Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi. Picture: Nigel Sibanda Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi talks a good talk. So much so that he has risen through the ranks of his party, the ANC, at a relatively fast pace.
The place where he first grabbed the Gauteng public attention was when he was the MEC for education. He always managed to personally make it to the spotlight of any scene where tensions ran high. He can never be accused of “not being seen to be doing nothing”.
His most famous brainchild as MEC for education before becoming premier is the Gauteng online school admission system for Grades 1 and 8, which he launched in 2015 to great fanfare. On paper, the system is the most brilliant piece of innovation in Gauteng education since the dawn of democracy. Theoretically, it was designed to take away the yearly hustle which saw parents queue for up to three days at the beginning of each school year to secure places for children at their school of choice.
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It had indeed become ridiculous that some of the schools that were considered prime picks for parents saw snaking queues outside their premises every year. And when Lesufi conceived and launched online applications, it was an immediate answer to a pressing problem. In practice, however, the system has become a nightmare for some parents. And it is the same story every year: thousands of pupils who could not be allocated a school by the system, only beginning their Grades 1 and 8 journeys weeks later than other pupils because they could not be placed at a school.
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