DESPICABLE CONDUCT OF SOME SADTU LEADERS WARRANTS SWIFT AND DRASTIC ACTION
18 May 2015
COPE calls on the Minister of Basic Education to hand the file on SADTU leaders who sold promotion posts for gain to the HAWKS for swift action.
We are shocked at the goings on in our schools. Last year we learnt of many educators helping learners to cheat in the Grade 12 examinations. We have also continuously heard of sexual molestation of learners and of other misdemeanours. To top everything we now read of union leaders wilfully, brazenly and unashamedly abusing their positions to sell promotion posts as though government did not exist. This is disgusting. Who will want to enter education when the situation in teaching is so utterly rotten?
Government must lead from the front, not follow cravenly from behind. The people of our country vote for a government. They do not vote for a teacher union. The authority of the state is for the state to exercise. Its failure to do so has brought education to a sorry pass.
COPE wants decisive action from the government to rid education of all rotten apples so that the profession can regain its lost credibility. In our view, a professional association must represent educators so that promoting professionalism becomes its primary priority. It will not hamper its role in improving conditions of service. Everyone in society will gain when educators pursue professionalism and behave as worthy role models.
In October 2010, the legendary Steve Jobs of Apple told President Barack Obama bluntly that teacher-union-work-rules were crippling America's education system. We can say the same of South African education. Only what we are witnessing is more destructive.
SADTU is not helping its members nor the learners in our country and a scandal such as the sale of promotion posts demands a thorough overall in how educators are represented and clarifying which authority belongs where.
Since its inception, Cope has held that unions must exist independently of any political party. It is inherently dangerous for government to lose control to a union as we are now witnessing. The extent of the damage to education that the City Press revealed yesterday, as a result of ties that are too close between government and union, must shock the entire nation. We are witnessing corruption becoming widespread and teachers deserving of promotion being overlooked because of the irregular manipulation and abuse of power by a teacher union.
COPE urges government to ensure that union leaders who turned tenderpreneurs, selling promotion posts, face the wrath of the law without delay. No nation can tolerate conduct as despicable as the guilty union leaders displayed.
Statement issued by Dennis Bloem, COPE spokesperson, May 18 2015
