Cape Town’s security concerns will force parents to seek former white schools
In the notorious townships in the suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa’s city, fear of crime and gang violence is forcing some parents to make difficult decisions to send their children to former white schools for long daily commutes.
“The thugs will enter the school with guns that threaten teachers’ guns and force the laptop to learners,” Sibahle Mbasana told the BBC.
“Imagine your kids going through it regularly. There is little sense of security in schools, and even if there is, there is nothing they can do.”
This has been more than three decades since the end of the white minority rule in South Africa, but there are still black students who have to endure the enormous inequalities that are the cornerstone of the racist system.
Mrs. Mbasana believes that her three children are the heirs of this legacy – especially Lifalethu, the eldest son of her township school between the ages of six and 10.
One of the main laws in the era of apartheid was the Bantu Education Act of 1953, which was designed to prevent black children from reaching their full potential. This creates segregated schools, less funded and less resources, which have created fewer resources for schools in impoverished areas, and has so far been overcrowded and often suffered from high crime, drug use and violence.
Mrs Mbasana, who grew up in Eastern Cape province and moved to Khayelitsha when she was 18, decided she had no choice but to transfer Lifalethu, who is now 12, and her other son Anele, 11, to a state school some 40km (25 miles) away in Simon’s Town, situationed on a picturesque bay on the Cape Peninsula which is famously home to South Africa’s navy.
Their seven-year-old sister Buhle joined the boys at the school, which has better facilities and smaller class sizes.
“I tell myself [that] Boole won’t go there [local] It’s because I’ve been through a lot with two boys when I was in that school. “The 34-year-old costume designer said.
She and her husband hope to keep their family completely away from Khayelitsha.
“We don’t want to live in a township, but we have to live here because we can’t afford to move out,” she said.
“Talk to anyone in the township and they will tell you that if you can, they will move out in the first opportunity.”
Khayelitsha is the largest and fastest growing township in Cape Town [AFP/Getty Images]
There is no doubt that despite poor infrastructure and barriers to large class sizes, township schools led by visionary principals and hardworking teachers still do miracles.
But it turns out that safety and security are insurmountable when gangs ask teachers to charge for protection.
Teachers at Zanemfundo Elementary School in eastern Philippines, which is said to be close to Khayelitsha, were told to pay a 10% salary to extortionists who seem to operate impunity, the news website reported.
“It’s not safe at all. We are in extreme danger,” a teacher told Groundup.
“These gangs come to the school to carry guns. Our lives are in danger. The teachers in the school demand transfers because they are not safe.”
According to the Western Cape Ministry of Education (WCED), it will now be stationed in schools and police patrol nearby.
But similar incidents have been reported in five other schools around Nyanga, Philippi and Samora Machel.
Sipho and Sibahle Mbasana’s daughter also start school in Simon’s town [Sibahle Mbasana]
“My husband Sipho is working on the Navy in the town of Simon, where he travels, so I think it would be safer and more comfortable for my kids to go to that school,” Mrs. Mbasana said.
However, longer commuting on buses or minibuses brings more safety to schools that bring dangers and stress to themselves.
Mrs. Mbasana said: “My children got up around 4.30am and left at 5.50am when Sipho was transporting them. When they got on the bus, because Sipho might be working elsewhere, they left before 5.30am and arrived at home at 4.30pm.”
“They are always tired and want to sleep. They are strong because they do their homework, but they sleep much earlier than other kids.”
Lifalethu made national headlines last year when he was forced to return home from Simon’s town to Khayelitsha because the bus he often took refused him to enter because he could not find his ticket.
The driver involved was subsequently suspended for violating the company’s policy, which requires employees to assist schoolchildren with school uniforms who lost their tickets.
As the darkness fell, when Mrs. Mbasana had his worst nightmare, when Anele called for his brother not to be allowed to go.
But then a huge social media madness happened, and he discovered good luck several times – at one stage a good Samaritan brought the boy an elevator and he got him off at a gas station about 5 kilometers from his home.
From there, he hiked with a security guard to live in his area and was brought back to his comforting family by the police who joined the search for him.
If traffic lights up, it takes less than an hour to get to Simon’s town from Khayelitsha, the home of the South African Navy [Universal Images Group/Getty Images]
His case highlights the plight of thousands of students from townships, some of whom travel up to 80 kilometers a day on public transport, or 80 kilometers a round trip on public transport, or pre-arranged trips with minibus taxis, and school in the suburbs of the city, an area that once accepted only white students in the park era.
Affluent residents of these suburban areas often choose private education for their descendants, meaning that state schools there tend to provide space for people from further afield.
Donovan Williams, vice principal of state elementary schools at Cape Town Fashion Observatory, said about 85% of his school’s intake of 830 students came from townships – many of whom were exhausted for long days.
“Some parents work in the area, and most parents spend a lot of money on transportation to get their kids better schools in the infrastructure,” he told the BBC.
“Sometimes they fall asleep in class.”
According to Amnesty International, South Africa is one of the most unequal school systems in the world – children’s outcomes depend heavily on where they were born, their wealth and their skin color.
Its 2020 report says: “Of the next 6,600 schools, children in the top 200 schools have made more differences in math. The sports field must be shedded.”
State schools are subsidized, but parents still have to pay for school fees, which are between $60 (£45) and $4,500 (£3,350) in the Western Cape.
Of the nearly 1,700 schools across the province, more than 100 are government-designated, free institutions for learners living in economically depressed areas.
The province’s education department explained that it often had to make up for the government’s funding shortages – more schools in middle-class areas turned to parents to pay for the fees.
West said 2,407 teaching positions have been lost in the province recently as the government allocated only 64% of the cost of a salary agreement negotiated with teachers nationwide.
The reduction in positions means that when the contract ends in December, some contract teachers are not reappointed, while some permanent teachers are asked to move to school.
“We are in an impossible position, it’s not our production, and the Western Cape isn’t the only affected province,” Wced added.
After the end of apartheid in 1994, people hoped that apartheid would level the playing field for all [AFP/Getty Images]
The National Professional Teachers’ Organization of South Africa (NAPTOSA) said the decision was particularly devastating for schools in poverty and crime-crisis areas.
“The schools that feel the real impact are your typical township schools. They are unable to replace these teachers through dominance appointments, which are the schools with resource improvements, and parents are able to pay extra costs.”
“They feel that tailors, their class size is bigger, and their teachers are more stressed.
“Kids, especially those who are less academically inclined, will slip through the cracks.”
Experts blame the ongoing educational differences on Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) government inherited from the apartheid regime in 1994.
“ANC has to face the fact that it cannot be delivered in its way.”,,,,, Tell the BBC.
He said that in the face of fiscal austerity, “there has never been an opportunity to develop a sustainable teaching platform.”
“Twenty years ago, the political interest in what happened in township schools has been lost. When it comes to teacher spending and the proportion of students, you can see how the department has been overlooked. The number of teachers in these schools continues to cause cuts in primary terms.”
Professor Fataar is equally frustrating about the future: “I can’t see, forbidden miracles, how we can increase the financial situation of poor schools.”
Parents like Mbasanas are trapped in towns and often at the mercy of gangs and have run out of patience.
You may also be right:
go bbcafrica.com More news about the African continent.
Follow us on Twitter @bbcafrica,on Facebook BBC Africa Or on Instagram bbcafraca
BBC Africa Podcast
