SACP Western Cape Statement on Court Ruling on School Closures

The SACP in the Western Cape together with the Alliance and parents of the affected school children have been vindicated by the Western Cape High Court interdict against the DA-led provincial government. The Court has stopped the DA dead on its tracks in its campaign to deny the poor their constitutional right to access to education. From the outset we have said and continue to aver that the DA serves the interests of the elite and only condescends superciliously in feigned charity when extending constitutionally protected services to the working class and the poor.

We agree with the learned Desai J that Zille's last-minute undertaking to keep Beauvallon, ValPark, Protea, and Levis Drive schools out of the 17 schools open, is "absolute gamesmanship". We further agree with the learned Judge that a courtroom is not a playground for the DA. This stunt would be funny if it were not pathetic for exposing the DA as having knowingly and intentionally acted unlawfully by closing schools in dominantly working class and poor communities.

We are not surprised by the DA's assault on education (our apex priority) as it reveals that the DA has anentrenched covert apartheid culture which consistentlydictates its programmes and actions. Beneath its veneer of liberalism lurks a shell of racism and elitism. We pledge ourselves never to relent until these pretenders to the throne are permanently rejected by the people of Western Cape. The people shall know who their enemy is and when such knowledge abounds, the working class and the poor people of the Western Cape shall have their human dignity restored as discrimination on class basis steeped in racism shall see its demise never to rise again.

Statement issued by Khaya Magaxa, SACP Western Cape Provincial Secretary, December 22 2012

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