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Education department needs R46bn for new classrooms and toilets at public schools

Education department needs R46bn for new classrooms and toilets at public schools

Daily Maverick06-05-2025
The Department of Basic Education says it needs R32bn to build new classrooms in 8,222 schools and an additional R14bn to construct toilets at 13,385 schools.
On Tuesday, the minister of basic education, Siviwe Gwarube, appeared before Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Basic Education to provide an update on the conditions at South Africa's public schools.
Gwarube revealed that 90% of 22,381 schools were in fair, very good or good condition. Eight percent were in poor condition, and 2% in very poor condition. She said that 8,222 schools needed new classrooms, and 13,485 additional toilets needed to be constructed.
'We are talking about more than just buildings and new schools; we have a new phenomenon of overcrowded classrooms … or schools with not enough classrooms, and … this is something that we really need to resolve. Over 8,222 schools still require additional classrooms, and that is estimated at R32-billion.'
She continued: '13,485 schools require additional toilets to cope with the rising number of learners … and that would require about R14-billion.'
The Department of Basic Education (DBE) said that for the current financial year, it had only R15,285,220 for the Education Infrastructure Grant, which was less than what was needed to resolve these issues.
Daily Maverick previously reported that in the face of overwhelming workloads, safety concerns and a lack of support, many teachers are reconsidering their future in the profession.
Safe sanitation
After missing the deadline to eradicate pit toilets by 31 March, the DBE told the committee that the Sanitation Appropriate for Education (Safe) programme, which was launched in 2018 to provide adequate sanitation facilities at schools, would be terminated at the end of this financial year. The programme has eradicated 3,235 pit toilets, with 137 still to be attended to.
Ramasedi Mafoko, the acting chief director for infrastructure at the DBE, said, 'As the Safe initiative is coming to an end, we are no longer taking any new projects; we will give them over to the provincial education departments with a clear instruction that sanitation is an immediate priority. So any pit latrines identified are given over to the province.'
The DBE told the committee that 206 schools out of 22,381 had inappropriate structures, referring to ageing structures, schools built of mud or those that need repairing.
Turning to its successes, the DBE said it had helped schools get increased access to water and electricity, had built 1,344 new schools and provided 12,797 schools with libraries. DM
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Kenny Kunene and the growing gangsterisation of our politics
Kenny Kunene and the growing gangsterisation of our politics

Daily Maverick

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Kenny Kunene and the growing gangsterisation of our politics

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Democracy undermined The impact of all of this on our society is fundamental and profound. Businesses cannot operate. And they cannot know how to protect their workers and assets in the face of a criminal state. Outsurance is a recent example of this. It emerged last month that a claim it paid out on a car after a reported accident was actually fraudulent. The company that had paid the insurance premiums turned out to be a front for an SANDF Special Forces unit. That unit is accused of killing Hawks investigator Frans Mathipa, using the car in the hit. They are then accused of deliberately destroying it. How can Outsurance conduct its business not knowing if a company it has signed a contract with is not actually an arm of the state that is killing people? For voters the damage is even worse. If there is no trust in politicians, then there can be no trust in the criminal justice system they oversee. But worse, if people are now entering politics to extend their criminal empires, the entire democratic project gets undermined. This will encourage and enable the rise of people who will promise to use violence against crime. Groups involving criminals will do this too, claiming to be speaking for their communities (the PA has arguably done this already, campaigning to reinstate the death penalty for crimes like murder; of course, they do not foresee a situation where one of their own could be accused of theft or corruption). In the end the competition will be for who can be seen as the toughest, or the most violent, against crime. That then sows the seeds for some kind of 'strongman' politics, where people will make the most extreme promises. In the meantime, the social ties and rules that are supposed to ensure some kind of fairness will simply break down. It will be rule by the strong. Where the weak will have no option but to either cower, or use violence themselves. Kunene is by no means the only politician connected to criminality. This incident is merely the latest expression of it. But our society appears to be heading in a very dangerous direction. And we are moving there very quickly indeed. DM

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