Noluntu Mbizo looks perfectly at home in front of her Grade R class in Mbabakazi Senior Primary School in the rural outskirts of Ngcobo.
And as she takes the class through the lesson for the day, she exudes the kind of confidence that any well-paid teacher would show.
But Mbizo is not getting paid for what she does, nor is she even qualified to teach the children in the first place.
That is because she was only employed as one of the meal-servers responsible for preparing meals for the pupils.
Grade R and Grade 1 pupils have not had a teacher in front of them since the beginning of the year, prompting a concerned Mbizo, who is also the secretary of the school governing body, to take matters into her hands.
The mother’s own four children attend the school. She said the nearest school was located far away in another village.
“I couldn’t just stand by and watch while our children sit idly every day with no teacher,” she said.
“It’s painful because I am not even getting paid for what I am doing here.”
The dilapidated school is one of the oldest in the area having been founded by Mbizo’s late grandfather in the early 50s, way before Mbizo was born.
The school is not fenced and the two buildings used as classrooms, flank a gravel road that leads to a water treatment plant a few metres from the school.
Several windows are broken.
There are not enough classrooms and Mbizo has to sometimes teach under a tree.
“We have to take them outside because sometimes if there’s a noise the other teacher cannot teach.”
Mbizo said they cannot afford to take their children to another school, and the nearest school is Hlopekazi Senior Primary more than 10km away.
Asked if she didn’t think it was against the law to teach without a qualification, she said: “I was never trained to teach but received a crash course from some teachers. What was I supposed to do when there was no one available to teach our children?”
She said they had been fighting to get proper classrooms from the government for several years.
“This is an embarrassment if you look at its condition. But for us people of Mbabakazi, it is all we have for our young children.”