Ends in parent driven protests justify means

The parent-led protest at Overton Primary School near East London entered a new phase on Monday when parents sent their children back to school.

Previously, education had ground to a halt. Teaching did not take place for over a week as parents effectively shut down the school by keeping their children from boarding scholar transport to demand the construction of a new school building.

Towards the end of last week, parents issued calls for the department of education to send teachers to the proposed new school construction site of Bhongweni, so that learning could resume while the department and Buffalo City Metro sorted out issues of land rights.

The nearly 350 primary school pupils had sat around idly for days. While the protest pressed on, parents and children alike wanted school to restart as quickly as possible without sacrificing the effectiveness of their protest.

Every day Overton parent Xoliswa Mvandaba’s Grade 6 pupil had come home from school and asked her mother when teachers would start teaching again.

“Some of the kids are worried that they are going to be left behind in their schoolwork because they are not being taught,” she said.

However, with no response from the department, the parents found themselves facing a dilemma: either end the protest and send their children back to poor and dangerous learning conditions or continue at the expense of their children’s education. No matter their decision, they felt their children would suffer.

This is not a decision parents should have to make, but their action was justified.

Though their children have returned to school, the parents’ fight is not over.

With the Overton case as just one example, the Eastern Cape has seen a recent surge in parent activism.

Parents in the northern areas of Port Elizabeth voted last week to keep schools closed until the department addresses issues such as overcrowded classrooms and teacher shortages.

These issues, as well as the protests against them, continue.

This spate of parent activism and subsequent court action by ANC MPL Christian Martin beg the question of culpability for what some are calling an obstruction of education.

As the 2015 matric results illustrated, Eastern Cape pupils face enough challenges without missing school a week at a time.

While some may lay the blame of education obstruction squarely on parents shoulders for shutting schools, the problems in Port Elizabeth and Overton Primary originate with the department’s inaction, not the parents’ action.

The obstruction of education began long before parents began the difficult task of planning, mobilising and launching a protest against the department.

To an outsider, these parents’ actions may appear contradictory: protesting for the betterment of their children’s education at the expense of their children’s education. However, this argument would ignore the mountains of correspondence between Overton and the department dating back nearly a decade.

Overton Primary even appeared near the top of the department’s school infrastructure “priority list” one year, only to disappear from the list the next.

The endless letters, e-mails, phone calls and broken promises finally led the parents in the Overton camp to conclude, rightfully so, that conventional communication channels had been exhausted. The protest represented a regretful last resort to shock the department into action – not a hasty plan hatched overnight.

The parents’ recent decision to return their children to school further illustrates this point.

There is a precedent for such parent activism. Last August, parents locked the gate of Vukile Tshwete Secondary School in the Eastern Cape in protest against the dangerous school infrastructure that threatened the lives of their children.

This action eventually drew the attention of Ray Tywakadi, acting head of the department.

These parent protests are grabbing headlines and finally exposing departmental inaction at schools like Vukile Tshwete and Overton.

Here, the ends justify the means.

The departmental inaction is manifold. First, the department failed to respond to these schools in crisis. A government source admitted that Overton Primary has the worst school infrastructure in the East London school district, yet the pupils, teachers and principal have waited years for a new school to be built, losing one donor and delaying another donor in the process.

Crumbling classrooms are overflowing and the school grounds flood regularly, putting the children in constant danger.

But now that parents have taken matters into their own hands, the department has again delayed decisive action. It has not responded to the protesters in any form despite repeated attempts by the parents to make contact, said school governing board chair Xoliswa Sokutu.

Last week, activists from Equal Education (EE) visited Overton Primary to meet the parents and SGB chair.

Together with the Legal Resources Centre, EE is exploring legal avenues to help make sure the department urgently assesses the situation of these two school sites and comes to an agreement that is in the best interest of the pupils.

As calls for MEC Mandla Makapula’s resignation grow louder and more numerous, this surge in parent activism only serves to legitimise the anger aimed the Eastern Cape department of education.

As a next step, Overton parents plan to march to the mayor’s office of Buffalo City Metro to demand the municipality release the land to build the new school.

But what if this march still yields nothing but empty promises?

Parents only have so many tools and methods of activism at their disposal to hold individuals within the department accountable.

Given the ECDoE’s recent track record, it should come as no surprise that a member of a parent protest recently punctuated the end of their message to Equal Education with #ECDoEMustFall. Parents of the world, unite.

Lumkile Zani is head of Equal Education, Eastern Cape office