Closures are along racist lines

The ANC says DA's war on poor continues... as it targets the poor. It is becoming clearer by the day the DA does not care for poor and vulnerable people.

From Makhaza to Hangberg it punishes the poor and vulnerable. The attack on poor black schools continues for the second consecutive year. Last year sixteen were targeted and this year another twenty seven of which more than twenty are poor no-fee schools.

The DA has closed more schools than it built. It built 23 schools and closes 27 in one year with a shortage of 60 schools in the province. It closes more schools in two years than what was closed on average in the Western Cape in the preceding decade!

What a mess the DA has made of education in the Western Cape. It is riddled with shortages of teaching staff, teaching aids and learner material, facilities and equipment like desks and chairs. Shortages are met with denials and cheap politicking as well as blame shifting.

Overcrowded schools and all other problems are met with denial by the so-called deceiving and denial alliance.

In fact, children are denied proper education as we have seen so many children at the halfway mark of the school year still not enrolled or placed. They are left to roam the townships and are at the mercy of poor communities.

There is no real commitment to tackle the problem and burning issues are only tackled after the fact when it causes bad publicity for this DA-led government. It is only putting a plaster strip on the wound and not dealing with the causes.

Western Cape education is in serious crises as it limps from scandal to chaos. This crisis is not felt or seen in the affluent areas. No, there so-called centres of excellence are kept up in the form of mostly former Model C schools.

The self-righteous DA revels in the performance of matric pass rates, brags with the mostly apartheid legacy of superior schooling for some in the Western Cape and vehemently points fingers at other provinces, ignoring the dire needs in its own backyard.

We know why the DA is content with inferior services and education for children in poor areas... it is because they are deemed to be refugees here.

The head of this very same government branded them refugees and also publicly stated blacks were not found in this province for a hundred years or more!

Are unsustainable white schools with dwindling learner numbers closed down? No! This DA turns a blind eye to such separate schools for former privileged which are still artificially kept running. They are bussing in learners from the metro and other privileged areas, while the poor schools are targeted and scavenged.

Does the DA integrate small schools especially in rural areas? No. The former Model C schools with dwindling learner numbers are allowed to proceed, while poor black schools are shut.

Why is the unviable old white primary school in Redelinghuys not closed and integrated with the poor old coloured school deprived of the facilities at the other school there with the same name?

Why is the mostly white Laerskool Paul Greyling in Fishoek - in the Cape Metropolitan area not closed down too after years of struggling and losing learners?

The closing of schools in the past two years targeted poor black schools and not the problem schools in former superior white areas. It is therefore utterly discriminatory and racist - as I have indicated here.

Rash and irrational positions are witnessed here, if not fruitless and wasteful expenditure, like in the case of the LK Zeeman school where a fence of half a million Rand was put up last year and this year the school is closed. This shows poor planning - if any.

Let me come to the elephant in the room. It is the matter of an absence of political leadership in this province. We saw the inapt MEC of denials in action. He officially denied a shortage of textbooks in Kraaifontein schools and claimed on national television early in July that it is only workbooks that must be delivered which are needed in the coming semester. After his semantics on the shortage of handbooks he then officially denied denying the shortage!

He is officially in denial.

He claimed to have used his brain on his decision to target poor schools. Well, we know where his brain is. He could not transform in a fishing company. He had to read on the internet what his party says about education when he became MEC because he did not know. He still does not know that it is his party's policy to support struggling schools - not to kill off the vulnerable ones.

Ducking and diving, this MEC is too scared to face the communities and explain his position.

He is unfit for purpose. He should go.

He is now after the fact and only after communities protested his arbitrary closure of schools without a prior consulted proper education or schools plan, going on a symbolic public participation process. He wrote letters of closure, and then denied he did to call it notices of possible closure and was caught out for deceiving the public by the media. His process is already fatally flawed.

The MEC Botha gallantly stormed in as the perceived deputy MEC for education to defend his MEC.

But, what is overwhelming in this whole saga is the roaring and deafening silence of the head of this government. Yes, premier Helen Zille retreated into her ivory tower behind sound proof walls with ears plugged.

The DA is content with poor people biting the bullet and deaf to the complaints about inferior services.

The DA is deaf to the plea of poor parents who have to buy new school uniforms for displaced children who are forcibly evicted from their safe school environments and bussed to other schools in suspect learner transport.

The DA is deaf to the plea of teaching and non-teaching staff, communities and parents.

One can almost hear the whole DA shouting like the French elitist callous saying about the poor: It they complain about not having bread, let them have cake!

Statement issued by Millicent Tingwe, ANC Western Cape, July 26 2012

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