Speech notes: Reaction to SOPA 2020 by Yusuf Cassim, MPL

Speech notes: Reaction to SOPA 2020 by Yusuf Cassim, MPL

Honourable Speaker, Fellow South Africans… I greet you with the universal greeting of peace, As-salamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh

On the 15th of January this year, I joined Hon. Matiwane and Hon. Naylambisa as part of the team conducting school readiness visits in Amathole East.

The very same morning, my eldest daughter Ruqayyah was anxiously bracing herself for her first day of school as a grade 0 pupil. Days like these are a big deal in the lives of a four-year-old.  Almost everyday in 2019 she would proudly ask her younger sister Zaynab, “Do you know that next year I am going to big school?”. Her excitement was coupled with an equal measure of anxiety. She understood that she would have to go to toilet by herself, I could tell that she gave this a great deal of thought by the number of questions she would ask. What if the toilet is dirty? What if there is no toilet roll? What if a boy walks in?

The following day, our team visited the Fort Malan Junior Primary School in Willowvale. If our hearts sank inspecting the pit toilets set on a concrete slab out in the open, they completely shattered as we witnessed a girl, the same age as my daughter, find a spot in the field between the school buildings and open-air pit toilets and proceed to relieve herself. The shame we felt, knowing full well that this particular school was on the list of 262 schools to have their sanitation upgraded by the 13th of December last year, could not be washed away even with the tears we shed.

Hon. Premier. Talk is cheap to that poor girl. We need action, and we need it now!

Like all parents, I dream of my daughter Ruqayyah being able to be herself, develop herself and pursue her individual aspirations. We can make this dream a reality for every South African through building an Open, Opportunity for All wherein individual rights and freedoms are protected, advanced and can be taken advantage of.

To build an Open Society, we must ensure that the safety and dignity of each child is assured. More broadly, an open society is fashioned through limiting state power and extending individual freedom. It is no coincidence that Minister Tito Mboweni’s announcement of a further R60b allocated to Eskom and SAA was coupled with a R7.1b cut to education resulting in R5.2b less money for school infrastructure and cuts to the School Nutrition and matric second chance programmes and less teachers. A prime example of choosing bigger government and state control at the expense of the dignity and safety of our children who will continue to suffer pit toilets, mud schools, overcrowded classes and unfenced and unsecured schools.

Hon. Premier, building an opportunity society will allow our children to take advantage of the individual freedoms that we must afford them in an open society. Crucially, a child cannot really be herself, develop herself and pursue her own ends if she is born into poverty without the prospect of a decent education.

I cringed as you characterized the supposed achievement of a 76.5% 2019 matric pass rate as progress made when in fact your government is responsible for overseeing a system that is blatantly manipulated to present a picture of improvement, shedding learners before examinations, in a desperate attempt to rig the outcomes. Your continued complicity in this scheme costs hundreds of thousands of children any prospect of being themselves, developing themselves and pursuing their aspirations.

Allow me to break it down for you. The matric pass rate excludes the 17007 progressed learners of which only 4152 wrote the final examinations and only 2712 or 15.95% passed. Also excluded are learners that have been culled in an attempt to inflate the pass rate. Of the 139 962 learners in grade 10 in 2017, only 63 198 wrote the NSC in 2019, of which 48 331 passed making the real pass rate a shocking 34.5% with 76 764 children cast out of the system. Learners were also lumped into the Multiple Exam Opportunity so that their failing doesn’t bring down the official pass rate. These learners represented as much as 20% of the cohort in our province compared to 3% in the Western Cape, a province which also incidentally has the highest learner retention rate in the country.

Artificially increasing the pass rate through casting out learners who need the most help and ensuring they never write the NSC is antithesis to an opportunity society.

The pass rate should be increased through improving teaching and learning.

Hon. Premier. We need action and we need it now!

Pass provincial legislation to make way for the assessment of teaching and learning in the classroom and school functioning as a whole with these assessments published for parents and communities to see.

Create an independent School Evaluations Authority tasked with supporting school improvement by identifying factors that matter most for quality education with reports published online.

Encourage learner retention and penalize all forms of learner culling.

The Western Cape took these brave measures and it has paid dividends.

Lastly Hon. Premier, you spoke at length about building a capable state.

In the last financial year alone, your education department underspent R17.8m and R18.403M meant to purchase busses and recruit therapists for special schools, R110m meant for infrastructure and R173.268m in Early Childhood Development meant to build jungle gyms for our children. Only 44 out of the 144 schools budgeted for toilets in the previous year got them whilst most of the 262 schools targeted in the current financial year have not even begun construction with some being rushed before the financial year ends this month and others left in limbo.

Schools have been left unfinished, principles are made empty promises by officials and textbooks and stationery were not delivered to hundreds of schools at the start of the academic year.

These are consequences of an incapable state with zero consequence management for those responsible.

Perhaps the most embarrassing example our incapable state Hon. Premier is the inability of officials to simply respond to emails and queries made by parents, principals and even members of this very house.

Of the 33 letters that I personally wrote to officials on behalf of parents who themselves have struggled to get any assistance from the department of education, I have received only 3 responses. If I as a member of this house and the portfolio committee of education cannot even elicit a response from officials responsible for the relevant area or competencies related to queries, know that desperate parents and principals have never tasted the Batho Pele principles you wish you instill.

If this wasn’t shameful enough, ignored queries were escalated to Ms Penny Vinjevold, a Deputy Director General of the Department and Mr Themba Kojana, the Head of the Department, with no response either. I initially suspected it was because I am a member of the opposition until I learnt that my ANC colleagues have suffered the same fate. If the HOD cannot respond to an email, is it any surprise officials throughout the department don’t deem it necessary?

Hon. Premier, you recognized the need for a culture change in the public service and eloquently described how your agenda depends on committed public servants who must work with diligence and humility in serving our people. If you are indeed serious, I advise that you start with these senior public servants who can’t even respond to emails. Here are the letters. Make an example of them and others will get the message that we actually have a Premier who is in charge, who means what he says and is leading.

We need action and we need it now!