You cannot teach a hungry child

FOR the past two weeks I have been staring with morbid fixation at the debate about budget cuts in the secondary education sector. If there is no special place in hell for politicians, perhaps we should inquire as to why not.

The absolutely dire financial situation of schools has everything to do with the government's “couldn't care less" attitude towards the most vulnerable people in this country. Children are often the collateral damage of politicians and officials' poor decisions and I don't know whether we are doing enough to hold authorities to account for what happens to them. The fact that about 1,000 children are murdered in South Africa every year is too gruesome to be included in this argument, I will suffice with the neglect of our education system.

In Gauteng, the provincial government of Panyasa Lesufi has cut several social services budgets in the past year, some with drastic consequences for children. Like many other institutions, Springs and Kwa-Thema Child Welfare have recently expressed their concern in the media about their ability to provide essential services with significantly reduced budgets. Among others, the issues are priorities and that premier Lesufi is cutting social budgets to finance his job creation programmes — claims that are not unbelievable.

Gauteng MEC for finance Lebogang Maile's claim this week that the province could be financially bankrupt as early as 2025, must be laid before the ANC's, but specifically Lesufi's door.

Now provincial governments are embroiled in a bloody battle to adjust education budgets for 2025, because the national government has partially devolved the burden of civil servants' annual salary increases to the provinces. These cuts are part of finance minister Enoch Godongwana's efforts to manage South Africa's growing budget deficit, but the priority list for budget cuts has terminal consequences for departments such as health, social services and education.

The Gauteng education department, led by MEC Matome Chiloane, faces a budget deficit of R4.5 billion. In an effort to avoid conflict with unions, Chiloane decided to protect 3,400 teaching positions by cutting essential services such as school feeding programmes and learner transport. I find it strange that the MEC can spells out this choice of his in public without a hint of reticence.

In South Africa, about 9 million children benefit from the national school feeding programme (NSFP). This program provides daily meals to learners in public schools, especially those in quintile 1 to 3 schools, serving the most disadvantaged communities in the country. As the school-going population is estimated to be around 13 million, this means about 69% of schoolchildren benefit from the scheme. This initiative is crucial to support learning outcomes, but also to improve attendance, especially for children from low-income households who rely on these meals for their daily nutrition.

My almost natural instinct is to dismiss Chiloane's decision as being as heartless as I know and understand the ANC to be. These budget cuts not only cause great concern among parents and school managements, they have a significant influence on how we understand justice and show that the interests of dominant pressure groups are more important than the general interest. To understand the logic of these cuts to the country's education budget is already difficult, but even more so Chiloane's management of the problem.

There can be no doubt that almost everyone will be directly or indirectly affected by the priority lists of politicians, but we now know that the Gauteng government's is to protect the middle class by exposing the poorest of the poor to further pain and suffering. Basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube — what a breath of fresh air she is — is right when she says these cuts are “destroying the fabric of our children's future". The tales and anecdotes over millions of South African children's only food being their schools' nutrition programmes are not exaggerated.

Critics, including education unions and the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), rightly argue that these cuts will hit the poor communities hardest and only exacerbate existing inequalities in education. The irony that teaching unions had pushed for an unaffordable 7.5% increase for civil servants in 2023 in a militant vein is not lost on me.

The reality is that vulnerable learners and families who rely on these services for their daily meals and transport to school will suffer the consequences of an increase awarded to already overpaid civil servants in an election year.

Premier Lesufi is a politician who only understands power politics. He is a blueprint example of what can go wrong with cadre deployment. Like the ANC, under such deployment the natural instinct is to use the state for job creation purposes rather than as a source of empathy and understanding. Chiloane would not have taken this heartless decision to protect the middle class at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable South Africans without Lesufi's knowledge.

Almost all government departments are experiencing budget cuts, but I wonder if we shouldn't protect children from politicians' priorities. In the Western Cape, a deficit of R3.8 billion has forced the provincial government to propose cutting 2,400 teaching positions by 2025. This province must cover 36% of the deficit for 2023/2024's salary increases itself. Although there have been no immediate layoffs yet, the province, like all others, still faces major challenges in maintaining the quality of education without adequate resources.

