Despite achieving the best matric results in the country for three years in a row, the Northern Cape is not benefiting from the knowledge of school-leavers in the province.
“We are suffering from a massive brain drain,” a worried Tina Joemat-Pettersson, provincial minister of education in the Northern Cape, told the Mail & Guardian. “But we believe that we can turn it around.”
Last year the Northern Cape outshone all other provinces, with an unprecedented pass rate of 90,7%.
The brain drain is very worrying, said Kennett Sinclair, deputy leader of the New National Party in the province. But he is also worried about the thousands of matriculants who do not leave.
“Year after year our province has the highest matric pass rate, but what happens after that? What is next for those kids now that they have passed matric? The reality is that they just go and sit in their little communities and they do not have anything to do.”
Joemat-Pettersson said that up to now the biggest challenge has been to deal with the mass exodus of learners to other provinces for tertiary study. The province’s first tertiary institution, the Northern Cape Institute for Higher Education, opened last year and, she says, a lot of hard work remains to be done to establish the institute as a force in education in the province.
Joemat-Pettersson said it is more than the lack of a quality higher education institution that is hampering the province. “Apart from the brain drain, we have the double disadvantage that our learners are not traditional candidates of higher education and do not know how to access a tertiary education.”
The department is offering learners scholarships to ensure that they return to the province to work and pay them off.
Despite the mineral richness and the political successes of the province, the economic growth envisioned in 1994 has not emerged. The economy is still driven by mining and agriculture.
Unemployment remains a major challenge.
Joemat-Pettersson believes the answer lies in attracting investors to the province — investors who will not send their money back to Johannesburg or London, as do most of the mining companies operating in the Northern Cape.
Charl de Beer, secretary of the NNP, says: “The mining companies take their raw minerals to places such as Vereeniging, where they are moulded into something and then exported. We have to find ways to add value to the product here, and … create more jobs.”
Small towns such as Campbell and Lutzville offer few work opportunities for their youth. Bigger towns such as Calvinia also struggle with unemployment.
“The young ones will get on the first truck that stops here,” says Koos Links, a parent in Calvinia. His children have left to look for work in Cape Town. “The only employment we get is from the white people, to work in their gardens and homes around here. Surely there must be something better for our children out there?”
Elize Tromp, a 22-year-old resident of Calvinia’s township, has not had a stable job since she left school four years ago. “There is nothing for us here,” she said. “I am only staying here to look after my family. But I also want to go to Cape Town.”
Even in a big city such as Kimberley school-leavers are not having much luck. Lebongange Mokwena and Talo Johan, residents of a township in Kimberley, have been unemployed since finishing matric.
“We play with the small children, because we have nothing else to do,” Mokwena said. “After school we were positive that we might find a job. But apart from the few casual building jobs, we struggle to survive.”
Sinclair said his party believes one of the biggest failures of the African National Congress in the province has been the neglect of the smaller towns. “The towns like Van Zylsrus’s economies are dead. They are becoming ghost towns,” he said.
Joemat-Pettersson, on the other hand, said the revival and rejuvenation of rural towns has been high on the ANC government’s agenda, starting with education.
“We have almost stemmed the tide of migration of learners from rural areas to urban areas. “We, for example, have a programme where we take technology to rural and farm schools.”
Education is one of the cornerstones of the Northern Cape’s development strategy to revive the economy of the province.
A project that Joemat-Pettersson believes holds a lot of promise for the future is Sutherland’s bid for the Square Kilometre Array, which will be the biggest radio telescope in the world.
“We need to educate our children to become astronomers and scientists so that they could go and work there.”