Basic education minister stood up this month and announced the pit toilet backlog from the 2018 list is cleared, every one of those schools now has safe sanitation. Almost a thousand schools across Limpopo, the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal are still using the same holes that have killed children before, some of them not even on that original list. I teach in Limpopo, I have walked past those toilets, cleared is not the word I would use for what I saw. Two children fell into pit toilets this year alone and somehow that is the year we are patting ourselves on the back for progress, what exactly are we celebrating.
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This is such a clear example of how disconnected official messaging can be from what’s actually happening on the ground. In my line of work we talk a lot about accountability and reporting integrity, and honestly, if any company published a completion report that didn’t match reality, there would be consequences fairly quickly.
What gets me is that these announcements often become the story instead of the actual conditions kids are learning in. I grew up in Soweto and went to schools that weren’t exactly flush with resources, so I know how much a safe, dignified space to use the toilet affects whether a child feels okay going to school at all, never mind concentrating once they’re there.
We can be cautiously optimistic about this country while still demanding that the numbers we’re told line up with what people are actually living through.
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The Wild Coast route past Elliotdale and Mqanduli tells you everything that speech left out, some of the primary schools along there still have the same block toilets I remember from guiding trips five years ago, roof half gone and all. Eastern Cape gets named in nearly every one of these reports because the budget for rural schools out past Mthatha never seems to arrive the way it does for the N2 upgrades tourists actually drive on. You can build a viewing deck for whale season in six months flat, yet the primary school twenty minutes off that same road waits a decade for a toilet block that isn’t just a hole in the ground.
That last post about the Wild Coast route really hit home for me. I have family near Mthatha and it is exactly what they describe, roofs half gone and still the same block toilets from years back. When I hear a minister say the backlog is cleared it makes me so cross because clearly somebody’s checklist and the actual ground reality are two completely different things.
At my school here in Durban we are lucky, but even we struggle to get small maintenance jobs sorted through the right channels, so I can only imagine what it is like out in those rural areas where the budget seems to just evaporate before it reaches the schools that need it most. It is not even about fancy infrastructure, it is basic dignity and safety for children going to the toilet.
At the end of the day we all just want stability for our kids, whether that is a proper toilet or a safe walk to class. Does anyone know if there is a way ordinary parents or teachers can report these specific schools directly, rather than waiting for the next official list that clearly is not capturing everyone?