A challenge to all chief executives to help deaf community

FOLLOWING upon the Business Report Editor Adri Senekal de Wet’s supportive article on November 6, 2017 concerning the sad plight of the deaf in South Africa, herewith my reply.

A yardstick by which to measure a society’s respect for human rights, to evaluate the level of its maturity and its generosity of spirit is by looking at the status it accords to those members of society who are most vulnerable: disabled people.

Universally the deaf are recognised as being just ordinary people, with the same (and often better!) intelligence and potentially able to perform just as well and do most anything that the so-called able-bodied person can.

In South Africa, however, the deaf are innocent victims of an inborn biased mindset within the bureaucracy at large, with an attendant lack of apposite insight and just fellowship towards them. This is demonstrated in the disavowal institutionally of the constitutional right of the deaf to equitable and equal benefaction, a sound basic education and, ultimately, fair employment opportunities.

In practice this is given effect by the deaf being both patently neglected in national socially uplifting endeavours and, particularly within the basic education system, subjected to deficient, substandard education.

For those few deaf learners who, notwithstanding substandard basic education provision, have, through sheer grit, underpinned by resolute outside support from family and friends, miraculously managed to attain Grade 12, the vast majority are inevitably precluded from pursuing postschool further vocational training.

In the conspicuous absence of a national deaf lifelong learning and adult basic education advancement programme – fittingly promoting universal disability instruction and tuition adaptation – there is a consequent lack of appropriate deaf special-needs accommodation at further education and training institutions across the board.

Exclusively

In tertiary education terms alone, of the 26 universities and 50 technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges with 264 campuses countrywide – all handsomely funded by the state and supported by the National Student Financial Aid Scheme – all are aimed exclusively at the further education of the hearing community, which would generally include the physically disabled and the blind, but not the deaf.

The consequence of this approach is that since the first university was established in South Africa in 1829, very few deaf school-leavers have been able to enrol freely at state-subsidised “hearing” higher education institutions, with only about 30 deaf students in the whole country having successfully acquired an accredited degree over the past 188 years!

Inclusive of the 96 private higher education institutions (HEIs) in the country, there are, however, three notable individual exceptions in the provision of tertiary vocational education for deaf students: two TVET colleges now employ SASL interpreters on an ad hoc basis, and Belgium Campus, a private HEI based in Pretoria, commencing in 2015 with a fully accommodated three-year deaf IT national diploma proffering – a first-ever in South Africa.

This self-sourced endeavour has been so successful that the pilot deaf student intake achieved an 87.5 percent pass rate with three cum laude passes and 19 subject distinctions in their first year-end exams.

How is the current deaf further education disparity to be resolved? If there was indeed equality in education and training in South Africa, then for a projected deaf population of 1.6 million people there should thus be at least five or six dedicated state-funded higher education institutions proffering appropriate tertiary education and training.

Participate

But why would the universities or TVET colleges wish to participate in the mêlée? The logical solution is to expand Belgium Campus’s singular deaf IT-training services and, using it as a model, also draw in other private HEIs to help bridge the divide in other training areas.

However, appeals to the Department of Higher Education and Training to institute a subsidy scheme for accredited private higher education institutions for the postschool vocational training of qualifying deaf students have been unsuccessful to date. The teasing question is: Where to now?

A national education-equalising transformation intervention for the deaf is a pressing human rights imperative. MARTIN PIETERSE

Editor’s challenge:

I CHALLENGE all chief executives of JSE- listed companies to invest a minimum 0.1 percent of their annual bonuses in December 2017 in a BR Trust Account: BR Cares. The purpose of the fund is to contribute towards the training of deaf IT specialists, such as software developers, IT engineers and data capturers, via an online training platform.

Every chief executive who contributes will be acknowledged in BR on Wednesday, February 14, 2018. Open your hearts, and listen to the voice of those deprived of the ability to hear. Contact BR Editor: adri.senekaldewet@inl.co.za