SO, the ANC Women's League has come out all pip pip, tally-ho for its president, praising Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga for "her dedication and determination to see the children of South Africa receive a decent education".

Hardly startling news, you may say. In fact, you could use the Hubble space telescope and still would not find a single trace of surprise among the Mahogany Ridge regulars at the statement the league issued after the teachers' strike on Wednesday.

The league were obviously not happy with the SA Democratic Teachers Union and gamely suggested they could have used other methods to resolve their grievances. "As mothers," they huffed, "we will not stand for our children's education being used as a tool to launch a smear campaign against individuals."

Fine words. But not a single mention of Putuma Junior Secondary, a rural school about 40 kilometres from Mthatha. It was here, also on Wednesday, that a group of academics, writers and civil society members began their 2013 Eastern Cape Schools Solidarity Visit, an initiative founded by the non-profit organisation, Equal Education.

According to press reports, the group were greatly troubled by what they found at Putuma. Some pupils walk up to 15 kilometres to get to school, and then cram themselves in classes of more than 100 learners. 

One of the visitors, the novelist Zakes Mda, told The Times he was dumbstruck that the appalling conditions at Putuma were similar to those at the school he attended more than 50 years ago. "There is no capacity," he said. "There is corruption at top level. [That is why] places like these are neglected. That makes me very, very angry."

Another, Lindiwe Mokate, of the SA Human Rights Commission, broke down outside a classroom of more than 130 pupils. "I couldn't deal with it - to see children sitting like that in a class," she told the newspaper. "What disturbs me most is that this country can afford to get these children desks to sit in. That is the sad part. I think Angie Motshekga should come out here and see what I have seen. She would have to be moved . . . I don't know that anybody who has seen [this] would not sit up and do something."

It's apparent that there are a lot of Putumas out there. Peter Hain, the British MP and former anti-apartheid campaigner, found one easily enough, this time in Atteridgeville, for a BBC documentary that was screened in the UK this week. Here a headmaster told him, "I don't have enough textbooks, and the president is spending all our money on his personal palace [at Nkandla]?"

"A loyal ANC voter, he feels betrayed," Hain later wrote in the Daily Telegraph. "As do millions of others - but not with the fact that the government of SA President Jacob Zuma hasn't solved all the country's problems. The head teacher knew only too well that the awful legacy of apartheid - mass poverty, homelessness and, above all, the deliberate policy by ruling whites to ensure blacks had no skills - could never be overturned in 19 years of democracy. That wasn't his gripe . . . What pained him most was that ANC leaders now seemed to be preoccupied with corruptly enriching themselves at the taxpayers' expense, not sticking true to Mandela's values. ‘They are looting the country,' ANC members told me time and again. . ."

Time and again, time and again. So it goes. Sometimes, and it is really not difficult to be be that cynical, it does appear as if that "deliberate policy" was still with us - but to what end? Could it be that the ruling party actually wants a vast mass of unskilled and semi-literate citizens out there?

Perhaps not, but these nevertheless are the sort of school-leavers we can expect now, as the country heads into its 20th year of democracy, and for some time to come. The upside, of course, is that politicians can always tell them their no-hope future of appalling drudgery and poverty is due to the legacy of apartheid and they'll believe it. For a while, at least.

Hain was able to put these and other criticisms to Zuma, who cheerily dismissed them all. He blamed "negative" reporting - which brings us conveniently to the draconian Protection of State Information Bill, which was passed in the National Assembly on Thursday.

It was interesting how poor the MP turnout was for the vote. The Cape Times said as many as 160 were absent. Most of them were ANC members. Could this be how they voted with their conscience? By staying away? If so, that's rather a cowardly way of disagreeing with a contemptible attempt at curbing freedom of information.

This article first appeared in the Weekend Argus.

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