Pupils forced to relieve themselves in filthy pit toilets, crumbling infrastructure that could cave in at any moment, and schools that are still without adequate water supply or electricity.
This is the daunting reality that thousands of Eastern Cape pupils will have to face when schools reopen for the 2022 academic year next week.
With looming litigation hanging over the head of the provincial education department for failing to eradicate pit toilets at schools, the hamstrung department still has some of the worst infrastructure backlogs in SA.
In Nelson Mandela Bay, six schools — Arcadia Senior Secondary School and Ankervas, Machiu, Die Heuwel, Fontein, and Van der Kemp primary schools — appear on the department’s priority list of schools that will require a complete rebuild.
The schools, which jointly accommodate more than 5,000 pupils, are crumbling due to vandalism and neglect.
A lack of doors, broken windows, classrooms and admin blocks without electricity, walls and ceilings with gaping holes, deplorable ablution facilities, vandalised fencing and the lack of adequate sporting facilities are a common thread among the schools.
Basic education minister Angie Motshekga said her department was working hard to address the infrastructure challenges at public schools in the country.
Despite the department’s efforts, the latest statistics showed that as of January 10, 44 schools still needed to be replaced and 115 schools required a water supply.
The six schools that had been prioritised in Nelson Mandela Bay are prime examples of schools that had been built using improper materials, as all of them were made from planks that are now more than 45 years old.
To date, the department has replaced pit toilets at 1,439 schools.
The Eastern Cape has been flagged as one of the leading provinces with pit latrines in schools.
Motshekga said the replacement of pit toilets and the provision of water and electricity supply were scheduled for completion in 2022/2023.
The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) is unconvinced of Motshekga’s promised completion deadlines and has vowed to drag the Eastern Cape and four other provinces to court in 2022 for failing to eradicate pit toilets at schools.
SAHRC deputy chair Fatima Chohan said the commission had written to the education MECs, requesting a list of schools that did not have proper sanitation following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Chohan said the departments had later informed the commission there were pit toilets at more than 3,000 schools, with more than 2,200 in the Eastern Cape.
“The commission having tried engagement with the relevant authorities sees no other option but to litigate in this regard, as no other strategy is likely to produce the desired result, namely, measurable progress towards the eradication of pit latrines in all schools and the provision of an acceptable form of sanitation in those schools currently offering none,” she said.
Equal Education researcher Elizabeth Biney and head of organising in the Eastern Cape, Itumeleng Mothlabane, said poor sanitation infrastructure remained a great historical challenge in the province’s schools.
According to Equal Education, the latest publicly available national data, per the 2021 National Education Infrastructure Management System (NEIMS) report, shows there are still 1,473 schools in the province that have plain pit latrine toilets that need to be replaced, 944 of which have no alternative sanitation facilities.
“The province’s pit toilet crisis represents nearly a third of the total pit toilets across the country.”
National Professional Teachers Organisation of SA executive director Basil Manuel said that after 28 years of democracy it was ridiculous that pit toilets still existed.
“This shows you that there is an entire generation that had not been catered to.”
SA Teachers Union executive director Chris Klopper said the eradication of pit toilets had been a priority since 1992 and one that just could not seem to be adequately addressed.
SA Human Rights monitor and community activist Christian Martin took up the dire plight of Arcadia Senior Secondary School with Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane, who, during a visit to the school in 2019, promised to speed up building a new school.
Martin likened Arcadia Senior Secondary, and many other schools in Gqeberha’s northern areas and townships, to deathtraps.
“The time has come for parents of affected schools to take a bold decision to shut down these danger zones.”
On Wednesday, provincial education department spokesperson Mali Mtima could not confirm whether its state of readiness report had been approved by the education portfolio committee.
HeraldLIVE