Re-elected president, Willie Madisha, told the 1 050 delegates representing Sadtu’s 515 branches across 51 regions nationwide, that the congress had taken place while the country’s labour movement was ‘under attack from sinister anti-working class forces and smear campaigns by faceless people through the media”.
Thulas Nxesi, who retained his position as Sadtu’s general secretary, said that ‘elements from within the organisation” were behind the attempt to smear Sadtu’s top brass. ‘These are individuals who leak documents to the media when the issues at stake could have been raised within the union’s constitutional circles,” he added.
But while these possible cracks – real or perceived – may have been successfully papered over during the four-day congress, Sadtu readied its membership for a massive showdown with their employers. Rejecting the idea of being a ‘sweetheart” union, Sadtu announced that it would fully support the Congress of South African Trade Unions’ call for protest action early in October.
Important educational topics raised during the congress include:
– The endorsement of the Developmental Appraisal System (DAS) and its integration with Whole School Evaluation. These mechanisms were regarded as crucial for teacher development, accountability and improving the quality of education.
– A commitment to eradicate sexual harassment and gender inequalities in schools and to initiate and support disciplinary action against teachers who brought the profession into disrepute.
– A demand for adequate time, training and resources to assist teachers to successfully implement outcomes-based education. This included a call for the government to reassess its funding strategies for education, to address infrastructural backlogs in schools and to re-introduce school feeding schemes under effective administration.
The congress was dominated by the need to discuss and implement a treatment plan for educators infected and affected by the HIV/Aids pandemic. According to Madisha, in the last two years alone, an estimated 1 200 members under the age of 45 had died as a result of Aids-related ailments.
Consequently, the need to negotiate for appropriate leave, death, medical and retirement benefits, as well as the provision of substitute teachers, was also accepted.
Minister of Education, Kader Asmal, said at the conference that independent international consultants had found ‘very positive attitudes towards change among teachers”. He assured teachers that post-provisioning norms were undergoing further review and that teachers were excluded from the provisions of Resolution 7 of 2002, designed to reduce the number of civil servants, as they had already been through the ‘difficult processes of rationalisation and redeployment”.
‘All the evidence points to the fact that we are facing an impending shortage of teachers, at least in some subjects and in certain provinces,” said Asmal.