ANGELA QUINTAL, Cape Town | Thursday
THE South African Education Minister has urged teachers who are threatening to strike to reconsider their actions, saying if the action went ahead it would be their pupils who would pay the price.
He has also indicated that there is still a chance that the national action might be averted.
Addressing the National Assembly on Wednesday night in support of World Teachers’ Day on October 5, he said he had no wish to negotiate from a parliamentary platform.
”Ignorance is expensive; too expensive for our children. While there is still a door open for talks, we must open it and walk through together.” However, the tide of public opinion was against the threatened national strike, which the country could not afford it.
”Not this time because of overseas investors or the markets, but because your children and your neighbour’s children will pay the price.
”Ignorance is expensive; too expensive for our children. While there is still a door open for talks, we must open it and walk through together.”
Asmal said even if a strike was avoided at the last minute, and it appeared both sides were in the final states of an agreement, the uncertainties and anxieties which pupils were facing would already have an effect.
”The simple insinuation of a strike is itself destabilising and de-motivating, at precisely the time when no learner can afford such feelings, and it would be regrettable if the matric results were to suffer as a result.”
Thousands of children would have to repeat a year or walk the streets without a matric, let alone a matric exemption, Asmal said.
”And that at a time when higher education institutions have the capacity to take in many more students.”
Asmal challenged teachers to question whether what they were doing was correct under their code of professional ethics.
South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) general secretary Thulas Nxesi said on Thursday morning talks with government had collapsed.
However, he still left open the door for further negotiation.
On whether the union would be willing to delay the strike so as not to interfere with the matric exams, he said: ”We would love to see that, but unfortunately education has no right time.
”We have been negotiating for the past four months, and now we are in the fifth month.”
Sadtu has said that 80% of its members voted in favour of a strike over pay talks.
It has identified October 15 as the date the strike will probably start. – Sapa