In August 2018, President Cyril Ramaphosa unveiled the Sanitation Appropriate for Education (SAFE) initiative aimed at eradicating pit latrines at about 4,000 schools across the country.
He assured the nation that the move “will spare generations of young South Africans the indignity, discomfort and danger of using pit latrines and other unsafe facilities in our schools”.
During his address, he alluded to the deaths of five-year-old Michael Komape who drowned in a pit toilet at Mahlodumela Primary School in Limpopo in 2014 and Lumka Mkhethwa, also five, who met the same fate at Luna Junior Primary School in the Eastern Cape in March 2018. He acknowledged that these tragic deaths “remind us of the human consequences of service delivery delayed”.
He said: “We have heard the cries of anguished families, we have felt the outrage of a society that cannot bear to witness another needless death.” Sadly, the nation has “witnessed another needless death” after three-year-old Langalam Viki’s body was discovered in a pit toilet at Mcwangele Junior Secondary School in Buffeldorings in Eastern Cape last Tuesday.
According to reports, she was last seen by her classmates last Monday when she said she was going to fetch a piece of paper left in the toilet. Her body was retrieved the next day by police search and rescue members.
The little girl’s death comes amid an announcement by National Treasury that R100m was being taken away from the Eastern Cape’s education infrastructure grant because of slow spending.
During an interview on SABC, the province’s education spokesperson Vuyiseka Mboxela made these bizarre comments: “You and me might say the child fell in the toilet only to find the investigation that is under way is going to give us different information ... We are not conclusively saying the child didn’t fall, and also we are not saying the child fell. We are trusting the service of the SAPS [SA Police Service] that is busy with the investigation.”
It’s time public officials who consistently don’t deliver are summarily dismissed as they don’t deserve to be in the public service.
Coming at a time when a child had lost her life, these remarks are bewildering and insensitive to say the least. In response to assertions that the department is to blame for what happened, she glibly said: “In a state of panic and frustration, such comments will be understood.” It is cold comfort to the Viki family that the education department is planning to build toilets at 353 schools in the province in the coming financial year.
Up until March last year, 811 institutions in the Eastern Cape, 557 in KwaZulu-Natal and 286 in Limpopo still had pit latrines, according to the department of basic education. The department had committed to eradicating these structures by the end of this month.
In September last year MPs doing oversight visits were shocked to discover that more than 200 blind, visually impaired and deaf pupils at Silindokuhle Special School in Nkomazi West, Mpumalanga, were still using pit-latrine toilets. Pupils at Lamulelani High, also in Mpumalanga, some of whom are forced to learn under trees, recently spoke of their frustration of being forced to use unsafe ablution facilities. There is absolutely no privacy for Lamulelani High pupils because none of the pit toilets has doors.
Basic education department director-general Mathanzima Mweli has been traversing the length and breadth of the country over many years monitoring infrastructure projects, including the construction of proper sanitation facilities. He has done excellent work, and the nation truly owes him a huge debt of gratitude. But the immensity of the task can’t rest on his shoulders alone. Provinces have to step up to the plate and also take responsibility for infrastructure projects.
After Viki’s death, Amnesty International South Africa wrote an open letter to basic education minister Angie Motshekga, urging her to immediately make public the number of public schools across SA that had pit toilets. It urged her and her department to ensure that every pupil’s right to safe sanitation is realised.
At least three young children have drowned in smelly pit toilets that have become deathtraps at schools. We cannot afford to lose another life. It’s time public officials who consistently don’t deliver are summarily dismissed.
Ramaphosa said schools should be places “where children can be safe, supported, nurtured and empowered”. It would not be a bad idea at all for him to make the eradication of pit toilets his pet project.
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