Pretoria, 5 October 1999.
Director of ceremonies
Executive Members of the South African Council for Educators
Teachers present here today,
Teachers everywhere,
I salute you one and all.
This is your day. It's a day when teachers world over celebrate their profession. It is a day when nations pause and contemplate how fortunate they are to have men and women who dedicate their lives to the total eradication of ignorance in their society, a nd in the world, men and women who give their lives from day to day to the service of the nation, and to the struggle for real freedom, freedom from having no hope for the future.
And so today, we as a nation want to join hands with the rest of the world in saluting teachers all over the world. We particularly salute our own teachers in our own country, who continue to toil under difficult conditions, so as to ensure that we as a na tion are counted amongst the best nations in the world.
The theme of this year's celebration of World Teachers' Day, chosen jointly by Education International and UNESCO, is "Teachers, a force for social change". We as a nation could not agree more with this theme. For we know very well the role played by our t eachers in the struggle for liberation in our country. We are very much aware of a number of individual teachers who distinguished themselves in the fight against Apartheid. We are also aware of the role played by teachers through their various organisatio ns to bring about freedom in our beloved country. We fought side by side with many of these individuals and organisations, and we are very proud of having been associated with them. Teachers such as Chief Albert Luthuli, Govan Mbeki, Harry Gwala, through t o Mathew Goniwe, Reggie Hadebe, Elmon Mathonsi, Skhumbuzo Ngwenya, and many other cadres of the liberation struggle will remain in our history as champions who represented the teaching profession in the trenches of struggle, and some of whom paid the ultim ate price for the struggle. We also remember some of the stalwarts of the organised teaching profession, such as the late H.H Dlamlenze, Poobie Naicker, Curtis Nkondo. Let us salute our women comrades of the teaching profession, who were also at the forefr ont of our struggle, such as Dr Ellen Khuzwayo, the current Premier of the Free State, Mrs Direko, and many others.
We salute all our teacher organisations, who organised teachers against Apartheid education in all its manifestations. Here I wish to mention the role of the Teacher's League, the many affiliates of ATASA, TASA, WECTU, ELPTU, NEUSA, the PTU, MATU, and many others. All these individuals and organised lived up to the theme of today's celebration, as they were indeed forces for social change.
But the real heroes of our struggle, the real forces of change are the thousands of teachers who contributed as individuals, through they ongoing commitment to teaching, and who continued to teach our children, even during the darkest moments of Apartheid repression, those who toiled under trees, in shanty classrooms, in schools without water and sanitation, in dilapidated classrooms, in dark tin shacks, in shabby little mud churches, in pig sties, in kraals, in garages, in all types of structures you can i magine. These are the teachers we must salute, and as we salute them, we must stop and ponder how on earth they were able to teach those little ones the alphabet, the sums, their geography, their history, their poetry, and produce those wonderful flowers f rom just a hip of dung. These are the real force of social change in our country. These are the unsung heroes, the forgotten soldiers, for whom we must build a monument through our celebration of World Teachers Day.
It is a shame that many of our teachers are still teaching under these conditions today. Recently I visited Shobashobane, and found an extra-ordinary community, whose dark history is known to all of us. There I found a school that did not have water, and i ts toilets were a disgrace. But I found an extra-ordinary sense of commitment from the community leaders. What was more touching was the remarkable nature of the principal of that school, and the teachers. Similarly, I found the same thing at a school in K wa-Madlala, near Port Shepstone. There are many such schools in our country. These teachers, who teach under such degrading circumstances, who most often than not are women, are the real forces of change. They never make it to big television screens. Their schools will never make the Sunday Times best schools survey, because they do not do what they do for any fame and recognition. They do it for the children of this land. They do it for our country. On a day like this one, it is very fitting for us as a na tion to thank these teachers, these men, and perhaps mostly women, who are our source of hope for the future. More often than not their efforts are buried in our expression of disdain for what other teachers do, and we end up not recognising them. Today is their day.
I as Minister of Education, have prioritised the alleviation of their plight by prioritising the need to end the conditions of physical degradation in South African schools, as part of my nine priorities. We cannot countenance a situation where such dehuma nising situations continue unattended in our country. I am pledge to all those teachers who teach under such conditions, that I will not rest until their conditions are changed. The government will do everything possible to accelerate change in their schoo ls, and to restore some sense of dignity in them, by making sure that their schools have water and sanitation, to say the least.
Which brings me to this question of dignity, and the status of teachers. At the Special Conference on the Status of Teachers, convened by UNESCO and the ILO, on the 5 October 1966, in Paris, a number of recommendation concerning the status of teachers were made. One of the principles underlining these recommendations was the following:
"The status of teachers should be commensurate with the needs of education as assessed in the light of educational aims and objectives; it should be recognised that the proper status of teachers and due public regard for the profession of teaching are of m ajor importance for the full realisation of these aims and objectives."
We all know that in our country the status of the teacher was deliberately lowered to be made commensurate to the aims of under-educating the majority of our children. Apartheid could not afford to accord a higher status to teachers, because it by so doing it would be according the education of the majority of the people some status, which it did not want at all. The status of our teachers therefore in our communities gradually came down as Apartheid education and its consequences took root.
One of the greatest sins of Apartheid was its promotion of a certain kind of professionalism among teachers, a professional devoid of any commensurate recognition of the status of teachers. Such a bland of professionalism was nothing but an attempt to give teachers a false sense of status devoid of any content. Professionalism thus became synonymous to docility in the face of oppression. Such professionalism was , rightfully so, rejected by many of our teachers.
What was unfortunate though was that for many this was seen as the rejection of the very notion of professionalism. It is time we as teachers showed the country that what we were, and are still rejecting is a notion of professionalism that makes us sterile , and dormant, even under the worst conditions of exploitation. We must show our country that we are a profession, and our fight for better conditions is still a fight for our professional status to be given content commensurate to the needs of education i n our country.
Once again I want to pledge my support for better conditions of employment for educators. I want to align myself fully to one of the guiding principles of the recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers of 1966 which says:
"Working conditions of teachers should be such as will best promote effective learning and enable teachers to concentrate on their professional tasks"
In fact I can safely say that all my nine priorities are about attaining this goal and principle. When I call upon all people to make the schools centres of community life, I am essentially saying that the community must regard schools, and therefore teach ers as theirs, and must look after them very well.
When I ban guns and drugs from all places of learning, when I insist that provincial systems, especially districts, should work, when I call for an intensification of professional development initiatives for teachers, I am essentially working to improve th e working conditions of teachers, so that they can concentrate on their professional task.
When I direct my Department to look at developing regulations to control access to schools, I do so in order to make sure that women teachers do not have to be always on guard for some thugs who want to come to schools to rape them or their children, but c an do their work under safe conditions. My call for national mobilisation for education, Tirisano, is essentially a call to improve the working conditions of educators.
Director of ceremonies, today's theme, teachers, a force for social change, calls upon us to do three things. Firstly, we have to examine the role teachers have played in our country, as a force for social change. This I have already done. Secondly, it cal ls on us to examine the truthfulness or otherwise of such a claim, and perhaps to argue around it. I do not intend to do this, simply because I think in our country no one needs any more convincing as to the fact that indeed teachers are a force for change . Thirdly, and perhaps even more importantly, it requires us to examine what role teachers can play in our changing society today, as agents of that change. It is to this that I want to turn. If you like you can say I am talking about the challenges facing the teaching profession today.
The challenges facing our country today are summed up very well in the words of our President, which have been adopted as the theme of the next five year, a nation at work for a better life for all. We are a nation at work to reduce the massive inequalitie s of wealth and power which fracture our society along multiple lines such as race, gender, and class. We are a nation at work to construct an economy that will be on a growth path and will be an effective competitor in a global economy. We are a nation at work to deepen democracy among all our citizens.
Nowhere else in our society should this fact be reflected more than in our education. Education is a major tool for communicating values and attitudes, and can be used to reinforce positive values and behaviours. Teachers should therefore both reflect thes e skills, values and attitudes, as well as transmit them to learners. The greatest challenge facing our teachers today is to reflect this very truth, this national challenge, this theme, in all they do. As agents of change, they should be custodians of the content of that change, and they should take the lead in driving that change. If our country is at work to effect social change, this will become evident in the manner in which our teachers, as a force for social change, conduct themselves.
Our country can only succeed if our human resources are developed to the level necessary to compete in the global village. Teachers therefore form the central pillar of our human resource development strategy, because of the multiplier effect this will hav e on all other areas of human resource development. We need teachers who can respond to the needs of our country, and who are equal to the task of developing our people, young and old, through quality teaching.
On this day therefore, I want to charge teachers in every corner of our country to be forces of change, to work tirelessly, and selflessly, for a better life for all, for a better education for all, for quality education for all.
Director of ceremonies, once again, on behalf of our government, and the nation as a whole I want to salute our teachers, and to pledge our commitment to make their conditions better for them. I want to assure them that they occupy a very dear place in our hearts as a nation. We love them. We are concerned about them. We respect them. We want to accord them the rightful place in our society. We want to give them the status they so deserve.
Long live the teachers of our country!
Khula, Thishela, Khula!!!
I thank you.