Soweto College of Education 20 February 2000
Sanibonani!
Dumelang!
Abusheni!
Molweni!
Goeie More!
Comrades and friends
Ngijabule kakhulu ukuba nani namhlanje lapha eSoweto. Lendawo enomlando omuhle emzabalwezweni wenkululeko.
(I am happy to be with you today. Soweto is an important place in the history of the liberation struggle)
When I received the invitation to attend this occasion, I told my officials that I would be attending a national meeting of my organisation, your movement, the African National Congress, and therefore I might just not make it.
I must, however, confess that great was the temptation to attend an occasion whose significance resonates far beyond the narrow confines of these walls. For, who can forget that Soweto is a special place in the history of the struggle against apartheid in general and Bantu Education in particular?
Don Mattera says memory is a weapon. Indeed, up to this day my memory of my own taste of Bantu Education legislation fortify me in my struggle to build a new system of education the same Don Mattera calls sea and sand, our love, our land.
I will never forget deeply how, as a young teacher, I was forced to teach in a school with an adjective: a so-called "Indian school". After three years of teaching in a system I daily found unpalatable, I resigned. I could not accept the indignity of teaching in a way that furthered the separate development shenanigans of the apartheid regime. I did so with the full knowledge that what I was doing was part of the tradition of the Congress Movement.
When I resigned, it was barely a few years after the ANC and the Congress Movement had planned to withdraw their children from Bantu Education schools, and set up alternative educational and cultural activities in the spirit of the Freedom Charter’s clarion call: The doors of learning shall be open to all. That call, in the context of the overall non-racial orientation of the Freedom Charter drew me to the ANC like a magnet draws a shiny coin to itself.
It is a source of great pride that I am among friends who took the lead from us and challenged the introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in black schools. It is the strength, resilience and perseverance of these men and women who said no with their bare hands and resigned rather than teach under the Verwoerdian conditions.
We are gathered here in conditions completely different from those of Soweto more than two decades ago, when this township was literally in flames and Louis le Grange blamed it for the formation of COSAS in 1979, remarking that "COSAS was conceived in Moscow, supported in Cuba, and formed in South Africa".
Soweto has a special place in the history of the education struggle in this country. It is the Soweto students who defeated Andries Treurnicht’s grand and arrogant scheme to force on unwilling pupils Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in black schools. Who can forget and not admire the courage of boys and girls armed with sticks and stones and rubbish-bin lids in running battles against hippos and guns and teargas and hatred? Cadres of that courage cannot be let down. A memorial to them must be a created through a system founded on one principle: Our children deserve the best.
It is sad that the ethos and culture prevalent in many of our schools is not in keeping with the vision that Hector Peterson and Mbuyisa Makhubo died espousing. Are the students we have in Soweto reflective of the engaging, analytical and reading students of the SASM and SASO years? Are students and teachers proceeding on the basis of our cherished principle that our children deserve the best?
The answer, sadly, is no.
There seems to be no regard for the principle that our children deserve the best.
When Tsietsie Mashinini led students into the streets, alleys and corners of this township on that fateful 16th day of June 1976, the message they were sending was clear: We deserve the best. When today’s children wake up, brush their teeth, wash, step outside and walk and ride taxis and buses and trains and bicycles to school, they are talking the language of Tsietsie Mashinini, Dan Motsitsi, Murphy Morobe that: We deserve the best.
Surely our children are not asking for too much. Surely they are asking us to return to the basics of:
Is that too much for our children to ask?
Since my appointment in June last year, I have received numerous letters and representations about the general state of collapse of education in this township and in other parts of the country. When journalists told MEC Jacobs and I that half the staff were absent at Meadowlands Secondary School, we immediately went there. Alas! We found that our directive that teaching had to start on the first day had not been heeded.
That school was in total shambles. Learners were still registering – despite the fact that registration was supposed to have been completed in September last year. Seven staff members were absent in what is a microcosm of large-scale absenteeism in many of our schools. Textbooks and stationery were lying in boxes in a dirty room, not ready to be handed out to learners. There was no proper attendance register; we were given a piece of paper which was used as a register.
