Today President Zuma is Commemorating Human Rights Abuses in the Eastern Cape
21 March 2017
We cannot commemorate Human Rights Day with President Zuma during his Eastern Cape visit, when our schools are sites of daily human rights abuses. Collapsing roofs and walls which have resulted in the deaths of learners, filthy toilets, unelectrified classrooms, and the absence of water in schools violate learners’ basic human rights and dignity.
On this day, 21 March 2017, before President Zuma’s Human Rights Day address, members of Equal Education in King William’s Town gathered for a silent picket to protest the government’s inadequate and slow realisation of their Constitutional right to basic education. Education is a fundamental human right, and one that cannot be attained when the State fails to meet its legally binding mandate to provide schools with basic infrastructure in terms of the Regulations Relating to the Minimum Norms and Standards for School Infrastructure, or “Norms and Standards”.
The nationally binding regulations stipulated that by 29 November 2016, all public schools had to be provided with running water, electricity, adequate sanitation and be made of appropriate structures (not mud, wood, zinc, or asbestos). Yet the Eastern Cape continues to suffer from severe and unsafe infrastructure backlogs –the worst backlogs in the country. The education crisis in the Eastern Cape is occurring within the context of poverty, slow employment growth, and low pay in the province. The State must prove itself both capable and willing to put the needs of poor learners at the apex, rather than the needs of politicians and their families.
Human Rights Day commemorates the sacrifices made by ordinary citizens and Struggle heroes on the path toward a free, democratic South Africa. This year President Zuma addressed the nation from Ginsberg, King William’s Town, where he also officially handed over the memorial grave site of Steve Biko to the Biko family. [1] Steve Biko can only be honoured by building schools that are centres of excellence with buildings that resemble the dignity with which our people in the Eastern Cape and South Africa deserve. He would not have wanted monies spent on him and his memory while hundreds of thousands of learners in the Eastern Cape are short changed by the Eastern Cape government, which is unable to build a capable State.
While progress has been made toward realising and protecting the human rights of South Africans in the last two decades, the right to education has thus far proved an empty promise for many, many learners in the Eastern Cape due to ineptitude and a lack of political will. EE members gathered at the entrances of the Victoria Grounds Stadium, where the Presidential address took place, to highlight the perseverance and resilience that is required of learners who battle undignified conditions to attain a quality basic education. Learners protested in silence, with placards which read “We’re done talking” and “Ngoku,” demanding that President Zuma acts now to ensure that they learn in schools that are safe and conducive to quality teaching and learning.
During the silent protest, EE members held images photographed by EE members, depicting the challenges that they face in their schools. The photographs and accompanying captions illuminate the dilapidated school environments in the province – environments which reflect historically entrenched inequalities.
EE has fought tirelessly to ensure that proper infrastructure is provided to all public schools. EE members picketed, petitioned, marched to Parliament, and took the Minister of Basic Education to court to publish the Norms and Standards in 2013. It became the immediate work of EE to make sure that the Norms are properly implemented. We have protested many times to remind the DBE of its obligations, and wrote letters to all nine education MECs to explain the problems with their Norms implementation plans. EE members have engaged with or audited over 650 schools around the country on their infrastructure backlogs.
In November of 2016, weeks before the first Norms deadline, EE surveyed the infrastructure of 60 schools in the Eastern Cape in seven school districts. Our summary of findings, contained in a research document entitled Planning to Fail, documents the disastrous conditions of the schools we found. Out of 60 schools, 17 were outright violations of the first Norms timeframe. Our analysis connects the violation of the Norms to the systemic failures of a government that has consistently shown itself incapable of meeting the challenge of turning education around in the province. Of the 17 schools which are violations of the first deadline, 41% were not on any project list for upgrades – neither the project list produced by the ECDoE, nor the ASIDI list produced by the national DBE.
The Eastern Cape has the lowest matric pass rate in the country of 59,3%.[2] The latest National Education Infrastructure Management System (NEIMS) data released in June 2016 notes that 31% of all schools with no water supply, 31% with no electricity, and 91% of schools with no sanitation facilities are located in the Eastern Cape.[3] The province is home to most of the country’s mud schools, which have not been upgraded.
The needs of school communities in the Eastern Cape have gone unheard and un-prioritised for far too long. EE members in the Eastern Cape are done talking! We demand decent school infrastructure. Ngoku.
Statement issued by Luzuko Sidimba, EE Head of Eastern Cape, 21 March 2017
