Toilet troubles just the pits

Hundreds of Eastern Cape schools are death traps – and Mbasa Junior Secondary in Ngqamakhwe is one of the worst.

Twelve gaping pit latrines – in such a bad condition that teachers refuse to use them – have already swallowed three of the school’s 385 pupils and a goat in recent years.

All survived, but they must also try and educate themselves at a school which has no running water, no electricity, with sections of the prefab classrooms having collapsed.

Mbasa violates almost all of the tenets of the Infrastructure Act – and its central norms and standards benchmark regulations.

Saturday Dispatch went to investigate further.

We found pupils playing in classrooms spattered with goat turds.

If there is no rain, tanks quickly empty, and then the entire school community takes the 1km walk to the Tsomo river to fetch water.

Teachers who have to answer the call of nature, have to get into cars and drive to nearby bushes to relieve themselves.

The school nutrition programme is a three-plate gas stove in a shack, and when the gas runs out, then food is made on the fire which is built in the ground outside the kitchen door.

Prefab walls have holes 1m in diameter and ceiling boards hang from the roof.

Every single window in 10 classrooms is broken, doors have no handles, the perimeter fence lies flat on the ground, but for the gate posts and gate which still stand, there are no sports facilities.

Fields comprise brown, impacted earth with a few scraggedly patches of grass on it.

But the school community, of 10 teachers, the school governing body (SGB) and parents remain unbowed in their campaign to fix the school.

They have travelled the road to Bhisho and the provincial education headquarters in Zwelitsha demanding the school be fixed, and decent toilets be installed.

The shabby 12 latrines are in a row of structures plonked on open ground, doors missing. Inside it are just cement slabs and a round hole. Most of the latrines’ box seats are smashed up, lying in the veld a few metres away.

Saturday Dispatch was told the children must squat or stand at a bent angle when using the latrines.

One of the prefab walls has been smashed away.

At the back of the row, the ground has caved in. There are gaping holes the size of a soccer ball and this, say parents, was how a schoolboy slipped and fell into it. (l See adjacent story).

The school’s principal Nomataru Ntshona said since 2011 three pupils and a goat had been rescued from the latrines. The latest incident occurred in January.

“Three pupils have almost died when they fell into holes that formed around the latrines due to the ground caving in,” said Ntshona.

Two of the pit latrines were built two years ago and have also become unsafe, Ntshona said. The school, with support from the community, came to a halt for five days recently when residents embarked on protests demanding a new school.

“These classrooms are accidents waiting to happen. Our children are not safe at this school,” said SGB chairwoman Nokuthembela Nkame, showing the Dispatch around.

“After school hours livestock, especially goats roam the school premises and go into the classes and leave this mess for teachers and pupils to clean up,” said Nkame.

The Department of Basic Education’s national education infrastructure management system found in a January report that of the Eastern Cape’s 5400 schools, 1945 schools used pit latrines, 37 schools had no ablution facilities at all, 154 schools had no electricity and 3699 relied on rainwater as a means of water supply.

In August last year, the Dispatch reported that thousands of pupils at more than 340 Eastern Cape schools were still learning in mud and unsafe structures, six years after the government committed to eradicate mud schools through the Accelerated School Infrastructure Development Initiative (Asidi) established in 2011.

On November 29 2013, Minister of Basic Education (DBE) Angie Motshekga published legally binding norms and standards for school infrastructure in South Africa.

It became law that every school must have water, electricity, working toilets and safe classrooms.

However, DBE failed to uphold this law when it failed to meet the first deadline.

One of the legislated time-frames was to eradicate all mud and inappropriate schools, by November 2016, but that never happened.

Two weeks ago, after the death of Lumka Mkhethwa, the five-year-old girl who died in pit latrine at Luna Primary School in Bizana, Motshekga called an urgent meeting where she announced immediate action to fix the infrastructure nightmare.

Her action, spurred on by an instruction from President Cyril Ramaphosa, also followed the death of Michael Komape who died four years ago, when he fell into his school’s pit latrine in Limpopo. After a meeting with the nine provincial education MECs and HoDs in Johannesburg this week, Motshekga announced immediate remedies, but gave no timelines.

DBE spokesman Elijah Mhlanga said they could not give deadlines due to Treasury’s R3.5-billion infrastructure “budget cut”.

Topping the list was the provision of age-appropriate seats for Grade R pupils in all schools.

Motshekga’s education administration also resolved to:

lConduct a rapid audit of all schools sanitation and ablution facilities;

lImmediately provide sanitation for all schools without any sanitation;

lDemolish pit latrines where new facilities have been provided;

lTo “progressively and urgently” eliminate pit latrines; and

lImmediately sort out schools with inadequate or insufficient sanitation.

Motshekga said her detail repair plan had to be submitted to President Ramaphosa within three months. Equal Education’s head of policy and training, Leanne Jansen-Thomas, accused Motshekga of hiding behind the argument of budget constraints.

“Government has a duty to lead society, and to marshal all the resources available, both public and private, to achieve quality education for all,” said Jansen-Thomas. — arethal@dispatch.co.za