SADTU:Education not revolution should be teacher's core business

The Democratic Alliance (DA) calls on teachers who belong to the South African Democratic Trade Union (SADTU) to put the interests of learners first by terminating their union membership en masse thereby ending the financial lifeline that keeps this anti-education organization, which is hostile to the interests of learners, alive.

We reiterate that teaching should be declared an essential service. We propose again that unions should be held accountable for the unlawful behaviour of their members during strikes. We urge government at all levels to assert with vigour our constitutional responsibility to ensure that teaching and learning takes place in an orderly and secure manner - and with quality.

If there was any doubt that SADTU has turned into a reckless monster, it is today's statement on SABC2 by its president Mr. Thobile Ntola that this union of teachers will make our country ‘ungovernable'. The escalation of anarchistic rhetoric comes on the heels of yesterday's statement that SADTU has declared ‘war on government' (City Press 10 October). SADTU will not sign the wage agreement but will not take ‘industrial action', at least not for now.

Mindful of the fact that revolutions are made by the unmet expectations of a rising lower middle class rather than the efforts of the organized working class, it is now crystal clear that SADTU seeks to style itself as the politico-military arm of COSATU.

After reading through the speech that Ntola gave at his union's recent congress in Boksburg, I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. Laugh because his endless tirade amounted to nothing more than a call for a North Korean-style "revolutionary" state. Cry because, well, as the leader of our largest teachers union, he said absolutely nothing of importance about our education crisis. He did not even seem to understand it, nor care about its consequences.

As millions of students languished at home when they should have been in school preparing for exams, he imagines that the strike "was supported by close to 100% of our population, except by government and big business and few inhuman individuals and institutions of doom." Those "inhuman" individuals to whom he refers are angry parents and the institutions "of doom" are universities and colleges that would have loved to continue educating those students.

By the look of things, the SADTU congress, which celebrated its 20th anniversary, has not moved a day past 1990. It is still fighting the same fights, using the same rhetoric, relying on the same tactics and is guided by the same (now antiquated) beliefs. Ntola repeatedly referred to those heady struggle days, when things were literally black and white and there was a revolutionary clarity to issues.  With his union's membership in COSATU and the tripartite alliance, which forms a crucial support for the government's ruling party, SADTU's aggressive talk is self-hating. The enemy is clearly within.

That is why, rather than talking about education policy, curriculum issues, teaching standards, or school facilities, he focused on the ideological purity of his union's membership: "The question confronting us now is how to be good revolutionaries." When ANC general-secretary Gwede Mantahshe, a "good revolutionary" by most standards, had the nerve to suggest that "revolutionaries are fighting over personal material benefits to the detriment of the African child in particular and the black child in general," the SADTU delegates (mostly teachers who should have been at school teaching) booed him. He said that SADTU treated African children like "cannon fodder in the bargaining process," comparing their plight to "white children" who continued to get taught during the strike at Model C schools, the very ones that SADTU teachers sent their kids to. The response? Boo! Hiss!

Ntola explained that strikes aren't for sissies. Negotiations are "an important weapon, not to be used by cowards and counter revolutionaries." It is used to create a state of panic to the employer. In the private sector the panic is the loss of profit whereas the employees might panic for the closure of the firms. In the public sector, the panic is the creation of instability - an inconvenience of the total population and also causes the public to put pressure on government to respond urgently." In this formulation, our children's education is simply leverage in the union's struggle with the government.

It is one thing to threaten the profits of employers who unions actually negotiate with and quite another to hold your own students' educations at ransom over a spat with an outside employer. These are not comparable examples as children are not agents in this bargaining process but simply pawns used by the union to "panic" government. It is a plan of the cowardly, the reckless, the irresponsible, the cretinous.

Ntola does however reveal some startling moments of clarity. At one moment he admits that "many schools are dysfunctional and most of them are managed by us." Yes, please, go on. He continues, "many managers managing the department of education are from our fold, yet things are falling apart." From your fold, you say? Wow, you are making wonderful progress. Is therapy not wonderful, Mr. Ntola?

Unfortunately, the dear leader does not address the implications of his revelations, rather putting the blame elsewhere, which is typical of one with a juvenile level of maturity: "The current education management has mastered all the evils of bureaucracy in the last sixteen years: We have a dishonest management to its work [sic]; deceitful and talentless bureaucracy; and some are useless and lazy." I knew it.

Ntola has a way to fix this. He wants to "ensure that deployment to local government, policy evolution, monitoring and evaluation is done by the alliance at the strategic centre for the revolution." That is of course the strategy and tactics of sheer genius: use cadre deployment to fix the problems of cadre deployment.  But lets not get hung up on contradictions because, as he says, "when we were elected to office four years ago we were given clear revolutionary task, not by SADTU alone, but by all the progressive minds on planet earth" to comprehensively lower the matric pass rate and increase the rate of teacher absenteeism.

The DA rests its case: declare teaching an essential service. Make unions pay for the unlawful behaviour of their members during strikes. Government at all levels must assert with vigour our constitutional responsibility to ensure that teaching and learning takes place in an orderly and secure manner - and with quality. We call on teachers to put the interests of learners first by terminating their union membership en masse and thereby ending the financial lifeline that keeps this anti-education organization, hostile to the interests of learners, alive.

Statement issued by Wilmot James, MP, Democratic Alliance shadow minister of basic education, October 10 2010

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter