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Give or take 100 pupils have to wade across a river to get to and from Ekhamanzi Primary School in KwaZulu-Natal.
Does the government care?
Not enough to build a bridge or hire a bus.
I wondered how much more they’d care if their own children had to do the same.
What if their six-year-old had to wade through a river to get to the closest school or the school where their child was placed?
In Gauteng this week the MEC for education, Panyaza Lesufi, expressed his frustration with “fussy parents” who didn’t take the places they were offered for their kids, overburdening the department’s systems.
“We don’t want to underestimate the importance of choice but there are other schools that are better than the ones our parents prefer.”
Who decides if they’re better? Sometimes parents want a school that’s closer, not better.
A better school that is an hour further away could be unsafe if there’s no reliable transport. We’ve all seen grungy old taxis with no safety belts transporting children.
I read all these interviews about “ungrateful parents” clogging up the system as I was helping an employee to get her son out of the school he was placed in and into another.
When he started high school a couple of years back, he was placed in a school two taxi rides and two hours away.
His mother visited the department and was told to suck it up.
Eventually she managed to get him into a closer school.
But last year he was mugged outside the school in full view of those in charge, so she wanted him to change schools this year.
Also, his fellow pupils were selling drugs and bullying him for money and food.
I wonder how the “suck-it-up” system of school placements would last if those who we elect to work for our benefit had to suck it up.
Famously, in 1977 US President Jimmy Carter put his nine-year-old daughter into the local government school when he took office.
In his acceptance speech he criticised “exclusive private schools that allow the children of the political and economic elite to avoid public schools that are considered dangerous or inferior”.
I wonder if there are any examples in South Africa.
Do any of our ANC leaders or vocal opposition leaders lead by example?
Are their kids in whatever government school they were placed in by their local education department?
Can anyone name a politician whose child started school on Wednesday at the state school they were placed in?
I think not.
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