Corruption robs generations of hope

View

IWROTE a newspaper article in October 2013 stating education in South Africa could improve if the Department of Basic Education was not cosying up to a particular labour organisation.

The recent damning report showing collusion between a labour organisation and the department is long overdue. Many teachers already knew people were being promoted because of money being paid.

Imagine a level one teacher being promoted to a level seven post in the department.

Even local teachers were surprised and wondered how a person who was not promotable locally to a level two post could receive such a boost in management skills.

Should the department not have recognised something was amiss? Should management not have become even slightly suspicious?

I believe they knew and benefited from these backroom transactions. I recently heard of a promotion to a primary school in Durban. Two different branches of the same labour organisation promised a single post to two teachers. One educator got the post and the other lost his money.

This seems a lucrative business and reveals that it pays in many ways to occupy high-ranking positions in teacher labour organisations.

The perks are numerous. It might be useful to establish how many highranking union members now occupy senior positions in government. Promotion for the candidate and then extra cash for the holidays.

The labour organisation which was consulted on the issue claims ignorance.

Why? This was known and the nefarious relationship between the labour organisation and the provincial department became increasingly scandalous as teachers realised promotion was no longer based on ability but rather on who you knew and how you could afford to bribe powerful officials.

Disgruntled teachers moved to other labour organisations and those who did not care remained. But if truth be told, there are other people who have moved from level one to principal positions because of their relationships with school governing bodies.

Some labour organisations have scant interest in the education of children. Their track record shows this (the number of strikes, the absence of monitoring in classrooms, the promotion debacle).

Denial by these labour organisations worsens the situation. Threatening to deal with errant members is a sham until the public sees such a threat carried out.

All who benefited from such economic arrangements must be identified and removed from office. There must be consequences for those who benefit illegally and the department must show the will to establish good governance and a clean administration.

Those officials and ministers involved must also be publicly shamed.

Teaching was once a divine profession, where the lives of our children were moulded. Most advertised promotion posts in the department see thousands of applicants, some of whom have little chance of being shortlisted as they lack the capacity for the position. There are too many excuses for our poor education system. For example, our Umalusi chief gave a strange reason for the poor matric results. He said the papers were of a higher standard.

Is the school a microcosm of the society in which we live? An unstable society will produce unstable schools, which then produce poor results.

The corruption that pervades the higher echelons of society filters down to schools and the results are there for everyone to see.

Unless we clean our departments thoroughly, the smelly remnants will gush forth into the institutions they serve. If the best candidates are not placed in positions of management, expect the effectiveness of these institutions to be compromised.

The system stinks and if something is not done soon, education will be run from some labour organisation office.

The department must wrest education from the hands of those avaricious individuals and do its duty to our children and their parents.

Doing nothing makes us enablers of those who violate our right to a just society – and robs generations of hope.

Mudaly is a senior lecturer at the UKZN School of Education. He writes in his personal capacity.