Ann Eveleth
THE Cape Town school whose legal action is threatening to derail Minister of Education Sibusiso Bengu’s teacher redeployment policy is popular among members of the provincial Cabinet and even Bengu’s own officials.
Grove Primary is well-known for its patronage by the province’s political elite: African National Congress MECs Lerumo Kalako and Leonard Ramatlakane and Department of Education officials Pat Naicker and department representative Nomakhita Makho-sana have children there.
Cape Town High Court last week ruled in Grove’s favour. The school had challenged Bengu over his policy of insisting schools take teachers from a central list of staff available for redeployment. The policy is central to his attempts to equalise teaching resources between schools and provinces.
Bengu has asked for leave to appeal, but if he loses the ministry may be forced to rethink the policy.
The ANC was swift to throw its weight behind Bengu. Parliamentary portfolio committee chair Blade Nzimande said Grove’s actions ”could undermine the whole process of transformation in our country”.
Ramatlakane said he supported Bengu’s objectives, but also the ”democratic decision” of Grove to fight him. Kalako declined to comment, but did say that the child whom he sends to Grove is ”a cousin” in his care. Naicker and Makhosana declined to comment.
But ANC provincial health MEC Ebrahim Rasool, whose daughter has been accepted by Grove, said: ”I haven’t decided where I will send her, but it won’t be Grove.”
The court action puts Grove at the forefront of a battle between the rights of individual school governing bodies, and those of existing public school teachers and the education ministry.
Under Bengu’s policy, excess teachers have been offered two options – severance or redeployment – in a deal agreed with teaching unions last year to shift resources to previously disadvantaged schools.
The plan backfired when thousands of senior teachers took the severance packages. Those who did accept redeployment went on to the central list, which the court ruling has now upset.
The court declared the redeployment policy ”illegal” in terms of a loophole in the South African Schools Act. The loophole allowed the special status of Model C schools’ hiring rights to continue until new, lesser recruitment powers under the Act for all school governing bodies come into play.
The department’s human resources director, Duncan Hindle, said if Bengu is forced to resort to retrenchments, the issue ”would have to be renegotiated across the entire public service”.
The negotiator for the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union, Don Pasquallie, said the ruling also ”has an impact on the whole process of collective bargaining” – a process at the heart of South Africa’s labour policy.
Helen Zille, public affairs director at the University of Cape Town, led Grove’s legal battle as chair of its governing body. ”We supported the government’s plans to equalise teacher-pupil ratios,” she said. ”But what we could not understand is how it could do this while promising there would be no teacher retrenchments.”
Bengu’s appeal application is due to be heard on August 4. Grove has given notice it will oppose the application.