Education boss’s big plans
“Chalk and cheese” was how the newlyappointed education MEC Mlungisi Mvoko described his school life in comparison to his life as a political leader.
The Daily Dispatch interviewed Mvoko, who was appointed provincial education boss in November.
A distinguished figure among his comrades, the debonair Mvoko faces a mammoth task of improving the disastrous department of education.
In May, basic education minister Angie Motshekga labelled the province as one of the worst performing in the country. Auditorgeneral Kimi Makwetu presented a bleak picture of the department’s finances with unauthorised expenditure hitting R1.7bn in the 2017-18 financial year.
The Eastern Cape has a shortage of critical subject teachers with 3,000 of those in classrooms considered to be unqualified. Of these 3,000, late education MEC Mandla Makupula said 260 did not have proper qualifications.
The department has failed to meet the 2016 deadline for norms and standards of South African schools.
This begs the question, what can yet another ANC deployee do to improve this ailing, yet critical government department?
A former teacher, unionist and bureaucrat, newly-appointed Mvoko appears to have all the right ingredients to lead a troubled portfolio, but with just a few months until the next general elections in May 2019, the odds are against him.
Mvoko spent close to two decades as
ateacher in the farm areas of Somerset East while slowly moving up the ranks of the ANC. In 2000, he was elected mayor of Cacadu district municipality where he served two terms producing qualified audits. He later led the Cacadu development agency. He joined the South African Local Government Agency as its treasurer before being elected as the deputy chairperson in the Eastern Cape.
In 2017, he left that role when he was elected as the ANC provincial deputy chairperson, which ultimately led to his role in the provincial legislature.
Mvoko says that some of his strengths in government lie in planning, monitoring and evaluation.
“How we turned the district around was exactly that, planning in advance and accountability. My experience in government is going to assist me in running this department,” he said.
Mvoko speaks
Where his predecessors failed, he says he plans to excel. He understands that without financial muscle, his job needs creative planning which he said would come with the help of district officials.
“I have set a plan to say I want to go to each and every district and understand the challenges passionately of his objectives. of those districts and together with administration or officials develop a turnaround plan.”
Mvoko puts a lot of emphasis on decaying infrastructure at schools. He believes that the education department needs to self-correct and develop partnerships with the private sector to solve the problem.
“We continue to receive messages on infrastructure. Until we do an audit on the current situation, we shall not be able to deal with the situation. The biggest challenge of the department [is that] we are reactive. In order for us to turn the situation around, we must have the hard facts, the data at our fingertips and from that we are able to develop a plan, and this is what I intend to do,” he said.
He commits that come February, he will come up with a concise plan to turn around the department.
“I am going to rely on the information that I request that will be provided by the department to draw a plan. I don’t want to create an impression that until I have visited all, [only then will] I get a plan. I am already trying to get information from district directors on schools. They must provide me with that information and together we must then create a plan and decide what departments we are going to work with. There can’t be a school without toilets. Let us prioritise schools without toilets and redirect our finances.”
● The death of Little Lumka Mketwa, 5, who drowned in a pit toilet at a school in Mbizana turned the spotlight to the department’s backlog in addressing infrastructural defects at schools.
Nine months ago, reacting to Lumka’s death, President Cyril Ramaphosa during a parliamentary sitting, ordered Motshekga to eradicate school pit toilets within three months.