Nombasa Hala joined Ndlovukazi High school in Queenstown in 1999 as a substitute teacher.
Fresh out of college, she taught general science and maths for the year. ”Up until now,” says Hala, ”I have not once been paid. I have never received a cent.” She estimates that she is owed R36 000 by the Eastern Cape Province Education Department (Ecped).
Hala has since taken a job at a garage. If a teaching post came up, she says she’ll consider taking it, but ”I’m now so disappointed that I don’t have the heart for teaching anymore. If I go back, then I could be disappointed all over again.”
Hala is one of over a thousand educators still waiting for the money for which they work.
Others still owed have been teaching for as long as 30 years. Another affected school is Dimbaza Junior Primary, the oldest school in a community close to Bisho. Fourteen out of a teaching staff of 29 are waiting for payments from Ecped.
Principal Pat Goya, who has been at the school since it started in 1969, suspects Ecped has ”forgotten about Dimbaza”.
Ecped representative Phamphama Mfenyana concedes that the situation has been ”a nightmare”, but that this ”backlog of a special kind” is receiving attention.
— The Teacher/Mail & Guardian, Johannesburg, April 2001.