Pupils, activists in safer schools protest
EDUCATION activists and pupils picketed outside the provincial legislature, calling for public schools to have adequate security fencing, infrastructure and safe ways to report sexual assault.
The picket by Equal Education took place as Western Cape Education MEC Debbie Schäfer tabled her annual budget speech.
The pupils held placards urging “My safety, my basic need”, “We need textbooks” and “MEC Schafer collaborate with Saps, CPFs, DSD to ensure safe schools”.
Siphesihle Falitenjwa, from Joe Slovo Engineering High School in Khayelitsha, said: “We do not feel safe while we are at school. Someone can easily come in our classrooms and disturb us or worse, hurt us. Some schools have been in mobile classes for years and are overcrowded.
“We are demanding equality. We want to be treated like the students in non-black communities.”
Akhona Mabanga, from Bardale High School in Mfuleni, said the memory of seeing a pupil killed in front of their school still haunted them. She requested security officers to search pupils to minimise the risks of being attacked.
Equal Education representative Sinekhaya Mbengo said they protested outside the Western Cape Legislature last month, calling for a response to the memorandum from their #SafeSchools march to Parliament in October 2017.
Mbengo said that from the annual report, they were hoping to be told there would be funds to ensure pupils at schools get better access to social workers and psychologists. They are also demanding the adequate provision of guards and policing in “red zones and gangland hot spots”.
Schäfer tabled a R22.193 billion budget for the 2018/19 year – the majority of the increased funding provides for increases in conditions of service.
About 75% of the budget was allocated for the compensation of employees. The remaining 25% was needed to fund all other programmes in this budget, including funds directed to schools through norms and standards funding, furniture, textbooks, infrastructure, examinations and transport, to name a few.
The pupil transport and hostels budget increased by more than R13m to more than R393m, and over R43m is allocated for the increasing need for hostel accommodation.
More than R34m will be invested into the Safe Schools programme.
“While this funding will not necessarily end violence in and around schools, it will be used to provide and reinforce targeted security infrastructure support to schools.
“Unfortunately, despite the additional security support and enforcement, some of our schools still fall victim to vandalism and burglaries.
“A reality of the budgetary constraints that we are facing is that we have had to cut the emergency school maintenance fund by R5 million,” said Schäfer.