The proposed SADTU GO-slow is regrettable and unfortunate
SADTU has called for a go-slow. This undertaking will include not teaching in class and markings. Furthermore, it will include resigning themselves from going to government paid teacher trainings and workshops because they demand the resignation of Minister Angie Motshekga and her Director General because the department has reneged to its commitment as encapsulated in the collective agreement with regard to outstanding payments the department had committed to the teachers. And so, once again, the victim here would be an African child as I have never heard of white teacher union undertaking to join the same with the effect that schooling disruptions will be unavoidable.
For me, the operational line, is why a black child has to bear the consequences!
The department appeals for a Court process to be the arbiter on this matter arising from a collective agreement before any action is pursued. The demands made by our union notwithstanding, the question that must be answered is what about the fate of the black children in rural areas and townships who stand to suffer out of this brinkmanship.
Is this the only route at our disposal as a union left to push and strong-arm the department into this issue including options of escalating to the COSATU leadership for a direct ANC engagement? Comrade Maluleke strikes me as too angry within the collective on this matter. To boycott teacher improvement workshops and training sessions just because we want a resignation of the Minister and the DG, does this radiate any form of intellectual rationality.
Who stand to lose from capacitation workshops between government and educators? If the answer is that it's the educators, then, where is the long term view in our decisions beyond the today's mutual manhandling. Non SADTU teachers and mostly white employed by government will attend these workshops and black teachers will boycott them.
One may ask as whether do we have any long term view on issues including internalizing the noble commitment to raise the social status of blacks and Africans in particular, of which education, is a sine qua non for this national democratic revolution's pursuit.
I agree that it is legally wrong and an act in a bad faith if the employer reneges from collective agreement and must be fiercely contested. But to contest the issue by a responsible union nor less under the fold of our federation, COSATU, must always demonstrate civility and it must exhaust all available avenues under the sun to corner the employer but short of disrupting the system. Disruption of the schooling process must be an ultimate outcome where moral sanctity and its high-ground has tilted to unions favour [ societal sympathy].
Moral high-ground is important because beyond this confrontation there is a union that must earn its stripes to the society and there is a government that must preserve its moral face to society. This goes beyond the simplistic doctrine of employer and employee relations but it's a revolutionary imperative. Balance of forces are always important than spoteneous declaration of war with the danger of no sympathy and backing albeit your cause is genuine.
I can tell it straight from my observation, this action has no moral societal backing and it project this revolutionary union as careless and only interested to incentives than discharging quality education. Of cause educators are workers and are entitled to these. But this, in contrast, unwittingly projects other unions outside of the progressive movement as more responsible and averse to the creation of chaos. Whether this is correct or not but it's a pervasive perception that is being nurtured in the very bosom of people's mind. And for us who are former worker leaders, its painful for such observations and conclusions about one of our own progressive trade union with such untrammelled history.
After everything considered, a black child in an African school must not be part of the domino effect of political interplay with regards to calls for the resignations of political and administrative heads for education in this country. This operative assertion must find dominance in every strategic approach in the engagements at high-level.
Some good intentions are being evolved by Department of Public Service and Administration to re-engineer public service with special attention as a priority to teachers. These measures includes the commission that will look at salaries improvements, teaching aids so necessary for unleashing quality education including professionalizing education to higher levels from the current state of affairs that is unsustainable.
We should be busying ourselves with formulating concrete proposals to input in this intended turnaround process because a strategic and progressive union cannot always unleash all its energy into immediate hair-splitting quarrels than strategic issues of policy and programmatic importance. This should be a line of demarcation between ourselves and other non-red unions whose focus is only shop floor struggles. SADTU in a sense, is an architecture post 1994 by its contribution of what is Basic education system today.
We need debates about curriculum content improvement, engagements on infrastructural improvement such as laboratories computer labs and libraries; and influencing of budgets in this regard, the improvements from current Dinaledi Schools to the general improvement of science schools in rural and township schools, more schools to address the teacher/leader ratios and the employment of more teachers and the assessment of impact of the no-fee schools in intervening on poverty stricken areas and trace post schooling progress of these kids because teachers knows them. These should be areas of strategic foci as SADTU has been resolving on these matters.
Khaye Nkwanyana is a member of the SACP Provincial Executive Committee member in KZN. He is responsible for Legislature and Governance Commission.
Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter
