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Dear friends and fellow South Africans,

Recently, Discovery Invest hosted a Leadership Summit under the theme
'Knowledge is the new currency'. Johann Rupert, Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
Wall Street dissident and derivatives trader, and Rudy Giuliani, New
York's former mayor, all attended.

After the seminar, Carte Blanche asked these influential leaders what
advice they had to offer South Africa. Mr Giuliani made the following
remark: "What this country is like 20 years from now is really being
determined in the schools in this country, not in the political arenas
or the business arenas."

These words are a stark reminder that many students, and indeed South
Africa as a whole, face an uncertain future.

With only four weeks to the 2010 matric exams, students are in a race
against time to catch-up on the many teaching hours lost during the
World Cup and the recent public sector strike. Most have not yet
finished the curriculum, even as they review for exams. We have failed
to prepare our children for one of the most important exams of their
life; the exam that will determine their own futures, and that of
South Africa.

Our failure is compounded in Government's laudable recovery plan that
never got off the ground. The Department of Basic Education and
teacher unions failed to agree on payment for teachers for the extra
hours. The Department left it to schools to come up with their own
recovery programmes, while teacher unions told their members not to
work the extra hours without agreeing on pay.

The inevitable sense of betrayal and helplessness among learners has
spilled over into violence. At Moletsane Secondary School in Soweto,
members of the Congress of South African Students created chaos,
disrupting exams. In Limpopo, exams were written under police guard as
"striking learners" barricaded gates, trashed furniture, smashed
windows and created anarchy in the classrooms. In the Free State,
violent protests resulted in the death of Grade 10 pupil Nontsikelelo
Nokela.

All this is reminiscent of the 1976 student uprisings. This is
unthinkable, sixteen years into a democratic dispensation. But I have
warned before that we are reaping the culture that was sown by the ANC
during the liberation struggle. When they incited supporters to burn
schools and march under the banner "Liberation Now, Education Later",
a philosophy was born that learning is not a serious pursuit compared
to politics or social justice. The teachers of today are the students
of yesterday who acquired that mindset.

The ruling Party is not as pure as the driven snow in the education
tragedy. What have they done concerning their members of SADTU who
neglected their profession and abandoned our children? While I support
every teacher's right to fair remuneration, our education system is in
crisis. Clearly the mechanics of the system are not working.

Since attaining democracy, South Africa has increased access to
education and health care dramatically. But for a country that spends
proportionally more of its GDP on education than the international
norm, somewhere, we have gone wrong.

International studies place the quality of education in South Africa
on the bottom rung. In maths and science, we rank below Mozambique and
Zimbabwe. Last year, 506 schools only managed to achieve a pass rate
of 0-20%. For 19 of these, it was 0%. Last year's 60.2% matric pass
rate was a drop from 62,5% in 2008 and, with the current crisis, we
dare not hope for an improvement.

In her book "Chasing the Rainbow: South Africa's Move from Mandela to
Zuma" Dr Anthea Jeffery analyses South Africa's ten critical policy
areas, which the South African Institute for Race Relations has termed
the "Ten Pillars of Democracy". Dr Jeffrey sheds some light on our
education disaster.

According to her, what the poor need most in post-apartheid South
Africa is to be helped to stand on their own feet by earning their own
income. This requires liberation from ignorance and disease, and help
to enter the labour and other markets. Dr Jeffrey writes, "Basic
schooling has become worse than Bantu Education, if only because
outcomes-based education (OBE) has undermined the teaching of reading,
writing, and arithmetic."

The problems we face are by no means insurmountable, provided that
Government acts on its pledge to make education a top policy priority.
I believe the pre-eminent responsibility of any government is to
ensure that its citizens receive a quality education. Without it,
other policy goals will suffer.

Emerging from its National General Council last week, the ANC admitted
that some government departments and policies are not functioning
optimally and need to be overhauled. Surprisingly, I did not hear too
much on the education front. While Government has committed itself to
a 2025 action plan for improving basic education, surely targeted
interventions are needed now.

Rural schools are struggling to provide basic education. Vacant and
unfilled teacher posts, especially in our poorest communities, speak
of the struggle to attract qualified teachers, especially for
mathematics and science. Inevitably, this leads to poor results.
Interventions are needed now.

The IFP has made numerous suggestions on how to rescue the ailing
education system. We believe in a diversified system that properly
caters for the vocational, technical and academic needs of the
country; we believe that education should be free up to and including
Grade 12; OBE must be discarded outright; we must develop a highly
qualified, well-paid and highly motivated cadre of dedicated
educators; we need to reopen the teacher training colleges that were
closed; we must provide far more bursaries in targeted subjects such
as mathematics, science and technical subjects, while prioritizing
these subjects at primary school level; and all institutions of
learning must be properly resourced.

Civil society organizations working in the formal education sector
within South Africa's most vulnerable communities have come together
under the Education Coalition of South Africa (EDCOSA). In recognition
of my lifelong commitment to education, I have been invited to become
its Patron. Sadly, I am unable to attend the launch of EDCOSA in Cape
Town tomorrow, as I am introducing the Oxford isiZulu-English School
Dictionary in KwaZulu Natal.

My commitment to "Education for Liberation", which I championed during
our liberation struggle, continues today. Education is as valuable for
strengthening democracy as it is for overcoming oppression. Knowledge
is power. Indeed, as the Leadership Summit put it, knowledge is the
new world currency.

When The Times published its 2010 rankings of the world's top 200
universities, the University of Cape Town took pride of place. This
shows what we can achieve. For the sake of our children, our nation
and our future, let's do what needs to be done right now.

Yours in the service of the nation,

Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi MP