Education is key

ON FREEDOM Day I listened to our new president spelling out his ideas on South Africa’s future.

He pointed out that after as long as 24 years of our new democracy, the majority of our people still live in abject poverty, and the gap between rich and poor continues to widen.

One of his main aims to correct this situation is to rely on some sort of “fair” expropriation of land without compensation, so long as food production is not affected.

Neither the track record nor the logic of this approach is good.

Without even looking north of the border, we know that past government attempts to award land to black farmers have failed. And why? Because the land has been awarded to people who either have no training in farming or who ask to be paid out rather than work the land.

The only way people can escape poverty is through an excellent basic education system, which is sorely lacking in South Africa.

Only this can equip young people to earn a good living.

Until you create proper teacher training colleges where teachers must pass appropriate examinations to qualify, until school inspectors are allowed to test the teachers and therefore maintain our teaching standards, until trade unions address the protection of pupils rather than that of their members, until those completing their schooling are up to a standard that qualifies them for university or college, we will go on stumbling in the dark.