Angie's promises cold comfort for kids

This might not be a year to remember for Magoxo Primary School pupils who are still taught under leaking roofs in overcrowded classrooms. They also have to drink unsafe river water.

The school, in Elliotdale, Eastern Cape, epitomises conditions in hundreds of other mud schools across the province. And there seems to be no end in sight to their plight.

Responding to a parliamentary question recently, Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga said of the 344 mud schools in South Africa that 343 are in Eastern Cape and one in KwaZulu-Natal.

Despite the government's repeated pledges to replace them, not a single school was built in the province during the past financial year. The department discovered through its national education infrastructure management system as far back as 2007 that 40% of schools in Eastern Cape were in a "poor condition".

Motshekga said her department had developed an "accelerated schools infrastructure delivery initiative"- now in its second year - to "accelerate the delivery of basic services to schools and eradicate all entire-mud schools".

"Funding of R8.2-billion has been allocated to the initiative over the 2011-2012 medium-term expenditure framework. This funding will eradicate inappropriate structures, electrify 1434 schools, provide water to 1307 schools and provide sanitation to 536 schools," she said.

But her promises are cold comfort to Dikwenisi Velehlathini, chairman of the school governing body at Magoxo, a school built by the community in the 1980s which has 218 pupils.

"The school is inaccessible, the road is very bad. We don't have chairs or electricity, and windows are broken. At times we are forced to use water from the river.

"The roof of one of the classrooms was blown off by winds about two years ago and it is yet to be replaced even though we reported it and education officials came and took pictures of it," Velehlathini said.

Lennox Gaehler, the UDM MP who asked the parliamentary question, said Motshekga's response was unsatisfactory.

"Their biggest problem is a lack of capacity, and the longer they delay it will be almost impossible to eradicate the mud schools. The situation is dire; some kids are being taught under trees," Gaehler said.