Some provincial education departments are failing to provide food parcels to pupils in the first week of the school holidays, despite amended directions by the basic education department instructing them to do so.
This comes in the wake of a media statement on Tuesday indicating that Equal Education (EE) will be hauling basic education minister Angie Motshekga and the nine provincial education MECS to court for allegedly failing to roll out the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP) “to every single eligible learner in South Africa for over a year”.
According to Motshekga’s amended directions, gazetted on June 29, schools “must make the necessary arrangements to continue to provide feeding until July 9, including the option to provide food parcels to learners who are beneficiaries of the NSNP”.
This is because schools were initially supposed to close on July 9, before President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement that brought the holidays forward to June 30.
Western Cape education department spokesperson Bronagh Hammond confirmed that schools offering the feeding scheme were informed it must continue from July 5 to 9.
“Cooked meals are being served. Learners [who] are normally recipients of the NSNP and are not attending school can go to their nearest feeding school on a daily basis to collect food.”
She said 491,600 pupils are beneficiaries of the scheme.
North West education MEC Mmaphefo Matsemela said meals will be provided until July 9, then continue when schools reopen.
“We ensure that every learner in the province is fed. I encourage parents who need our assistance during this winter break to release learners to come over to school for servings this week until Friday.”
In the province, 748,112 pupils in 1,332 quintile 1 to 3 schools, as well as identified special schools, benefit from the feeding scheme.
Eastern Cape education spokesman Mali Mtima said only matrics attending winter classes were receiving meals during the holidays.
But Limpopo education department spokesperson Tidimalo Chuene said they asked schools “to package June surplus food to all needy learners during the vacation”.
Asked whether there is a structured feeding programme in place for schools from July 5 to 9, she said: “No, not according to the current arrangement.”
Almost 1,5 million pupils rely on the scheme in Limpopo.
Eastern Cape education spokesperson Mali Mtima said only matrics attending winter classes are receiving meals during the holidays.
He said the department will continue the feeding scheme when all pupils, teachers and volunteer food-handlers return to school on July 19.
Northern Cape education department spokesperson Geoffrey van der Merwe said the department of basic education “will be providing guidance on this matter”.
However, teachers at Elnor Primary School in Elsie’s River in the Western Cape are determined to continue dishing out food parcels to pupils next week, when the provincial feeding scheme stops operating.
Dillon Henwood, 25, a grade five teacher, said they supplemented the meals provided by government by adding chicken and bread to the menu.
Teachers take turns every Tuesday by taking a 40-minute drive to Salt River in their private vehicles to fetch between 60 and 80 loaves of bread that are donated by a bakery.
Henwood fetches about 30kg chicken from a meat supplier in Epping every second Wednesday.
“We are feeding about 400 children daily. We try to make the food more appetising by adding chicken. I want to make sure that they eat the kind of food that I want to eat,” he said.
Meanwhile, EE, Equal Education Law Centre and Section 27 said in a statement they are asking for a new court order that declares education officials have not met their constitutional obligations to provide daily meals to all qualifying pupils, as ordered by a high court in July 2020.
“The education MECs and basic education minister Angie Motshekga should give the court reasons why they shouldn’t be fined or sent to jail for being in contempt of the court order.”
They said they are asking the court to order the national and provincial education departments to file new, revised plans to deliver the NSNP that take into account the continued challenges posed by Covid-19.
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