As a perky little girl, Veronica McKay used a big stick to round up her three siblings and everyone else in her vicinity to come to her “school”. Sitting them down, she made them learn whatever she had put on her chalkboard.
Nearly four decades later, following the launch of Kha ri Gude, South Africa’s biggest adult literacy campaign, McKay has lost her stick but not her childhood passion. In fact, the chief executive of the campaign has not stopped teaching.
For more than a decade she taught thousands of students as a professor of sociology at Unisa. Since 1994, as the director of Unisa’s Adult Basic Education and Training (Abet) Institute, she has empowered thousands of adults with the three mighty Rs – reading, writing and arithmetic.
“My grandmother was illiterate…I also grew up on the Jo’burg mines and…with that kind of exposure you become even more aware of the problems of illiteracy,” says McKay.
“As a student I became involved in groups teaching literacy. During the struggle years we used church groups to teach literacy,” she says.
But following Education Minister Naledi Pandor’s launch of the R6‒billion Kha ri Gude campaign in the Eastern Cape, McKay, the eternal educator, is facing her biggest challenge.
Leading Kha ri Gude, which means “let us learn” in Tshivenda, she will have to keep 80 000 educators motivated to teach literacy in their mother tongue, oral English and numeracy to 4,7-million adults.
“This campaign is the first step up the ladder of possibilities. The possibilities can be small, like filling in a form or writing a letter or writing one’s own name. It may open other possibilities to go on to formal learning (or) to run small businesses better, or it may just help people to live more easily. It could mean being able to vote without assistance in the next election,” McKay says.
Although McKay has been described as being “as tough as biltong” and was able to convince an interviewing panel that included ministers to appoint her Kha ri Gude CEO, she is nevertheless terrified. She says: “All eyes will be on the campaign. Everybody…inside and outside the country will be watching and measuring.”
Although the budget is R6-billion, the cost per learner is only R1 300. Nevertheless, she is scared of the responsibility of managing such a big budget. To help, the department has appointed auditing company SAB&T to manage the project and seconded two of its senior officials to the campaign to ensure the integrity of the financial and administrative systems. In addition, curriculum, research and evaluation committees will oversee the campaign, while there will also be a monitoring team including international experts and an inter-ministerial committee for general oversight.
Since the launch in the Eastern Cape – the other provinces will start classes in the course of the month – the campaign has not been trouble-free.
Late last year literacy guru John Aitchison pulled out of the execution team Pandor had put together because of what he described as “bureaucratic blockages”. McKay, who was then halfway through constructing the learning materials, carried on. “I guess I just work around problems,” says McKay.
Those materials, which are already being considered for use elsewhere in the world, have now been printed. Coordinators, supervisors and educators are being trained and learners are pouring in.
“There is an amazing, almost inexplicable dynamism on the ground. There are already Kha ri Gude dancing groups and choirs and provinces are competing. There is a Kha ri Gude song of gratitude to Minister Pandor. This is a campaign by the people for the people and the power of people should never ever be underestimated. I think the minister has been overwhelmed by witnessing how her vision is being realised,” McKay says.