Education’s failure a lesson to us all

TODAY, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga and the provincial Education MECs have failed thousands of our country’s children. They have failed to ensure that all public schools have access to water, electricity and decent sanitation. They have failed to ensure that all schools made of inappropriate materials have been replaced. They have failed to comply with the Norms and Standards for School Infrastructure Regulations.

This is despite the minister and her MECs having agreed to meet this deadline.

No matter what happens after this, Minister Motshekga and her education MECs – the Western Cape’s Debbie Schäfer, Gauteng’s Panyaza Lesufi, KwaZulu-Natal’s Mthandeni Dlungwane, the Eastern Cape’s Mandla Makupula, North West’s Sello Lehari, Limpopo’s Ishmael Kgetjepe, Mpumalanga’s Makgabo Mhaule, the Northern Cape’s Martha Bartlett and Free State’s Tate Makgoe – will be remembered as having left an entirely avoidable, shocking legacy.

In another country, we might have expected them to step down.

Such is the extent of their failure to us as a nation, and to our children, yet we see on Twitter how some criticise committed South Africans like Equal Education. Meanwhile, Minister Motshekga earlier this month said she “welcomed” being held accountable by the public.

Yes, yes. We know professional politicians, no matter their illustrious history, brave it out. They must. After all, they cannot afford to lose their jobs. We are, however, also well aware that not all government officials and party faithful send their children to state schools, knowing full well their own children deserve better opportunities.

Many children who represent the next generation will, after being so ill-treated by successive education MECs – including the DA’s in the Western Cape – make sure they get justice, if not now, when they are adults themselves. After all, the impact of a poor education on a nation is incalculable. We’ve already felt ours for decades, with the impact of Bantu education having entrenched race divides in myriad ways. Surely we want to see equality between our children – an equality which would bring about a stronger, greater country.

We should admire the activists and lawyers from Equal Education who went from province to province, and from village to village, putting faces to statistics to fight for Norms and Standards.

Like them, we must support all South Africa’s children. As patriots, we have that obligation. Otherwise, like Motshekga and her MECs, we too will have failed.