Dragging feet on school toilet saga
YESTERDAY Education MEC Mandla Makupula visited the Luna Primary School in Bizana, where five-year-old Lumka Mkhethwa died after falling in to a pit latrine last week.
As expected, Makupula commiserated with the bereaved family and vowed to ensure that the children of Luna do not have to suffer the indignity of using such decrepit facilities again. Obviously, this was the MEC’s attempt to project a positive PR spin to the tragedy – that of a caring and a responsive government showing support to the family and the school.
But we are not fooled. If this government cared about the plight of poor rural children, then Education Minister Angie Motshekga would not be using taxpayers’ money defending the indefensible at the Bhisho High Court.
The minister is in court to defend action brought by Equal Education asking the court to compel her to meet the target they set to fix schools in need of infrastructure. Instead of racing against time to meet their deadlines, Motshekga is wasting time and money while concocting legal arguments as to why her department alone should not be held solely responsible for the building of infrastructure.
Legally that may well be the case, but in the public eye an image of an uncaring minister and government, fighting against doing what is right, is created.
Ironically, little Lumka died on the very same day that James Komape joined the Equal Education protest outside the Bhisho High Court. He had come all the way from Limpopo where his five-year-old Michael died under similar circumstances in 2014.
A visit by Makupula to Bizana does not change the reality of hundreds of poor pupils who risk their lives every day using unsafe toilets.
Lumka died such an undignified death. The pain that her parents must be going through is unimaginable. No parent sends their children to school to die. A school is a place where our children should be safe.
It is disgraceful that we still have schools using pit latrines and without proper sanitation in 2018. In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly declared access to clean drinking water and sanitation as a basic human right.
A recent report, dated January 2018 by the Department of Education, showed that the Eastern Cape was the only province that had schools without any toilets. There are 37 such schools in the province.
The same report revealed that of the 5 400 schools in the province, some 1 945 schools still used pit latrines – making it the thirdhighest number of schools using pit latrines in the country.
President Cyril Ramaphosa’s intervention – ordering Motshekga to end unsafe toilets in schools within the next three months – is the kind of response that was expected from a government that claims to care for the plight of the poor.
Sadly Motshekga had to be forced by Ramaphosa to do the right thing.
For little Lumka, Ramaphosa’s intervention came a little too late. But at the very least, it will save another child from having to die in a pit latrine.