Toilets in fields, bees, bars: it’s just another day in an Eastern Cape school

Window panes damaged by birds, swarms of bees in classrooms, graves and a funeral parlour on school premises.

A recently released report by the Eastern Cape’s portfolio committee on education after visits to 198 schools over 10 days in January paints a very dismal picture of school infrastructure, water supply, furniture and scholar transport.

Some schools that don’t have tap water are being forced to buy it at huge cost, while others rely on rain and rivers for their supply.

Nomzamo Senior Secondary in the Sarah Baartman district was harvesting water from a dirty asbestos roof, something  “which will have serious health implications for users” thereof.

The department must approach the local municipality to have the water tested to establish its safety for drinking, the report stated.

At the Chief Dumile Senior Secondary in Bizana, which has 1,110 pupils, there is no clean water or sanitation and pupils living across the Nkundla river miss out on schooling when it rains as there is no bridge to cross it.

Many teachers and pupils are still using pit-latrine toilets, while pupils at one school are forced to relieve themselves in bushes because there are no toilets.

Learners are using drugs, with some even coming to school intoxicated, and others using them on the school premises. The department must engage with the local authorities and liquor board to close the tavern.

Committee members were told that Ngalonkulu Senior Secondary, also in Bizana, was surrounded by taverns and “this negatively affects learner discipline”.

“Learners are using drugs, with some even coming to school intoxicated, and others using them on the school premises. The department must engage with the local authorities and liquor board to close the taverns,” the report said.

Vacant posts for two teachers at the school had not been filled for the past two years.

The battle to attract and retain teachers was a common problem at many schools, including Emgodini Primary in Flagstaff, where the school lost eight teachers in 2017 alone.

“The mud school, established in 1939, is dilapidated. Classes are overcrowded, with some having 106 learners.”

At Flagstaff’s Mkomane Senior Secondary classes are overcrowded and there are eight vacancies.

According to the report, some pupils, whose request for scholar transport was approved, were forced to walk 24km to school because “the service provider who was awarded the tender declined after having noticed the distance the provider would have to travel”.

Ntabankulu Senior Secondary in the Alfred Nzo district, which has 1,071 pupils, has nine vacant teaching posts.

Some of the findings involving the school included:

• No permanent classrooms, with the 18 structures that do exist deemed inappropriate;
• A huge shortage of furniture for teachers;
• A shortage of ablution facilities;
• A high pregnancy rate; and
• Pupils abusing drugs.

The reliance on rivers and rain for water was evident at Madikizela Secondary, about 18km from Bizana, as the school does not have piped water.

Members of the portfolio committee were informed that the southern ground hornbill, or intsikizi in Xhosa, “continuously damages the school windows”.

“As a result, the school maintenance budget gets depleted as the school repeatedly installs windows.”    

The report also stated that there was a need to exhume graves on school premises.

The committee recommended the department must, among other things, engage with the families of those buried there to have the bodies exhumed and reburied elsewhere.

The danger posed by bees to the safety of pupils at Khwaza Senior Secondary in Cofimvaba was also highlighted in the report, which recommended the department find an apiarist to remove them.

At the dilapidated Maletswai Primary in Maletswai (Aliwal North), committee members heard about a funeral parlour on the premises.

“The department must consult the department of health and the funeral parlour of prospects of relocating it.”

The DA’s shadow MEC of education in the Eastern Cape, Yusuf Cassim, said the report, which was adopted in the legislature, “laid bare the chaos that the Eastern Cape education system is in as a result of a dysfunctional department of education”.

“The report detailed how members of the provincial legislature were confronted with schools [where infrastructure was falling apart], no textbooks [were] being delivered and [there was] a shortage of teachers, among many other critical issues.”

“The department’s mismanaging of its budget is further evidence that it is unable to execute its mandate and must be put under section 100 administration immediately so the governance issues that have caused these crises can be rectified.”

Cassim said the department forfeited more than R200m of its education infrastructure grant to National Treasury because it failed to use it.

He said the province had 3,157 schools with inadequate sanitation, including 1,445 that were still using pit-latrine “death traps”.

Eastern Cape education department spokesperson Mali Mtima had not responded at the time of publication.