Anxious times for matrics

Covid-19 and the accompanying lockdown restrictions have exacerbated the gap between the haves and have-nots, and experts believe the public school pass rate could reflect that when the matric results are released today.

Experts predict a drop of more than 5% in the pass rate in public schools.

Given the inequalities in South African society were widened by Covid-19, a significant drop in the release of matric results should be expected today, Unesco Chair on Open Distance Learning (ODL) at Unisa Professor Moeketsi Letseka cautioned yesterday.

“Professor Servaas van der Berg of Stellenbosch University projects just over 5% decline from the 81.3% pass rate achieved in 2019, and I think he’s being nice,” said Letseka.

“My view, is that it is going to be worse than that.”

Pointing to the second year-onyear drop in IEB results, Letseka notes that the drop was significant because of the small numbers of pupils who wrote the final exam last year (13 163).

And that was despite having the financial resources, and Wi-Fi, and who could shuffle between devices to combat the restrictions brought on by the virus, Letseka noted.

“The conditions of 2020 meant pupils had to go home. Homes are not ideal for learning, homes are for parents, and parents cannot teach,” Letseka said.

“In my view, Covid exposed the worst of glaring inequalities.”

An estimated 1 058 699 pupils sat for the department of basic education final examination last year.

Myriad reports have shown public schools were ill-prepared for pupils in 2021, which means in 2020, they were already in shambles, compounding the forced stay-at-home effect brought on by the virus.

And it goes back farther, with Amnesty International saying in a new report, Failing to learn lessons: The impact of Covid-19 on a broken and unequal education system, “how students from poorer communities have been cut off from education during extended school closures”.

The report noted in 2018, out of 23 471 public schools, only 19% had illegal pit latrines for sanitation, with 37 schools having no sanitation facilities at all; 86% having no laboratory; 77% having no library; 72% having no internet access and 42% having no sports facilities.

Michael Komape, Lumke Mketwa, Lister Magongwa, Lister Magongwa and Siyamthanda Mtunu are the pupils we know about who died in school pit latrines.

Letseka said informal settlements were becoming the new normal in SA, and it was the children living in them in abject poverty who were depending on Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga for a quality public education.

In 2019, Stats SA, together with the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (Saldru) and the Agence Francaise de Développement, found the labour market income was the main driver of income inequality in South Africa, contributing 74.2% towards overall income inequality in the country in 2015.

However, the stay-at-home government dictate meant parents/caregivers/guardians who were supposed to be out scraping money together were not able to do so and were further unable to help children as they themselves were barely literate.

SA also took a huge smack in jobs lost, with the number of unemployed persons increased by 2.2 million to 6.5 million compared to the second quarter of 2020, according to Stats SA.

Amnesty International’s report went on to say 239 schools lacked any electricity and many of the shortcomings “are in breach of not just the government’s international human rights obligations” but its own “minimum norms and standards” for educational facilities”.

On Friday, Khume Ramulifho, MPL and Democratic Alliance Gauteng Shadow MEC for education, visited three schools in Diepsloot, east of Johannesburg, and discovered schooling had not resumed at Diepsloot Secondary School “due to no water and electricity, while the ablution facilities and mobile classrooms have been vandalised”.

On Wednesday, The Citizen reported pupils from several communities in Limpopo could not access their schools on Monday and Tuesday due to flooding rivers, collapsed classrooms and shortages of personal protective equipment. –

Covid exposed the worst of glaring inequalities

Man who tried to get me into ANC faction fights at Ace court case. Earl Coetzee

What is wrong with these people? This is a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately, often while watching gangs of teenage “struggle veterans” in badly fitting fatigues and other poor and unemployed folks in party regalia gather outside courtrooms to defend the very architects of their misery.

And by “these people”, I’m not referring to the professional sycophants who would kill off their own mothers for a quick buck and the opportunity to increase their proximity to power (here’s looking at you, Carl). I’m referring to the ordinary rank-and-file members of the ANC.

These are the very same people who are worst affected by the follies of the Jacob Zuma years. These are the people who have to absorb the losses in economic growth created by years of looting and mismanagement.

The ones who go to bed in cold, dark homes, due to the inability of our state power utility to do the single job it has been created and funded to the tune of hundreds of billions to do.

It is these same people who are incapable of putting food on the table, in a country where 30% of the population is unemployed and 49% live under the upper poverty line, while the leaders they defend drive around in luxury cars, paid for with tax money, and their children holiday in Dubai with the Guptas.

So, yeah… “WTF is wrong with these people?” I asked myself again on Friday morning, while watching a grown man humiliate himself in Bloemfontein, in support of his glorious leaders.

But then in the corner of my screen I saw a familiar face, and it all started to make a little more sense. The face was that of a university acquaintance. Let’s just call him Motaung.

Back when I was a journalist in Bloemfontein, Motaung suddenly reached out to me, and asked if he and his business partner could come pay me a visit, as they had a proposal for me.

My anti-MLM sensor automatically kicked in, and I told him that I wasn’t interested in trading forex, binary options, or investing in his essential oils business.

He assured me it was a legitimate business idea and they thought I would be the perfect person to join their company.

So, the meeting happened, and I was given a glimpse into the inner workings of how business is done in the dirty world of factional politics. This was shortly before the ANC’s Mangaung conference in December 2012, and there was a battle waging in the province between current ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule and a group of dissidents referred to as the Regime Change faction.

Motaung and his partner’s business idea basically boiled down to this: they would feed me misinformation and dirt on Magashule, which I would have published via my then employer’s television and online platforms, as well as on a new media platform they planned to create and which I was expected to edit.

The idea behind all of this was that they would help see the undoing of Magashule’s reign in the Free State, while setting up alternative misinformation channels to the network of yellow rags and Bell Pottinger-esque trash media which Magashule was said to be running in the province at the time.

The expectation was that this would set us up to take over from the Magashule camp once the Regime Changers elected their premier, and we would all be kneedeep in the dirty money.

I naturally told them to go to hell... –

The leaders they defend drive in luxury cars