, diversification of the country's water mix and more effective conservation and demand management. Addressing the high number of She used the example of pollution, saying the department would first talk to offending municipalities, then warn them and eventually take the non-compliant to court. Those cases lasted for five to seven years, she said, and in that time, the pollution continued. Infrastructure backlogs have been another area of concern. For years, major national surface water projects have been stalled, including phase 2 of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, the uMzimvubu and uMkhomazi projects. These are now in the implementation phase. Progress had also been made in unblocking long-delayed municipal projects. In the Giyani water project, for example, phase 1 had brought piped water to all households in 23 of 24 villages, while phase 2, which will extend services to 31 more villages, is set to begin later this year. The department has deployed water boards to support struggling municipalities in Gauteng, Free State, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal. Interventions here include infrastructure repairs, sewer unblocking, pump station refurbishments and restoring municipal operation and maintenance functions. In Emfuleni, Rand Water has led an intervention aimed at curbing To address mounting debt, the water department, in partnership with the treasury, has introduced credit control measures, a debt write-off mechanism and the withholding of equitable share transfers for non-compliant municipalities. The department said it had also taken a firm stance on sanitation. It has gazetted new norms and standards declaring bucket toilets unacceptable and is promoting chemical toilets and water-efficient, non-sewered sanitation technologies in dense informal settlements. The Bucket Eradication Programme, originally managed by the department of human settlements and now under the water and sanitation portfolio, has completed bucket replacements in the Eastern Cape and North West. Projects in the Free State and Northern Cape are nearing completion. Efforts to professionalise the department include a revised organisational structure and the appointment of qualified senior management. Improved financial controls have seen the department move from Audit performance has improved, said Phillips, with the department now receiving unqualified audits with findings and implementing a roadmap to achieve clean audits. It has also significantly reduced irregular and unauthorised expenditure compared to 2017-18 levels. Anti-corruption measures have also been strengthened, according to the department. Its internal audit unit finalised 446 investigations between 2019 and 2025, confirming 326 cases of misconduct. Disciplinary outcomes included dismissals, suspensions and demotions. A new Water Sector Anti-Corruption Forum, launched jointly with the Special Investigating Unit in May 2025, aims to improve enforcement and information sharing.
Mail & Guardian
an hour ago
- Mail & Guardian
Ramaphosa defends BEE as vital for inclusive economic growth
President Cyril Ramaphosa President Cyril Ramaphosa has again defended black economic empowerment, saying the In his weekly newsletter, Ramaphosa said South Africa should 'pursue growth and transformation in concert' and must 'dispense with the false notion that we must make a choice between growth and transformation'. Economic growth without transformation would entrench exclusion, while transformation without growth was unsustainable, he warned. The remarks follow mounting opposition to broad-based black economic empowerment (broad-based BEE) and the Employment Equity Act, including from political parties such as the Democratic Alliance (DA) and Freedom Front Plus, which are part of Ramaphosa's government of national unity. In May, Freedom Front Plus urged Ramaphosa to dispose of BEE laws and commit to investor friendly policies after he led a delegation to the United States to try to mend damaged relations over what President Donald Trump says are South African laws that discriminate against whites. The DA is challenging the Malatsi rejected suggestions that the regulations were aimed at paving the way for Elon Musk's Starlink to operate in South Africa, as critics have suggested. Starlink has failed to get an operating licence because South African-born Musk refused to meet broad-based BEE ownership requirements. South Africa's drive for transformation stands in contrast to the US's rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion measures, which puts at risk global policy coherence ahead of the G20 presidency handover between the two countries later this year. Although it has been widely criticised for only benefiting the politically-connected and being riddled with corruption, Ramaphosa praised broad-based BEE for creating black industrialists and changing management control and patterns of ownership in companies. 'The progress we have made is undeniable. We have seen real changes in ownership patterns, including more businesses owned by women. We have seen changes in management control, enterprise development and skills development,' he wrote in the newsletter. He noted that, according to Statistics South Africa, from 2006 to 2023, black African households experienced real income growth of 46%, coloured households of 29% and Indian households of 19%. 'Despite this progress, the average income of white households is still nearly five times higher than that of black African households. This is the gulf we must close through deliberate and sustained efforts to expand opportunity,' Ramaphosa added. He highlighted the 'poly-crisis' of global conflict, economic stagnation, mistrust in institutions and climate change as the challenge to government efficiency. The Institute of Race Relations has criticised broad-based BEE, arguing instead for ' Ramaphosa said transformation would continue as a guiding principle for the government's infrastructure programmes, new industries in the green transition, localisation efforts and reindustrialisation. 'The transformation we seek is not about ticking boxes. It is about building a resilient, just economy for generations to come,' he wrote in the newsletter.
