CONGRESS OF SOUTH AFRICAN TRADE UNIONS

30th July 2012 

To: The Provincial Government 

Attention: Office of the Premier and MEC Education 

Re: COSATU Section 77 

Dear Madam Premier 

Please receive correspondence from our offices in respect of the matter we are referring to NEDLAC under Section 77 of the LRA. We address it to your offices as it is a position of the Government of the Western Cape that prejudices the Socio Economic rights of workers and their children, and to which we are unable to find an agreement. 

We have addressed correspondence to your offices on the 2l June 2012 outlining our concerns and referencing the press statement that contains details thereto. We have in this correspondence called for a meeting to deal with the related areas.

The main focus of our concerns however is the lack of an agreed to, coherent educational plan that underpins any possible developments that would impact on the educational prospects of the children of working families. These educational plans must at the very least ensure that all the children of the Province have the same educational opportunity and resources, at their schools, irrespective of whether their parents are rich or poor.

You have refused to take up our offer to find solutions, in a meaningful engagement, instead making some reference to doing what may be lawful, whilst disregarding our interest as workers in relation to the interest and future of our children's educational environment. We have in the interest of good faith repeated our proposal to an engagement on the issues, in our correspondence dated 4th July 2012, to which you have chosen not to reply.

Instead of finding solutions with the parents, workers and broader community, as proposed in our correspondence, your educational MEC has sent out letters to schools, in relation to the closures that have the effect of achieving the objectives of closure by stealth, essentially violating the law. The reality is that the correspondence that you have sent to schools has severely undermined the culture of learning at those schools, as well as scaring parents into going to find alternate schools for their children for the New Year. In this way you essentially construct a circumstance that makes the closure unfold, even those you claim to have withdrawn have had a negative impact. 

We cannot accept that you treat the future of our children with such disregard, in respect of the closures and the lack of an educational plan for equality of opportunity. We are saddened by your arrogance and disregard of the soclo economic rights and concerns that our constitution affords us, in relation to Government policy that causes social injury in respect of the socio economic rights and interest that the working class have. 

We will not allow you to treat our kids in this manner as you try and maintain and legitimize the Apartheid generational advantage of the wealthy white people in this Province. We are lodging the attached section 77 application at NEDLAC, and hope that in the engagements that must follow through NEDLAC we can find mutually beneficial solutions, to the closures and equality in education. 

Yours faithfully 

pp. E. B. Geswindt 

Tony Ehrenreich 
COSATU Provincial Secretary 

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