I am very aware that teachers in South Africa very often work under significantly more difficult conditions than their counterparts in other middle-income countries and do not want to belabour the point that they are overpaid. However, the teacher unions' influence on the state's disproportionate salary bill cannot be denied. Economist Dawie Roodt points out that South African teachers earn up to 50% more than the norm in OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries. The OECD, a group of 37 democratic political systems and market-oriented economies, provides meaningful comparisons.

Then there is the context of the cuts. South Africa has a potential workforce of about 40 million people. About 15.8 million currently work in the formal sector. In terms of the extended definition of unemployment, just more than 40% are inactive in the labour market. In South Africa, employees in the public sector, especially in education, health and administration, generally earn more than employees in similar roles in the private sector.

The treasury allocates 35% of every cent the SA Revenue Service collects or borrows to about 1.3 million people in the public service in the form of wages and salaries. The international norm is around 25%. Economist Mike Schüssler mentioned to me a few years ago that public service workers earn about 35% more than comparable employees in the private sector. Workers in state enterprises thus earned as much as 45% more than the private sector would pay.

We often hear that 70% of South African schools can be considered dysfunctional. If the Bela Act is finally passed and Grade R becomes a mandatory part of schooling, there is absolutely no way school managements would be able to balance their budgets. Ramaphosa admittedly succumbed to pressure the week before last, after his theatrical signing of the Bela law, and did not ratify articles 4 and 5 of the law, which have to do with mother tongue education.

Afriforum and the DA have joined forces to have the president hesitating for three months before he can promulgate the law. But if Kallie Kriel from Afriforum really wanted to make a point in his conversation with the president on behalf of all children in this country, he would have objected to the article about Grade R teaching. Perhaps he did, but his priorities were language of instruction and affluent schools, rather than those truly in need. Priorities!?

Jaco Deacon, chief executive of the Federation of Governing Bodies of South African Schools (Fedsas), has always had his heart in the right place as far as I'm concerned. Deacon pointed out to the president and education departments that given the budget deficits, there is no way parents can be forced by legislation to send their children to school and also that schools do not have the capacity to comply with the legislation. The Bela Act will criminalise parents and schools due to the state's incompetence.

The so-called no-fee schools are the largest among the dysfunctional schools often with classes of more than 60 children per teacher. It is simply not possible to teach under such conditions. How should those schools accommodate compulsory Grade R education? Principals of the so-called former model C schools will tell you that state allocations for maintaining infrastructure have been so minimal for so many decades that school managements have to budget for it from their own funds. In other words, the parents pay, an option not available for more than 70% of public schools.

The Eastern Cape's situation may be slightly different. Due to, among other things, demographic mobility, the province is undergoing a significant process of rationalisation and restructuring of schools due to low enrolment numbers and limited resources. Schools in the Western Cape and also in Gauteng must somehow find a way to manage the consequences of urbanisation and migration. More than 1,000 schools in the Eastern Cape have recently been earmarked for closure. Most of these are small and unsustainable primary schools, mainly in rural areas. The closures are part of the province's strategy to optimise resources. Around 390 additional schools are to merge as part of this initiative.

Godongwana is to deliver his medium-term budget policy statement at the end of October and the hope and expectation is that he will be able to grant an additional financial allocation for Gwarube's basic education. Sometimes the decisions of politicians have moral consequences. Whatever the end or final decision, when it comes to the distribution or redistribution of scarce resources in a country where the majority of people live under conditions bordering on a struggle for survival, difficult moral questions will be asked.

• Meanwhile, basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube, has said the public wage bill has seen unsustainable increases consistently outpacing inflation over the past 15 years.
  
  “While we must fairly compensate public servants, these above-inflation increases have rendered the public wage bill unaffordable," Gwarube told a media briefing on Wednesday.
  
  But barely an hour later, deputy president Paul Mashatile told delegates attending the South African Democratic Teachers' Union's (Sadtu) tenth national congress that teachers work very hard and “it must be up to us, as the leadership, to make sure that we deal with the conditions of employment of teachers and, dare I say, including better remuneration for teachers".

♦ VWB ♦

BE PART OF THE CONVERSATION: Go to the bottom of this page to share your opinion. We look forward to hearing from you.