The Big Read: One road, two journeys

The uphill road to Enkanyisweni Primary School in rural KwaZulu- Natal is uneven, gravelly and hard.

Suddenly, the tar road starts and the car flows smoothly down the even black surface towards the valleys below. In that sudden transition from gravel to tar in the same community, in the same province, in the same country, lies an intriguing story about local politics and, more broadly, inequality.

The gravel road falls under one councillor; the tarred road under another. Your life is marginally better or worse, depending on which administration you fall under, or which school you enrol in.

On the tarred side of the road stands one of South Africa's most impressive primary schools, situated in the Adams Mission area, south of Durban. Like all good schools its origins lie in the distant past with the missionary endeavour of overseas visitors, in this case American churches. The school quickly gained a reputation for quality education in the midst of the ramshackle schooling offered by the apartheid state. But those foundations were solid enough so that when the school came under state control, it had already established a tarred road culture that would not bend to the gravel road administration of an imposed bureaucracy.

You can smell a good school before you even enter the gate. There is a sense of order and industry, and the welcoming party of young girls near the gate dancing and singing to the hollow tune belted out by a young male drummer suggests careful preparation to impress the party of visitors. All the teachers, mainly women, are immaculately dressed, including the star of the school, principal Z Mkhize.

Of course, the electricity would fail on such a special day, so the principal's presentation would have to be from the hard copy notes. This puts her off-balance so that she starts slowly but then finds her "line and length", in cricketing parlance, and we sit in awe of what this school could accomplish with so little resources. The evidence of success was all over the school. Children reciting verse in unison. Walls adorned with children's artwork and writing. Books filled with active writing by every student. Colourful charts in every class.

Said Mkhize: "We mix paraffin with candle wax so that we can get these floors so smooth."

Here they do not wait for the government but take charge of school improvements themselves.

"We were not ready, but now we are," she says confidently. The children will now participate in various maths and reading Olympiads with pupils from the more well-heeled schools. I have a sense they will excel because a little one comes in reading fluently from an isiZulu reader and another from an English reader.

Here is a simple test of whether there is any education going on in a primary school - give a child a book to read. Outside, the gardens are beautifully arranged. Not a leaf out of place.

Then a striking observation - teachers who start at the school never leave; they retire from here, and this partly explains the coherence and accomplishment of Enkanyisweni. But three teachers recently had to retire and, unsurprisingly, the government department did not provide their replacements in time. Not a problem for the principal, though.

"In this school every child gets taught, even with the three vacancies," said Mkhize, who teaches three classes herself.

Here is the moral conundrum I wish to put to you. Why should the future of children be left to chance? If you were born on the right side of the road, the tarred section, metaphorically speaking, you have access to excellent education and you are likely to pursue a university degree and land a good job. But if you happened to land on the gravel side of the road, so to speak, the odds are stacked against you. Why does such gross unfairness not deeply disturb South Africans?

Why do we accept that a school with tuition fees well in excess of R100000 per year can exist in the same country as a school where a child can drown in a pit latrine? Does the fact that a few middle- class black children can access the R100000 school take the odiousness of race out of the equation? Does the fact that Mkhize's school succeeds despite the odds soothe our troubled consciences? Have our moral arteries become so hardened that we no longer find revulsion in such inequality? Surely it is not fair that a child's future in this country is so randomly determined by gravel or tar?