We owe the 14 schoolchildren who were killed in the crash between a minibus taxi and a truck last Monday the truth. What happened to them was not “an accident”. It was a tragedy we have manufactured over 31 years.
It is a tragedy that stalks every child who has to travel long distances in dangerous “scholar transport” from their neighbourhood to a school in a formerly whites-only area. What happened was political cowardice and leadership failure trickling down to the public and causing death and untold pain. The crash that occurred on a narrow strip of road in Vanderbijlpark was not caused by poor driving, an overloaded taxi, an expired licence disc or a dodgy public transport permit.
It was caused by this: Why are hundreds of thousands of black children packed into unsafe minibus taxis every weekday morning to learn at formerly white schools far from their homes? Why, 31 years after a free South Africa was ushered in, aren’t there excellent schools in Sebokeng or Zola or Soshanguve? The ANC can argue until it is blue in the face, but there is perhaps no sphere in which it has failed more spectacularly than in the education of black children.
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Instead of energetically putting in measures to improve existing schools and build new schools that would continue the legacy of great black schools such as Ohlange High, Healdtown and others, which were destroyed by the Bantu Education Act of 1952, it has instead shut down schools in places such as Soweto. It breaks my heart that when Nelson Mandela was set to vote in 1994, he chose to do so at Ohlange High School in KwaZulu-Natal. The symbolism was huge.
The school was founded in 1901 by John Langalibalele Dube (the first president of the ANC at its founding in 1912) and Nokutela Dube. That act alone sent a message across the country: This ANC government would fix the mess of apartheid education. Utter failure has followed that great act of symbolism.
Today, the country transports its children in rickety minibus taxis from black townships to formerly white suburbs. With the help of the state, trade unions aligned to the ruling party block action against their members who sell teaching positions for money and sexual favours in township schools. We should hang our heads in shame.
The ANC — together with other formations — freed black people from apartheid. Yet, many of the party’s actions over the past 31 years have told black people that they are inferior to whites.
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