POOR SCHOOLS NEED CARE, NOT CLOSURES
Provincial education department has proven heartless towards disadvantaged pupils
WHAT is clear about the closure of a poor school that the department refused to help over the years is that the provincial minister of education cannot be vindicated.
Her department allowed Uitsig High School to deteriorate in order to justify the school’s closure and save money.
Subsidising an independent school in an upmarket area while neglecting a school in a poor area is a crime.
The same was done by the British colonialists in the Cape in the 1800s and 1900s. They deliberately funded “white” schools and left “non-white” schools overcrowded, without funding, so that they deteriorated and the “non-white” children could be available as cheap labour. This would ensure that the “white” class could maintain its supremacy.
The courts are structured to support “white” policies at the expense of the poor majority. Yet when it comes to voting, politicians will hold the poor baby for their parents’ votes, only to drop the child later when that child needs quality education.
The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA)’s ruling was biased and the MEC was not taken to task for not abiding by the provisions in the preamble to the Education Act, which binds the state to provide quality education and give effect to the constitutional right of the Uitsig children not to be abused.
The education department failed in its duty to provide a decent environment for the children to learn in, over years, and thus deliberately created an ideal atmosphere for the development of crime – exactly what the British did before apartheid.
During apartheid, the government wanted to justify its doctrine of separate development, so it supported the different-race schools with structural basics but watered down educational exposure and allocated less funds for “non-white” schoolchildren to ensure “white” supremacy. When is it going to end?
Apartheid has not yet left the minds of many Western Cape officials, who still prefer supporting “whites” first and depriving non-whites.
Bo-Kaap schools still do not have one proper sports field for the schoolchildren, and the vacant land in Bo-Kaap that could have been used for a sports field was sold to white developers.
Tamboerskloof, Green Point and Sea Point have many sports fields for their pupils and they are fully manned by the city council.
A no-confidence vote for the provincial education department is needed and all parents need to organise themselves to provide appropriate education for their children.
The provincial education department has proven its heartlessness with its lack of care for poor children – several schools in the Western Cape have been closed and poor children and families disrupted.
In Cape Town, transferring a child to school 2km away from home makes the child 2 000 times more likely to be abducted or assaulted.
A true education minister would first see to the needs of the poor schoolchildren by visiting the most needy areas and then ensuring that the department promptly provides the schoolchildren with all their needs.
Such a minister would not wait for schools to beg for help.
That bureaucratic master-slave mentality must stop if we want to grow into a successful nation – and we are able to, because we have the best resources and the most tolerant people and are one of the most friendly countries – except for some separatist old guards of apartheid.
Education is still politically motivated. When are we going to grow up?
The world is technologically connected but disconnected in the spirit of care for children.
If we grow up and take true responsibility for our schoolgoing children, they will protect us when we need them and not destroy us because we could not behave decently towards them.
Realpolitik is caring for poor people’s education first so that the gap between rich and poor can narrow, and the country can move forward. Depriving any community of supportive education is to deprive the self from inner growth and the country from progressing.
Quality education is an education without prejudice. The wounds of prejudicial education in South Africa run so deep (as intended by the elite) that poor adults are often so demotivated that they have no energy to help themselves or to source help from others.
The educational deprivation of the masses over the years has even made it impossible for the poor to buy this newspaper – let alone be able to read this article. Serious-minded readers will spread the message of this article to those who need to be motivated towards positive change.