Lizeka Mda
Luvundu Junior Secondary School looks very familiar. After about 8km of gravel road out of Willowvale, I drive around the bend and there are the two characterless cream- coloured blocks of classrooms, joined by a shorter one for the staff room and principal’s office to make a U-shape.
A new block of five classrooms has been built where there used to be a football field. But everything else looks the same – even with the signs of wear and tear. We moved from the old rondavels to these buildings in 1975.
Some children are playing in the grounds when I drive through the school gates at 9.45am. There are curious faces peeping from the windows.
Then the bell rings and the children run out of the classrooms and assemble in the centre of the U. A lone teacher follows them. He recites a prayer and tells the children that school is out. He also reminds them that examinations begin on Monday.
Bonile Nama tells me he had to send the children home because he could not supervise them alone. The other 11 teachers, including the principal, did not turn up today. He does not know why. There is a sports meeting at Peddie, some could be attending that.
He is referring to the soccer, rugby, netball, softball and volleyball matches the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union has arranged for its members. A week before they are due to go on strike, they can afford to take a day off to play sports.
The children, obviously pleased at this turn of events have disappeared. When I was a pupil here teaching stopped at 11am on a Friday. Then boys would carry the desks out of the classrooms while the girls went to nearby houses to gather cow dung and to the dam for water to clean the floors. Today the floors are tiled.
I look at my old standard 7 classroom and remember too that this was the second year of the new system which had done away with form I, and came up with standard 7 instead of form II. Our maths textbook was divided into arithmetic, geometry and algebra, yet when I had to write that final exam I could not answer the sections on algebra and geometry, because our teacher had only taught us arithmetic.
I suspect that 22 years later things are not much better. Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Kader Asmal has not arrived in this district. There is no running water at Luvundu. There are three water tanks. When I was a pupil there these were padlocked and were for the exclusive use of teachers.
There is no regular transport and people wait for hours to hitch a ride into town. The rides are often vans that are tightly packed with people by the time they get this close to town.
Later I catch a glimpse of the principal of Luvundu, at the wheel of one of these unofficial taxis.