Minister in court over hungry pupils

Hungry children need food now, not “one day”.

This was the argument put forward by the legal team of Equal Education (EE) in the High Court in Pretoria yesterday, when the youth-led social movement faced off against the department of basic education over the suspension of the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP).

Advocate Geoff Budlender, for EE, slammed the department’s stance – that it had not refused to reinstate the NSNP but the process could not happen “overnight”.

Budlender described this as “bizarre” and pointed to the millions of vulnerable children who continued to go hungry, every day the NSNP remained suspended.

“We suggest the [department] goes and tells them the NSNP will be resumed ‘one day’ and sees what they say,” Budlender said

In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga in March announced the closure of the country’s schools and with it, the suspension of the NSNP – which ordinarily feeds more than nine million of the country’s most vulnerable children almost daily.

In May, she announced the phased reopening of schools and said only pupils in Grades 7 and 12 would return to class in June, but that the NSNP would resume for all qualifying pupils at the same time.

She subsequently backtracked, however, saying the department needed more time to “acclimatise” and so, initially, only those pupils who were actually attending school would have access to the NSNP. This prompted EE, together with two Limpopo high schools, to turn to the courts.

They launched an urgent application against Motshekga and the country’s nine education MECs, for an order declaring “all qualifying pupils, regardless of whether or not they have resumed classes at their respective schools, are entitled to receive a daily meal as provided for under the NSNP”.

They also want a supervisory order, directing the department to come up with a plan to resume the NSNP and to file detailed progress reports with the court every two weeks.

When the case came before Judge Sulet Potterill yesterday, advocate Marius Oosthuizen, for the department, vehemently denied the allegations of callousness levelled against the minister.

Oosthuizen pointed to the logistical challenges of providing food for children who were not at school.

“Yes, there are a lot of children on the ground who have not yet received meals but that doesn’t mean we’re sitting doing nothing,” he said.

“We’re working day and night to address this problem as soon as is practically possible.”

Judgment was reserved.