As the costs of schooling exceed the government’s limited resources, even the bare necessities can be painfully slow in coming. And no one knows this more than the educators and pupils at Mqanduli Primary School in Mahlungulu, near Umtata in the Eastern Cape.
Stuffy and dilapidated rondawels have served as classrooms for 16 years but schooling has gone on despite the lack of basic necessities such as ablution facilities, electricity and cleansed water. Drinking water is taken from the same river where there was a recent outbreak of typhoid.
The conditions, until recently, looked likely to persist with the Department of Education in the Eastern Cape being expected to perform miracles even though its recent input offered little hope.
Apart from the shoddy conditions in which learning and teaching occurred, another example of how the school has been left to fend for itself is that the department pays for only four educators to teach the 400-odd pupils.
Had it not been for the four volunteer teachers from the community, there would have been a teacher: pupil ratio of 1:100.
Chief Patekile Holomisa, traditional leader of the area and an MP for the ANC in the National Assembly, makes no bones about the government’s lack of investment: “The very fact that there are mud huts for schools is an indictment on the government,” says Holomisa. “We expected the government to do something [about the school], but every year we heard, ‘There’s no money, there’s no money'”.
Community leader Wellington Tembekile Mdunyelwa says that the community identified the need for a new school back in 1994. “It was all uphill,” says Mdunyela, “until Nelson Mandela came to visit in April 1999. Then suddenly the foot was on the accelerator.” Thanks to Mandela’s intervention, the desire to make a difference came in the all-important funding for a new school (and primary health care centre next to it) from Microsoft Corporation.
But it was not only the famous “Madiba magic” that attracted the R5.5-million from Microsoft Corporation. One of Microsoft’s criteria before committing money to social development projects was that there is evidence of the community’s involvement. Joanna Demirian, international community affairs manager for Microsoft, says: “Our strategy is to help support social change entrepreneurs, working with people with a vision and with an understanding of the subtleties of the context”.
The school in Umtata is one of 95 social development projects in 67 countries that Microsoft is supporting. A combination of the people’s vision and Microsoft’s has resulted in a snazzy brick school complete with nine classrooms and a media centre (the primary health centre is still to be built). The buildings themselves are ready, except for the finishing touches, to open for learning from the first day of the new school year. Still missing, though, are the resources which should come from the Department of Education, for example, more teachers, furniture, electricity and phone lines (which Microsoft require before fitting out the media centre with computers).
Department of Education representative Phamphama Mfenyana expresses confidence these needs will be met, but district officials have in the meantime informed the school that there is no money in this year’s budget for furniture. “It would be a disgrace if the government is not going to provide support,” comments Holomisa, “when a company that is not obligated to do so can do this.”
But no matter what obstacles the school may face before it is fully equipped, principal Mavis Noah believes prospects are looking brighter after 16 years of teaching in old mud huts.
Whether or not they are sitting on the floor when work in the first term begins, one thing’s certain, the teachers and pupils are online to a better future in their “marvellous new school”.
— The Teacher/Mail & Guardian, January, 2001.