Everyone involved in educating this country’s children, from Minister of Education Sibusiso Bengu to the most junior teacher, should be forced to sit an exam this week, a test containing a single question: define the word responsibility.
If they can define it, they might wantto consider how the word applies tothemselves.
For these people together must take responsibility over the last year for preparing nearly half South Africa’s matric students to fail this year.
For the thousands of children who resit, there will be tens of thousands who won’t – tens of thousands of youngsters who will pay the price for the bungling, mismanagement and incompetence of the state education system.
It may be gratifying but it is too simplistic merely to call for Bengu’s head. He is, by all accounts, a clever man, and his objectives are laudable: to repair the damage inflicted by years of apartheid’s education policies.
But if Bengu is to stay in his job, he should at least have the common decency to discharge his most basic task: to lead an education system where merit is the only factor that determines how far a child can go.
So far, his leadership has been found wanting. The minister has spent far too long trying to placate his party’s allies in the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu), and far too long standing by as provincial education officials plumb new depths of idiocy. This lack of leadership has infected the whole system, all the way down to teachers who happily stray from their lessons to chat about football for an hour or so.
The result has been three years in which provinces have blithely paid their best teachers to leave, not bothered to order textbooks, ignored staff training, scrapped vital school-building and maintenance programmes, and overspent on thousands of employees whose work is assessed just once a year: with the matric.
The real tragedy is that the damage wrought by this mismanagement will only fully become clear in years to come. And then matric 1997 could very well look like a good performance.
Bengu has shown himself adept at steering difficult legislation through Parliament, including the vital South African Schools Act. And until there is a black face among the top 10 matric students in the Western Cape, Bengu will enjoy massive popular support in his attempts to redress past imbalances.
But it is time he dumped the vested interests. It is time Sadtu was made to understand that the government’s first priority is not the union’s support, but the welfare of this country’s children.
It is time to clean out the rat’s nest that is provincial education, constitutional and public service constraints notwithstanding. It is time teachers, principals, inspectors and governors who can’t or won’t do their jobs are shown the door. In short, it is time Bengu stood up for the children.
Until Bengu displays this kind of leadership, and fights and wins these kinds of battles, all his great plans will came to naught.
Bengu has the chance to go down in South African history as the man who did more than any other minister to bury forever the prime legacy of apartheid. On his current performance, however, he will be remembered as the man who sent state education, and with it this country’s future well-being, into terminal decline.
No tears, please, for the old Crocodile
The Attorney General of the Western Cape, Frank Kahn, is to be congratulated for his decision to launch a prosecution against former state president PW Botha.
Admittedly he had little choice and he was guilty of perhaps unbecoming hesitation, but he has at least carried out his duty, and for that the country can give a sigh of relief.
The damage to the justice system as a whole – never mind the Truth and Reconciliation Commission – would have been incalculable had he done otherwise.
It is now up to others to do their duty. We would not wish to dictate to the courts how they should deal with Botha, but we note speculation that he will “escape lightly” and that the case will anyway take as long as two years to be heard.
This is a nonsense. The facts of the matter are undisputed: Botha has defied a subpoena from the truth commission.
His defiance clearly obstructs the workings of an instrument of government. There is no reason whatsoever why it should not be dealt with expeditiously.
The maximum sentence under the law is two years’ imprisonment, or a fine of R20 000. The obvious course of action for the courts is to impose a two-year sentence, suspended on condition he co- operates fully with the commission.ar sentence, suspended on condition he co- operates fully with the commission.shes to go to jail, let it be on his head.
Botha has done enough damage to South Africa in his working life. He should not be allowed to do further damage in his dotage.