Andy Duffy
The head of state education in the Northern Cape faces a disciplinary hearing next week on charges of misconduct.
Zodwa Dlamini is alleged to have defied MEC for Education, Arts and Culture Tina Joemat and provincial Director General Martin van Zyl in their attempts to manage the embattled provincial education department.
The province suspended Dlamini on full pay in February. Van Zyl this week declined to detail the charges against her.
Dlamini, who took up the job as head of department in June 1995, was unavailable for comment this week. Her attorney, Joseph Mhlambi, says the province claims she had disobeyed Joemat and Van Zyl and flouted procedures last June when she recruited a textbook publisher.
“Their emphasis is that she did things without their permission,” he adds. “We want to know further details.”
The internal disciplinary hearing is due to start on Monday. Dlamini’s suspension is another example of the high-level bloodletting under way in provincial education.
State education chiefs in the Free State, Northern Province and North West province have all been given the boot or quit in recent months. Their departures have often been accompanied by allegations of mismanagement, incompetence and fiery relations with their MECs.
An investigation by the Department of Public Service and Administration in the Northern Cape last year found Dlamini was denied key decision-making powers. All authority over her department’s finances and recruitment policy rested with Van Zyl’s office.
“[Dlamini] felt she needed these functions within her department in order to allow her to make management decisions,” the report said – an argument it supported in its final recommendations.
Other major problems facing the education department in the Northern Cape include personnel costs, poor training and the huge distances between its schools and offices.
The province estimates it overspent its 1997/98 education budget of R705-million by R120-million, most of it on personnel. A representative says it is not yet clear how that over-expenditure will be funded.
The provincial education budget this year has been set at R812-million. The department expects teaching numbers to drop from 6 500 to 6E200 over the next few months.
About 40E000 schoolchildren in the province are taught at farm schools. Previous estimates said 98% of teachers at these schools are not qualified.
But many farmers have obstructed the department’s attempts to lift teaching standards.