Wednesday, 12 October 2016
Abahlali baseMjondolo press statement
S’bu Zikode to Speak at Schools in Estcourt on Friday
S’bu Zikode, the current president of Abahlali baseMjondolo has been invited to speak to the learners at the two schools that he attended: Inkosi Mjwayeli Primary School and Bonokuhle High School where he was matriculated. Both Bonokuhle and Inkosi Mjwayeli are situated in Estcourt in eMangweni, eMoyeni. Continue reading
18 August 2015
Unemployed People’s Movement: Statement on the Education Crisis
Recently parents in Port Elizabeth have taken to the streets to protest against the atrocious education being experienced by their children. They are not alone. The whole South African education system is terminally sick. This is demonstrated by the lack of teachers in our schools, the lack of science equipment, learners who are learning under the trees, the dropping of the pass rate from 40% to 33% and the fact that both the culture of learning and teaching has gone to the dogs. Continue reading
Circuits of Schooling and the Production of Space: the Household, Education, and Symbolic Struggles after Apartheid
by Mark Hunter
Every weekday morning, in every South African city, scores of taxis, buses, and cars move children, black and white, long distances to attend schools. A simple explanation for the phenomenal rise of out-of-area schooling in South Africa—one perhaps unmatched anywhere in the world—is the end of apartheid’s racially divided schooling system in the 1990s. But focused on south and central Durban, this paper traces the emergence of ten distinct pathways that children take through different schools, referred to as “circuits of schooling.” The social-geographical inequalities that underpin schoolchildren’s movement today, it argues, are rooted in racial segregation under apartheid, rising inequalities within segregated areas from the 1970s, and a decisive shift from race- to class-based inequalities after 1994. However, rather than seeing children’s mobility as unfolding mechanically from social structure, life histories of parents and interviews with schoolteachers demonstrate that it is a) emerging from important gendered socio-spatial transformations in families/households; b) tied up with the reworking of symbolic power, including through the contested status of English language and schoolboy sports like rugby; c) and produced by (and producing) new struggles over space. As such, the paper proposes that the concurrent deracialization of schools, workplaces, and residential areas is marked by a new urban politics in which the “right to the city” and education are deeply intertwined.
Click here to download this paper at the WISER site.
PPEN MEMBERS LAUNCH PUBLIC INTEREST LITIGATION AIMED AT SECURING THE RIGHT TO BASIC EDUCATION FOR ALL
________________________________________________________________
A group of educational activists associated with PPEN (Public Participation in Education Network) has taken advice from IFAISA (The Institute for Accountability in Southern Africa) concerning the prospects of success in litigation by way of direct access to the Constitutional Court. This public initiative is aimed at exacting respect for, promotion of, and actual access to the right to basic education, which is guaranteed to all in terms of the Bill of Rights.
Many discussions, protests and court actions have occurred over a long period of time to support the realisation of children’s right to basic education. We are aware, and supportive, of other cases currently being heard at different levels of the judicial system. We see our public initiative as complementary to other similar efforts as we simultaneously support the momentum for community and social mobilisation for quality public education. In essence, we seek to engage in a constructive spirit to bring about a better dispensation that is able to more effectively and efficiently deliver that which the Bill of Rights promises: basic education for all. There can be no doubting that the way in which basic education is being delivered will exacerbate the present situation and result in the ever increasing number of functionally illiterate and innumerate ‘push outs’ from the basic education system, posing a real danger to the future of peace, progress and prosperity in the land.
We have commenced with preparatory work on the court case and to mobilise wide support for our public interest litigation. Because the case is brought in the public interest, it is obvious that the more individuals, organizations, networks and communities who either participate directly in, or give their support to our efforts, the better.
The following are some basic priorities that we will argue are both achievable and necessary in order to realise our children’s constitutional rights. It is by no means exhaustive. You are invited to motivate any additions or modifications:
* Proper nutrition and decent early childhood development programmes to properly
prepare children who enter the formal education system to do so “on the front foot”.
* School infrastructure that is fit for purpose.
* The use of mother tongue based education in at least the foundation and intermediate phases”. (This implies a minimum of 6 years).
* The promotion of skilled educators via professional development and the development of accountability and support structures at the school level.
* Provision of appropriate education support materials and ensuring that they are in classrooms timeously.
* Restructuring the school funding models to ensure the realisation of quality educational provisioning for all children.
In legal terms, we aim to achieve a Supervisory Order from the Constitutional Court which commits it to play a more active supervisory and accountability role in ensuring – in practice – the right to a quality basic education for all children. The matter is urgent – the lives of children are affected.
We appeal to all individuals, organisations, networks and communities to publicly support this initiative in the interests of advancing a quality public education system for all. For further information please contact: Enver Motala: 0824634189, John Samuel: 0829924444, Jean Pease: 082 6553363
Motala Heights Abahlali baseMjondolo Branch
Press Statement 6 January 2010
Unlawful Attacks on Education Rights in Motala Heights
Today people are celebrating the matric results across the country. Here in Motala Heights, as in many poor communities around the country, we are planning our resistance to the illegal exclusion of poor children from our country's schools. Every year the first campaign on the Abahlali baseMjondolo calendar is the struggle to keep our children in school and to have them respected in school.