Twenty-five Northern Province schools are set to start teaching Ndebele, but there aren’t any textbooks.
TWENTY-FIVE schools are ready to teach Ndebele as a home language for the first time in the Northern Province, but there are no textbooks, African Eye News Service reports.
The language has been introduced for pre-school and grade one pupils at Monsterloos in the Nebo district, where the nearest town is Groblersdal to the west, in Mpumalanga. Nebo curriculum adviser Ndabezweni Shabalala said on Monday the teachers were frustrated.
“I have only a few textbooks and all the schools want me to make copies, but there is no money to do that,” he said. Shabalala added the schools had tried to make a start in teaching Ndebele, but it was difficult to do this without the textbooks.
“I sent a list of the books to the department of education in Pietersburg last October, but not one has been sent,” Shabalala said. “This has a very negative effect on the teachers’ work.” Shabalala said he arranged for Ndebele experts to do workshops with the teachers last November, but there was no money to do this again.
“We cannot pay for the lecturers’ transport and food,” Shabalala said. “We expected the department to pay for everything.”
Education spokesman Rapule Matsane said the provincial office was not aware of the problems. “This is a result of inefficiency at the management (district) office. We had the impression that everything was ready, but now they are shifting the blame to the provincial office,” Matsane said.
“We are going to deal with the matter,” he added. Although there are about 72 000 Ndebeles in the Northern Province, their language has never before been taught in schools.
Shabalala said communities at Monsterloos had asked for this to be done. Communities at Mtetema and Leeufontein, also near Groblersdal, also asked for the same thing, and this would be done later, he added.
— African Eye News Service, February 3, 2000.