‘Illegal school’ evacuated, torn down

A TASK team has been established to investigate the need for another school in Joe Slovo, near Milnerton.

The team met on Friday after the Western Cape Education Department was granted a court order to demolish and evacuate more than 400 pupils learning at the Khozi Primary School.

Now Marconi Beam Primary School “is under pressure because many parents insisted on enrolling children from the illegal school (Khozi Primary School) at this school”, according the department.

WCED spokesperson Paddy Attwell said the mobile classrooms at Khozi have been sent to schools that need “urgent accommodation” on the West Coast.

This has left hundreds of pupils without a school and parents worrying that their children would end up on the streets and exposed to danger.

Five-year-old Lathitha Dyantyi has not been at school school for almost three weeks. Her mother, Thabisa Dyantyi, says she has been struggling to find her a school.

“It is better now because I am on leave and I look after her, but what will happen when I go back to work? Since the school closed there are so many children playing on the street. We know schools are overcrowded, that is why we want another school built on the same land where Khozi Primary was located,” said Dyantyi.

Marconi Beam Primary School principal Bukelwa Plaatjies said she enrolled 185 children from Khozi Primary School in the past three weeks.

She said some pupils from Khozi Primary were rejected because they were either older than the grades they were currently in, have no documentation or were not on a list provided by the department, among other reasons.

The department leased the land from the City of Cape Town to accommodate the mobile classrooms while completing the R47 million Sinenjongo High School.

Attwell said the lease had since expired. Some residents occupied the empty mobile classrooms unlawfully in January, when the Sinenjongo pupils moved to the new school. The sheriff of the high court executed an order to evict those behind running the “illegal school” on June 7. Contractors started removing the mobile classrooms.

Those responsible for the illegal school were well aware of the terms of the interdict granted by the high court in March. The sheriff of the court followed due process in implementing the court order, said Attwell. He said the department’s district officials engaged all role-players “fully on placing learners in proper schools, in the best interests of the children concerned”.

Four schools were identified. “Parents refused to move their children to these schools.

City mayco member Suzette Little said the respondents would argue in court on August 8 why the order should not be made final.