Motshekga on warpath after questions on latest pit toilet tragedy

The gloves were off in parliament on Wednesday night when basic education minister Angie Motshekga told a member of the portfolio committee to “bring it on”.

During a heated exchange between her and outspoken DA member Baxolile Nodada, a fuming Motshekga told him: “Bring it on Nodada. I don’t want to say much. There are officials from the department but I can say, ‘bring it on’. I am not going to be abused by members of the opposition. Never!”

Her outburst followed comments by Nodada after she accused him of politicising his visit to the family of four-year-old Langalam Viki, who drowned after falling into a pit toilet at Mcwangele Junior Secondary School on March 6.

Motshekga and her deputy, Reginah Mhaule, as well as senior officials of the department were briefing committee members on the budget and annual performance plan.

Earlier Nodada made reference to the “ventilated” or so-called “VIP toilet” in which Viki died.

“I want to check with the minister considering that the VIP toilets are actually not safe. Are you considering, as part of your targets this year, to amend the norms and standards to remove VIP pit toilets?”

He said he asked this deliberately “because there’s nobody that could even think they can bury their children at that age”.

“It’s really an untenable situation. It’s quite a traumatic experience more so than anything if your child has to die in that [toilet].

“What is the reason for the continued shifting of deadlines when it comes to the eradication of pit toilets considering that children just continue to die in those.”

Responding to his comments, Motshekga said it was “disingenuous for him to have gone to a school and created a picture that he was not aware that there was controversy about how the child drowned”.

She said the controversy was over whether Viki “went into the pit latrine alive or was she dumped there”.

“There are suspicions and he knows it and he goes and politicises it. We are expected as government to be insensitive and talk about a child’s death in public and say what he said is not true.”

She said Nodada “spread around disinformation which I find very regrettable from a member of the committee”.

“He went there and knows what the truth is but for political reasons he politicises a very sad issue.”

An angry Nodada retorted that “it cannot be that the minister comes here and insults me, [saying] that I am lying about a family I visited myself yesterday who asked for my help”.

“If we wanted to politicise things, minister, trust me we can politicise things but we are raising issues here that you and your department need to resolve. The only thing I am hearing here is excuses left, right and centre.”

Said Nodada: “We are not stupid by being here. We are not here by chance, we are elected to be here.

“Let us not be insulted as MPs who have an oversight responsibility we need to play. But if we are called into that arena, we will come to that arena.”

He said it was quite disappointing to hear the responses from Motshekga and Mhaule.

“It’s really abusive, honestly speaking.”

The chair of the portfolio committee, Bongiwe Mbinqo-Gigaba, said they were in a political space and hoped that “the emotions by next week would have gone down”.

“It happens and it will happen because we are not going to necessarily agree on many issues.”

She adjourned the meeting after midnight on Wednesday.

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