State fails the poor in ways that can be fatal

ASCHOOL is supposed to be a safe place for any child. No parent should have to worry that sending a son or daughter to school could mean sending them to an early death due to negligent teachers or dilapidated school infrastructure.

Yet for the parents of Michael Komape, 6, sending him to Mahlodumela Lower Primary School in Chebeng, Limpopo, on January 20 last year meant exactly that.

The boy was using a primitive toilet at the school when the corrugated iron structure collapsed. He fell into the pit and drowned.

His death shocked the nation and shone the spotlight on the continued use of pit latrines in spite of the government’s own policies that ban their use.

Komape’s parents have now decided to sue Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga for R3.1-million in a move they hope will force the department to act more quickly in ending the use of pit latrines in poor and rural schools.

It is shameful that the family have had to resort to the courts because of the department’s failure to do its job.

The court case comes at a time when the department is embroiled in another legal suit over its failure to provide all Limpopo pupils at state schools with textbooks.

In her court papers in the textbooks case, Motshekga argues that “a standard of perfection” should not be imposed on the department; all that should be required of it is “to take reasonable measures” to fulfil its constitutional obligations to provide education for all.

It is this kind of attitude that results in the department and its staff doing only the bare minimum — and sometimes not even that — when they could do more to provide quality education.

The result is that the poor, who constitute the majority of the population, end up suffering.

Michael would still be alive today had the department prioritised the building of proper toilets, especially for lower primary schools, in rural Limpopo and other parts of the country that are historically disadvantaged.

His life could have been saved if teachers at the school had done more than the bare minimum, and had ensured that no six-year-old went on their own to toilets that were clearly a safety hazard for children.

But because politicians and civil servants alike apparently believe that poor South Africans do not deserve “perfect” services, not only is the quality of the education they receive compromised, but their lives are put in great danger.