Eastern Cape defies Zuma

President Jacob Zuma is set to read the Eastern Cape provincial government the riot act over the province's alleged refusal to allow the national government to take over its education department.

The Eastern Cape provincial government refused to accede to the demands of a team of cabinet heavy- weights established to deal with the matter at a recent meeting in Cape Town, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga revealed yesterday.

At a press briefing in parliament yesterday, Motshekga said: "We are actually stuck. As soon as the president comes back, as early as next week, we will have to go back to the province to solve the impasse."

The 2011 school year got off to a disastrous start in the Eastern Cape when pupils arrived at school to find that textbooks had not been delivered, and that the province had axed 4000 temporary teachers, suspended scholar transport and stopped school feeding schemes, saying it didn't have any money left to pay for them.

The cabinet decided in February to take over the provincial education department. A few weeks later, Motshekga reported that a top team of national treasury and education officials had taken over the leadership structures and financial management of the department, and that Eastern Cape officials were co-operating.

But yesterday she revealed that the plan had failed.

"If truth be told we have major, major problems in intervening in the Eastern Cape, to an extent that I had to go back to the president to say we are getting lots of resistance from the leadership in the Eastern Cape."

Motshekga said the province had not legally challenged the takeover, "but they have created a state of paralysis by just not co-operating with the national department".

She said the provincial cabinet, including Premier Noxolo Kiviet, had signed a document agreeing to the takeover. But later, Kiviet told Zuma she wanted "some conversation" about it, Motshekga said.

The cabinet team then met five MECs in Cape Town, but the meeting "deadlocked" after Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said Education MEC Mandla Makapula should appoint a new head of department, Motshekga said.

The nearly R5-billion set aside by the national government to replace mud, tin, wood and asbestos schools across the country over the next three years had also caused "tension".

Though the Eastern Cape was identified as a priority area for this project because it has 395 mud schools, the money would not be handed over to the province because it was a project being administered by the national government.

Provincial government spokesman Mahlubandile Qwase denied that the takeover was being blocked.

Qwase said: "The government of the Eastern Cape has no decision not to co-operate with national government. There is no such resolution by the exec council, which has no intention to undermine the authority of the cabinet."

However, Qwase insisted that the team of ministers would have to meet again with the MECs to discuss "confusion" around the education department head, Modidima Mannya.

"Mannya was appointed and you cannot just throw a person out there just like that. You cannot do it clumsily like that. There are legal implications."