A year can be a matter of life and death for poor

The Department of Basic Education has set next year as the deadline for the eradication of pit latrines at schools.

Two years does not seem like a long time, especially if you have been waiting for 27 years for this basic human right. But two years – even a single year – in education is a very long time.

It can determine whether a child stays in school or misses it for several days each month if it is a girl or woman teacher.

It can also determine whether a child drops out completely.

It can also be a matter of life and death, as we have experienced with five-year-old Michael Komape, who died in 2014 at Mahlodumela Primary School in Limpopo, after falling into a pit latrine.

Lister Magongwa died the year before in 2013 when the walls of the pit toilet collapsed on him at Mmushi Primary School, also in Limpopo.

There were other incidents in Eastern Cape in 2017 and 2018 which claimed the lives of six-year-old Siyamthandwa Mtunu and five-yearold Lumka Mkweta, who fell and drowned in human excrement in pit latrines.

There’s also the cruelty of some teachers who would not think twice about sending a child down the dangerous pits to retrieve a cellphone.

So, it is a matter of urgency that the department eradicates pit latrines.

This week, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said her department has replaced pit latrines in 1 439 schools as of January 10.

However, there are still 1 423 schools with thousands of pupils who are still exposed to the dangers of these pits until 2023. It is a long time to wait for a basic human right.

The South African Human Rights Commission is doing its bit by taking the provincial education departments to court to force it to set action plans of eradicating pit latrines in motion.

To rub salt into the wound, it was the same Department of Basic Education that oversaw the building of a R82-million Mayibuye Primary School in Tembisa, Gauteng, only to realise after it has been completed that it was built on a wetland and therefore was unsafe for occupation.

So, money is not a problem if it can be wasted like this.

One only hopes that with the ANC elective conference coming up in December, and Motshekga, a member of the ANC’S national executive committee (NEC), and the longest-serving education minister in South Africa’s democratic history, would fast-track the eradication of pit latrines to boost her chances of re-election to the ANC NEC – and to another cabinet appointment.

If Motshekga has no appetite for re-election, may she do it to be able to say that in her 13 years as basic education minister her major achievement was to eradicate pit latrines.