DA to submit damning KwaNyuswa education claims to Public Protector
19 January 2015
THE DA will submit damning claims of wide-scale corruption, nepotism, financial mismanagement and other serious malpractice - including the sale of matric certificates - at some 20 schools in the KwNyuswa area to the Public Protector for investigation.
This past weekend, the DA was invited to attend a meeting with school representatives. They claim that despite two years of trying to get the province's Education department to deal with the individuals who have resorted to such practices, no help has been forthcoming.
Today, matters came to a head after six educators from Thabela High school, originally suspended in 2013 due to alleged corruption and not teaching class for an entire year despite receiving salaries- returned to school.
This despite the fact that there appears to have been no formal departmental investigation, no feedback to either the school or the community and certainly no communication from the DoE to say they would be returning.
This morning, tensions escalated as angry community members barred these teachers from entering the school premises. Meanwhile education officials scrambled to reach the scene.
The DA is appalled that it should take such drastic community action before the department wakes up.
We place full responsibility for this volatile situation at the door of KZN's Education MEC Peggy Nkonyeni.
KZN learners go back to school on Wednesday morning. Yet the situation at this school and within the community at large is far from conducive to any kind of learning.
The DA expects MEC Nkonyeni to explain what interventions have been made by the province's Department of Education regarding these KwaNyuswa schools over the past two years.
In the interim, we will forward what we regard as solid evidence to the Public Protector for thorough investigation. We will also study these documents in more detail and where necessary we will begin to expose their contents.
Statement issued by Mbali Ntuli, MPL, DA KZN spokesperson on education, January 19 2015
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