Mail & Guardian
2 hours ago
- Mail & Guardian
Trump and Malema are more similar than they would like to admit
EFF leader Julius Malema. Photo: X The What Trump probably intended as a damning exposé of societal ills in South Africa inadvertently illuminated the bemusing congruence between himself and the very figure he sought to condemn. Despite occupying vastly different ideological poles, Trump and Malema are, in essence, two sides of the same political coin: larger-than-life figures who wield hyperbole and spectacle to bend public discourse to their will. Trump built his brand on disrupting norms, lambasting elites, and speaking in a vernacular that resonated with a segment of the American populace feeling unheard. His rallies are choreographed performances, his pronouncements often designed more for shock value and media capture than for precise policy articulation. Malema, too, is a showman par excellence. From his early days as a firebrand youth leader in the ANC to his role as the self-styled 'commander-in-chief' of the EFF, Malema has consistently pushed boundaries, employing confrontational rhetoric that electrifies his base and forces opponents to react. He thrives on controversy, using provocative statements and symbolic gestures, such as the controversial 'Kill the Boer' chant, to rally support for his vision of radical economic transformation and social justice. Malema is ' The core of their shared political artistry lies in their strategic deployment of hyperbole. For Trump, every challenge is a 'witch hunt,' every unfavorable media report 'fake news' and every policy critique an existential threat to the nation. This exaggerated language simplifies complex realities into digestible narratives of victimhood and heroism, positioning himself as the sole defender against perceived adversaries. Similarly, Malema employs stark, often revolutionary, language to frame South Africa's systemic inequalities as a direct continuation of colonial and apartheid injustices, demanding radical solutions like land expropriation without compensation. While What makes Trump's recent White House stunt so profoundly ironic is that in attempting to expose Malema, he merely exposed his own methods. The 'ambush' of Ramaphosa with a video clip was a calculated act designed to dominate the narrative and assert a particular, unsubstantiated, viewpoint. This is the very essence of both Trump and Malema's political styles: the transformation of political discourse into a dramatic spectacle, where facts are often secondary to emotional impact and media virality. They are both adept at wielding 'alternative facts' and 'dog whistles', using carefully constructed ambiguity to appeal to their base while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability. This mutual reliance on political theatre, despite their opposing ideological agendas, is a critical lens through which to understand contemporary populist movements worldwide. Whether it is the right-wing nationalism espoused by Trump or the radical left-wing populism championed by Malema, the playbook often involves bypassing traditional political discourse, appealing directly to raw emotion, and manufacturing continuous engagement through engineered controversy. They both thrive on being perceived as 'outsiders' challenging a corrupt system, even when they occupy positions of significant power or influence. The political world watched Ramaphosa's composed response to Trump's calculated ambush. Yet, the wider public must scrutinise not only the content of such stunts but also the shared theatrical impulses that drive them. When one larger-than-life, stick-it-to-the-man figure attempts to discredit another by highlighting their provocative rhetoric, it is not merely a diplomatic incident; it is a curtain-drawing moment. It reveals the shared DNA of political personalities who understand that in the age of constant information flow, it is often the most audacious, the most hyperbolic, and the most dramatic performance that captures the public imagination, for better or for worse. The true 'genocide' we face might not be of a specific race, but of nuanced debate and factual integrity, orchestrated by those who understand the formidable power of the political stage. Lindani Zungu is a Mandela Rhodes scholar pursuing a master's in political studies and is the editor-in-chief of the youth-oriented publication, Voices of Mzansi.