These are the kinds of lapses which cannot be tolerated in education. It is this appalling state of affairs that has caused the Soweto parents, some of them pensioners, to send their children - often at great expense – to schools in town or northern suburbs. It is a tragedy that some of these parents have fallen prey to fly-by-night operators rather than keep their children in schools in which they have lost confidence. The parents are voting with their hard-earned shillings: Our children deserve the best.
Beautiful schools here and on the East Rand are running empty, while children in the Northern Province are learning under trees.
As a democratic government we have an obligation to stop the pain that Oswald Mbuyiseni Mtshali so poignantly captures in his poem, "The Shepherd and his flock", where the young black shepherd, seeing the white farmer’s children going to school, tearfully asks:
O wise sun above Will you ever guide me into school?
In depicting that tearjerker of a scene, Mtshali was reminding us that: Our children deserve the best.
The lack of discipline and professionalism among some teachers has rightly created a perception that they do not care about the future of our children.
How do we explain that last year, particularly during the public service dispute, there was no teaching for almost a whole month in this township? Some elements in teacher unions went on strike even before their national offices had, and continued for a while even after the strike had officially been called off. They went around brandishing a slogan: "When Soweto sneezes, the country catches a cold". Worse still, some "balaclava-clad" teachers drove non-striking teachers and learners out of schools. They must be tamed.
I want to invite you to work with us and not to be defensive about all these things. They happened. Let them not happen again.
My department is involved in a number of initiatives aimed at improving the conditions of service of principals and teachers. By the end of April this year we will complete the training of 27 000 principals on education, law and policy, including conflict management and dispute resolution. All principals have been provided with the Education Law and Policy Handbook. With this knowledge they will be able to interact more effectively and productively with their teaching staff.
My department is engaged in a process of improving the status of underqualified and unqualified teachers by providing opportunities for professional development. We have set aside R120m for this project. As part of our efforts to motivate our teachers, I will be presenting the National Teachers Awards on 5 October 2000, the World Teachers’ Day.
I want to take teaching back to the time when teachers were pre-eminent residents of every village, where schools were considered as hallowed as the churches, back to the time when education was revered and the educated respected, when teachers were honoured with girls crossing their legs in class and boys swallowing their cigarettes at the sight of a teacher.
I am proud to be part of an occasion whose other aim is to honour icons of the education struggle in Soweto. It is only those who are wilfully blind who can forget the contributions of Curtis Nkondo, Aggrey Klaaste, Dr Nthato Motlana, Fanyana Mazibuko, Helen Khuzwayo, Ms Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Albertina Sisulu and many others.
I want to pay tribute to the Greater Soweto Association of School Governing Bodies for contributing to the cause of education. Your attendance today, from a diverse spectrum of society, bears testimony that the public has lost patience with inertia, incompetence and a lack of professionalism that have become rampant in many of our schools.
On the issue of school improvement and teacher professionalism, we are presently developing a whole school evaluation instrument and guidelines on the records to be kept in schools and quarterly reports on school attendance. This will be buttressed by regular evaluation, monitoring and reporting in order to ensure that steps are taken to improve the situation in schools.
Our children deserve the best.
Early this week I announced the appointment of a new provincially-based "supervisory" service that will be fully operational by the end of this year. This crack unit will focus on the whole school evaluation, and provide advice on continuous quality improvement. This project will be a vital cog of our programmes for the next five years as we give practical expression to our belief that our children deserve the best. .
I am encouraged by the winds of optimism that are sweeping through the education system. Tirisano has become a clarion call throughout our country. I am convinced that we are beginning to turn dysfunctional schools around. In this instance Gauteng’s Education Action Zones have become a model of focused intervention at these secondary schools. I urge all of you to give this programme your support.
If you do that, you shall be recognising the fact that, indeed our children deserve the best.
In conclusion, I must alert you to the fact that the eyes and ears of the nation are on all of us. We dare not flounder. We dare not falter. We dare not fail.
We shall pull it off, be sure.
Mphathi wohlelo, bazali, bothisha, bafundi, ngijabule kakhulu ukuba nani namuhla. Ngithanda ukuphosa inselelo kinina nonke, ukuba nibambisane nathi sakhe ikusasa elihle labantwana bethu.
(Director of Ceremonies, parents, teachers, and pupils, I am indeed happy to be with you today. I want to challenge you to join hands with us so that we can build a better future for our children.)
Khotso ebe lelona. Keyaleboha, lisaleng hantle.
(Peace be with you)