MEC for Education in the Free State, Papi Kganare, is set to clampdown on teacher absenteeism in the province.
TARA TURKINGTON reports
SCHOOL was not easy for the MEC for Education in the Free State, Papi Kganare. It was at Sehunelo High school in Bloemfontein that Kganare learnt a valuable lesson about making your own success in life. ”I enjoyed maths,” he remembers. ”It was because of the teacher we had in Form II and III. Unfortunately, in Form IV and V, we didn’t have a maths teacher. We were given textbooks and we had to cope on our own.” Against all odds, Kganare swotted by himself and passed maths in matric.
Kganare was assigned the education portfolio in March 1999. Previously, he had been the province’s MEC for safety and security from 1994.
After school, he went to Pretoria and landed a job as an assistant librarian at Unisa. Although he was promoted quickly, he was dismissed the following year because he had been absent too much after being frequently detained for political involvement in the United Democratic Front.
In 1984, he started working as an organiser for the Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union of South Africa and worked his way up to become the general secretary of the union — the position he held when he was elected a member of the Free State provincial legislature in 1994.
Since moving into his office in March, Kganare has not been afraid to get stuck into the many challenges facing education in the province. Right away, he says, ”we made it very clear that all teachers must be at school and teaching. All officials must give necessary support, and all kids must be off the street.”
He closed down several schools where problems were rife. At Seemahale High school in Botshabelo, Kganare’s department is instituting disciplinary charges against 34 out of 38 teachers for being absent from school without leave.
Kganare agreed that absenteeism was far more widespread in the Free State than in Botshabelo alone, but that he was committed to fighting it.
Now, he says, he will also conduct a province-wide audit in the first half of this year to ascertain which teachers have missed school without permission, and will deduct the appropriate amounts from all their salaries.
The department is in the process of appointing an accounting firm to conduct an audit of the leave records of all 32 000 people employed in the Free State education department.
Kganare says, ”We are also putting pressure on all ex-Model C schools to employ black teachers and that white teachers applying for posts in the townships are treated equally. A number of white teachers are now teaching in Free State township schools. At first the black teachers wanted to revolt. They told me: ‘This is our school!’ I said, ‘It’s not your school, it belongs to the people of South Africa.”’
— The Teacher/Mail & Guardian, February 7, 2000.
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