School's success should be lesson to government

If anyone still doubts the crippling effect of the ANC's internecine war, they need only look to the Eastern Cape, where the battle has stalled almost every level of government.

Mlibo Qoboshiyane, the MEC for local government, went public this week accusing the ANC-controlled OR Tambo district municipality of political sabotage. And the target, he said, was the president of that same ANC, Jacob Zuma.

Qoboshiyane, who is also the ANC spokesman in the Eastern Cape, said the OR Tambo municipality, which covers Mthatha, had deliberately not spent R95-million allocated for water and sanitation upgrades.

"We all know the regional leadership in that area is against President Zuma's bid to retain his position as ANC president in December," he said.

"We now feel their failure to spend the grants is a deliberate attempt to frustrate and sabotage projects in a bid to portray the president as a failure."

Pinch yourself. You are awake. This is real.

This is what governance in the Eastern Cape has come to: the provincial chief of local government publicly accuses one of the councils he oversees of using state funds to influence the outcome of the ruling party's December conference.

Qoboshiyane's argument assumes that if the water and sanitation upgrade had been delivered it would somehow have been to the personal credit of the president, that a service as local as that happens, or is perceived to happen, only at Zuma's behest.

Could there be a more abject admission that government in the province has lost its way? Like the proverbial iceberg, this is just the visible tip of the monster that makes the Eastern Cape such a sad reflection of the devastation Zuma's rule has wrought.

The economy is declining faster than the national average, the roads managed by the province and its councils are crumbling, healthcare is in crisis and education is an unmitigated disaster. Whether you call them refugees or migrants, the Eastern Cape education department's own figures show school enrolment in the province has dropped from 2.05million in 2006 to 1.69million this year.

While population growth should see enrolment rising, about 356000 children have either dropped out or taken their learning elsewhere.

But as most provinces crumble and the miners' revolt spreads, Zuma's ANC remains focused only on the battle of Mangaung and his ambition to remain in charge of the party and the country for another lucrative term.

In the midst of this carnage, I was invited this week to the prize-giving evening of East London's renowned 133-year-old Cambridge High School. It was the most heartening thing I have done in ages.

Stretching the resources inherited from the apartheid order's Model C system, a brave and evidently committed community of teachers and parents soldier on despite the bungling and neglect of the government to give 1100 children the gift of opportunity.

In a microcosm of the new order most of us would like to see take root, a racial bouquet of pupils and staff appear to be going beyond the extra mile to make their world a success. Every Cambridge matric passed last year in a province with an overall pass rate of 58%, the worst in the country.

Prizes and announcements reflected a modest but significant range of provincial and national achievements in sports, academics and extramural activities.

In a poll including but not weighted towards staff, the overwhelmingly African pupil body elected a black boy and a white girl as head prefects for the new year. This is not one of East London's elite schools, but it is one of its very good ones.

I am sure unseen problems and tensions seethe below the surface. But in fabulous contrast to the example being set by government and social leaders in the province and the country, they are getting the job done, and done well.

Here, in contrast to most of South Africa's rural areas, freedom from apartheid has delivered one very important gain, and that is opportunity.

If one were to condense the promise of the 1996 constitution to one word, that might well be it. All its rights, guarantees and protection come down to ensuring everyone has an equal opportunity to make a success of their lives.

One does not have to travel far from Cambridge to demonstrate that our new South Africa has a very long way to go to deliver that promise of opportunity to everyone. Just a few hours away, children walk more than 10km to and from schools with missing walls.

There are allegations the justice system has been manipulated to favour some, the abuse of tenders makes a mockery of equal opportunity and cadre deployment corrupts efforts to develop the country.

But across the province and the country, there are schools, clinics, police stations, home affairs offices and other entities that share the ethos of Cambridge High - places where people go to work to do the jobs they are trained for as best they can and often in the absence of appropriate government support.

They are the South Africans who will eventually deliver the promise of liberation and make this country great, as it ought to be. In doing what they do every day, they shame those who even contemplate the possibility that R95-million intended to give clean water and sanitation to more people in Mthatha might be used or withheld to influence the outcome of the ANC's internecine war.