DA blasts Sisulu's suggested 50/50 race quota for schools

27 July 2022

For more than 25 years the state of our schools and that of basic education have deteriorated rapidly - proving once again that the ANC literally destroys everything that it touches.

In the light of this, it was shocking to hear the proposed solution by the ANC's Social Transformation Committee Chair, Minister Lindiwe Sisulu, to introduce a so-called "50/50" racial model in schools.

The DA will not stand for this. The DA has committed itself to the principle of non-racialism that will effectively redress the continued economic exclusion of 30 million impoverished citizens while simultaneously doing away with continued Apartheid-style racial classification, such as this.

This proposed racial engineering by the ANC is strongly in line with their support for the draconian Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill and particularly the "Lesufi clause" that seeks to disempower school governing bodies.

This is a classic example of the ANC misdiagnosing a problem and then giving it the wrong remedy on top of that. Again, the pathological ANC seeks to use race as a way to catagorise and treat people, this time innocent school children.

The likes of Lindiwe Sisulu and Panyaza Lesufi will not fix or even improve the state of our schools and of basic education. In fact, they will be its death knell.

The only way to fix our schools is to implement the DA's 6-point plan:

1. Build schools to get rid of mud/asbestos and pit toilets;

2. Introduce collaboration models wherein well-run schools partner with those that are dysfunctional to improve quality teaching, leadership and governance;

3. Regulate online and blended learning and ensure access to ICT and Wi-Fi;

4. Develop and reskill teachers to teach the skills and knowledge required by the modern labour market, industry and entrepreneurship. Further legislate a National Independent Schools inspectorate to monitor quality teaching in the classroom;

5. Dual mother tongue text books for teachers so that learners can study in their mother tongue to improve their reading, comprehension, writing and numeracy; and

6. Review SASAMs and Lurits to ensure that we better track, trace and retain learner drop-outs to keep more children in school.

The DA rejects the minister’s suggestion to racialise schools instead of fixing dysfunctional schools that affect the majority of black children in this country.

Issued by Bax Nodada, DA Shadow Minister of Basic Education, 27 July 2022