Issued by the Gauteng Provincial Government
Diepkloof, Soweto 14 June 2001
Master of ceremonies
MEC Jacobs
Principals and educators
Learners
Community leaders
Distinguished guests
We are meeting here today just two days before the 25th anniversary of the heroic students uprising of 16 June 1976, which symbolised the determination of our youth to fight for freedom in the face of apartheid repression.
It is indeed apt that Soweto, where the uprisings were most prominent, has been chosen as the site for the launch of Gautengonline. This is evidence of the road we have traveled since the dark days of Bantu education, which sought to condemn our youth to forever remain hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Today is an important milestone towards the realisation of our government's commitment to providing young people in schools with an opportunity to jump onto the information superhighway. We will do this by providing an average of 25 computers in each school, which will see that by 2006 every learner at a public school has internet access and a personal e-mail address, which they can use anywhere where there is a web-enabled facility.
Over the next three years, we have committed R500 million to this project, which will provide learners with free access to interactive technology and an invaluable educational resource. No longer will learners be confined to the available library resources at their schools. Gautengonline will mean that a learner in a school in Orange Farm will have the same access to knowledge and information on the internet as a learner at an expensive private school in Sandton. It will mean that all kinds of learners-low achievers and high achievers, black and white, girls and boys, well-to-do and poor youngsters-benefit equally from the technology available in schools.
The project forms part of the provincial government's commitment to turn Gauteng into a Smart Province in which we harness technological advances to the benefit of all our people.
This, the African Century, is also the century in which all our people will have the opportunity to become active participants in the information and communication technology revolution.
Your school, Ikaneng, is one of the first of 25 schools that will benefit from Gautengonline.com in its first year of implementation. The rollout plan will prioritise schools in townships and rural areas where the facilities are most needed.
We will use the project to create a networked public schooling system, able to harness the full power of information and communication technology, by massively improving the flow of information and resources through the education system to benefit educators, learners, administrators and communities.
Educators will be able to easily access and download online information such as forms, administrative documentation, curricula and teaching aids.
Gauteng online can also be used as a tool for their self-empowerment and to more easily further their own education. For the school administration, it will make communication with the education department and other parties via email much easier.
It is important to note that the project will go hand-in-hand with programmes to upgrade general infrastructure in schools, including the provision of electricity and water, repairs to damaged schools and improved security measures.
The gautengonline.com initiative will contribute to economic growth and job creation by preparing the knowledge workers that are able to use IT effectively in the workplace and who have the expertise that is crucial to the development of the new economy. It will improve learners learning skills and represents an important element of government's human resource development programme in Gauteng. It will ensure that our children can become global players in the IT arena.
This project will provide you, young people, with a reliable, continuous and dependable source of information necessary to empower you to contribute more meaningfully to the development of your communities and your country. We are determined to focus on the development of the youth. An investment in our youth is also an investment in our future as a nation.
The success of this initiative will depend also on how we are able to provide security for the computer equipment we are going to put in schools.
We must develop collaborative strategies between communities and schools to ensure the safety of these computers in schools.
As government we are issuing a challenge to the private sector to join hands with us to build our economy as well as the necessary skills for our economy. We will also look to the private sector for an additional contribution to the funding of this project, as it will also benefit them.
As an expression of our commitment to bridge the digital divide and to prepare our citizens for the information age, we therefore now declare gautengonline.com. online.
Thank you.