Standing up to Angie: iLIVE

I am a black grandmother and a teacher. I was part of the Equal Education march in Pretoria on Monday, as were my two grandchildren.

I was not organised by any white person to go to the march.

I did not organise any black children except my two grandchildren.

I want them to develop into socially responsible human beings. I am teaching them that we have a government that is open and willing to listen to its citizens when things go wrong.

I am teaching them that social justice happens when one feels compelled to take up a cause that affects others as "an injury to one is an injury to all".

I am telling them that what made apartheid so wrong was the silence of many white people because apartheid did not affect them.

I have been involved in Equal Education now for a while and am a member of the national council.

Contrary to what the Department of Education would like the public to believe, Equal Education is concerned about the absence of social justice, but it is disciplined and respectful in its approach.

Equal Education has engaged the minister of basic education since 2010.

It had no option but to take the department to court and push for norms and standards for school infrastructure after all the promises the minister has broken.

I am deeply offended by the statement issued by Angie Motshekga. It implies I have no mind of my own and white people tell me what to do.

It is true that the present government has done a lot to improve the classroom conditions of many children in the country. But the minister must tell this to the children in my village in Qumbu, Eastern Cape, where the situation in schools is still deplorable.

No respectable parent will send their children to these schools. If the minister told this community how much the government cares about them, would it believe her?

The children in my village have every right to expect to be treated the same as children in Sandton or Pinelands.

The department must stop politicking and fix what is wrong.

We should not be criminalised for speaking out in a democratic South Africa.

Motshekga is not expected to build a single school, but the provinces are, and all she needs to do is to appreciate the gravity of the situation, do what is right and in her power and publish minimum norms and standards for school infrastructure.

This country belongs to all of us - not only the government.

• Associate professor and director of the Centre for Researching Education and Labour at the University of the Witwatersrand and a member of Equal Education's national council