Western Cape teacher cuts: Education MEC’s answers reveal province’s political intent

9 October 2024

Western Cape Education MEC David Maynier could lean on Western Cape Premier Alan Winde to allocate education its fair share of the provincial budget received from the national fiscus.

Or he could whisper in his DA colleague, the National Education Minister’s, ear to use her influence in the Cabinet of National Unity to force provinces to use the money they receive for education on education.

But he’d rather scrap 2,400 teachers’ posts to make the point that “the national budget process has completely collapsed”. 

That’s the bottom line of Maynier’s response to a series of written questions posed by GOOD MPL Brett Herron, who sought an explanation for the province announcing it would scrap teacher posts just a few months after he announced in his budget speech that the province would be hiring extra teachers.

According to Maynier, in June 2023, the province began “to hear whispers in the corridors that something was seriously wrong and that the national government was in trouble. We heard rumours that national government couldn’t afford the wage deal, and that a full-blown fiscal emergency was looming”.

On 1 November “the sheer scale of the national fiscal emergency hit us” when the national Minister of Finance announced the mid-term budget, the MEC said.

Yet, four months later, in his budget speech in March 2024, he tabled a budget that provided for an increase in compensation for employees of 6,1%, and the increased hiring of teachers.

He says the reason he announced in March 2024 that the province would be hiring extra teachers, despite having long realised the “sheer scale of the fiscal emergency”, was that, “the 2024 Basket of Posts process which took place in 2023 preceded the budget cuts”.

The gist of it, according to him, is that, besides the Department of Basic Education cutting the province’s conditional grants by R179.4 million, National Treasury reneged on its promise to cover 78% of the costs related to public sector wage increases, only covering 64% of the costs.

“Which means we are being short-changed by the national government to the tune of R537 million,” Maynier said.

Maynier claims his department therefore has a R3.8 billion budgetary shortfall over the next three years, forcing him to cut teacher posts. What he doesn’t say is that the Western Cape government has raided its education budget to the tune of R8 billion over the next three years to spend on other things, like innovation and its policing plan. That’s R8 billion of the money allocated by national to the province based on the number of children at school.

The state of the economy, and the State’s fiscal contraction, impacts all provinces. While all provinces are therefore having to cut spending, some of it crucial spending, the Western Cape is the only one to announce a reduction in teachers’ posts.

There is a national teacher shortage in the country. The last thing the long-term development of the country and its people needs is to deprioritise education. Not least, in a country where the generational impact of deliberate under-education of the majority of citizens remains so keenly felt.

Maynier must be stopped from scoring political points at the expense of teachers. 

If the Western Cape refuses to heed the advice of civil society and trade unions, and respect its teachers, national government must step in and provide the appropriate leadership.

Issued by Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary General & Member of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament, 9 October 2024