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It is exceptionally worrying that 22 schoolchildren have been injured by the collapse of four mud classrooms at the Mrwabo Junior Secondary School in the Eastern Cape. We understand that the roofs of the huts were blown off during a brief storm, and that the buildings then subsequently caved in, leaving one child with a broken arm and a number of other children requiring hospital treatment. The school is located close to Mthatha, and is near to another mud school I recently visited, to investigate the infrastructure problems facing learners and teachers, who are taking the government to court over its failure to provide them with their constitutional right to a basic education.

This travesty, occurring just as students are about to write final exams on Monday, will not be an isolated incident unless the Eastern Cape Education Department meets the urgent infrastructure needs of its schools. Big changes are needed. Last year, the Treasury provided the Department with R20 billion, but the Department could not explain how R1.5 billion of it was spent. The Auditor-General (AG) says it cannot determine what the Eastern Cape Education Department spent its allotted infrastructure funds on. As a result, it indicted the Department with a disclaimer of opinion, the worst possible audit outcome. That is unconscionable in a country facing such urgent basic education needs, and in a province where many children are forced to learn in despicable conditions.

At about the same time that these children were trying to survive the destruction of their school yesterday, the Eastern Cape government hired disgraced former Superintendent-General of the provincial department of education, Modidima Mannya, to come do the same job again. Backed by the South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU), Mr. Mannya was rehired even though he left the post in 2001 after he was threatened with criminal charges by the Education MEC, who claimed he had failed to perform his duties. Last year, he was suspended and dismissed as head of the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Agriculture after a disciplinary hearing found him guilty of 16 charges of misconduct. To bring back this non-performer with such weak managerial skills goes to the heart of why the Eastern Cape Education Department is failing to educate its students. It is under the watch of people like Mr. Mannya that the province's education system has reached the point of collapse.