Gaye Davis investigates the roots and the immediate causes of the latest education crisis
RAP artist Snoop Doggy Dog booming from an upper-storey classroom appeared to be the only source of enlightenment for pupils at Fons Luminis High School in Soweto’s Diepkloof Extension on Wednesday this week. “We’re relaxing,” a pupil shouted through a broken window pane. “School’s out.”
School was “out” for hundreds of Soweto pupils following last week’s “expulsion” by teachers and pupils of about 40 Diepkloof principals, who were accused of misappropriating money and equipment gathered in a fundraising drive.
The “disappearance” from Fons Luminis of two donated photocopiers (later found to have been sent for servicing) sparked the crisis. But its roots lie in what PWV MEC for education, Mary Metcalfe, describes as the “absolute” breakdown in relations between teachers and principals — a situation not limited to Soweto schools.
It’s a relationship largely informed by old antagonisms forged under apartheid, when principals found themselves caught between the rock of unpopular policies that their employer, the Department of Education and Training, wanted them to enforce — and the hard place created by militant pupils and teachers pushing for the democratisation of their schools.
Metcalfe’s decision on Wednesday to peel velvet glove from iron fist and threaten disciplinary action against teachers who prevented principals from resuming their posts on Thursday was endorsed by the tripartite alliance, education and community-based organisations — but lacked the sanction of teachers and pupils who expelled the principals. As such, it represents a major test for Metcalfe’s fledgling ministry: by choosing to stamp its authority on the situation, it must not be seen to waver.
The decision came after crisis meetings deadlocked. “This is one of the first areas where we have had to take action in advance of the completion of discussions on the ground,” Metcalfe said this week.
For the ministry, the issues are clear. Anarchy cannot be allowed to prevail; the principals’ arbitrary expulsion is condemned and they must be allowed to return. The ministry believes the key to resolving the conflict lies with the Soweto community. To this end, it has legitimised governing bodies thwarted by the old regime such as parent, teacher, student associations (PTSAs). It has sent in a task team to facilitate talks and investigate whether or not funds were misused.
The conflict revolves around funds raised by principals for the Do it in Diepkloof Trust, which local members of the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) and Congress of South African Students’ (Cosas) believe have been misused. Ministry officials cite a lack of transparency in trust activities as one cause of the row.
But Percy Ntshingila, acting chairman of the Soweto Principals’ Forum, believes the allegations obscure a Sadtu bid to force the dissolution of the forum, many of whose 289 members also belong to the Transvaal Union of African Teachers (Tuata). Sadtu perceives Tuata as conservative; its resistance over the years to Sadtu’s “one industry, one union” call laid fertile soil for suspicion and hostility between teachers and principals. Sadtu teachers’ perception of the forum as a Sadtu- bashing vehicle deepened the schism.
“As soon as we realise we can’t destroy each other we can work on a new relationship,” Ntshingila told the WM&G. “We are all in the same business and should have the same interests. It might take time but it’s necessary for the good of education and the community.”
This is what Metcalfe hopes to achieve: healing the wounds of the apartheid past by enabling a new relationship between teachers and principals. “Animosities are deepest on the ground — it’s personal,” she says. “These are old scores that people want to settle. If there is a principal, teacher or inspector who has behaved badly, it must be dealt with, but transparently.
“People have to realise what April 27 means: the opening of space for participation of ordinary people. PTSAs are not just for activists… It is impossible to deal with any crisis while parents are not participating.
“The ownership of schools does not vest in any organisation or individual but in the community under the guidance of the present government.”
While PTSAs emerged in the mid-1980s, intended as vehicles of people’s power, they remain largely crisis- orientated, according to Sibusiso Sithole of Natal University’s Education Policy Unit. And while more than 2 500 were said to be in existence countrywide by the end of March 1994, this was negligible considering that South Africa has some 23 000 schools.
In Diepkloof this week, pupils either attended classes run by teachers determined not to allow schooling to collapse despite their principals’absence or, more commonly, roamed the streets.
Ntshingila was “praying the dust will settle and things will return to normal”. At Fons Luminis, where Cosas members had warned pupils against speaking to the press, one youth said: “We need our principal back because our teachers are not attending classes.” With matric exams due to start in less than a month’s time and last year’s disastrous results in mind, it was a cry from the heart.