The African National Congress’ policy conference kicked off in Johannesburg this week. Its intellectual equivalent of mud wrestling was over a truckload of documents analysing party organisational renewal, nationalisation, job creation, investment and land redistribution.
There was also President Jacob Zuma’s catchily titled but ponderously composed Second Transition centrepiece of policy proposals, which is his personal manifesto for a second term masquerading as deep thought. His deputy and potential rival Kgalema Motlanthe cruelly dismissed it in passing as as ‘a smattering of Marxist of jargon’, basically turgid and conceptually inadequate. Worryingly for Zuma, many of the delegates agreed.
Nowhere among all this earnest introspection, however, was there anything at all about book burning. For this was the illuminating juxtaposition. While ANC delegates lined up to flex their mental muscles to shape South Africa’s future, just a few hundred kilometres north outside Polokwane, the future of another generation was going up in flames. Literally.
Thousands of never-distributed school textbooks were being shredded and incinerated in Limpopo, where 5 000 schools had still not received their 2012 curriculum textbooks six months into the academic year. The books, many new and in plastic shrinkwrap, included volumes in English, Pedi and Afrikaans for maths, science and economics, for Aids education, as well as piles of poetry and plays.
Among those deemed ‘unusable’ because of curriculum changes, even as library reference works, were Shakespeare’s Macbeth and a biography of Nelson Mandela. The Basic Education ministry was meanwhile scrambling to meet a second court-ordered deadline for all outstanding textbook deliveries in the province.
It is disconcerting that education officials in an education ministry believe that no book is somehow preferable to a slightly dated version. It is pathetic that officials in Limpopo and possibly the Eastern Cape – the other province where civil society NGOs have humiliated the Basic Education ministry with due performance on delivery court orders and where the national ministry has taken over the failed provincial departments – are so slow to distribute textbooks that syllabus changes render them ‘unusable’.
While there is little common sense in continually changing syllabi and the having to pulp the textbooks, there might be commercial sense. EduSolutions, a company managed, according to Beeld, by senior former government officials, held the R700m annual tender for Limpopo’s school textbooks. Presumably, the more books scrapped, the more they have to produce.
This week EduSolutions, which was fired by Limpopo’s education administrator a few months back, lost a court application to be reinstated. It boasts that it already manages ‘the entire supply chain’ for public schools in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng and says it will sue for damages.
It emerged in court that EduSolutions – the company motto is ‘one hand washes the other’ and its website chronicles its ties with Zuma and his foundations – was one of 23 tenderers for the Limpopo contract. It won when the other 22 were all disqualified without reasons being given. Criminal investigations are under way.
None of this is particularly unusual. There can scarcely be anyone left in the country who will be surprised at what is just another example of the most inept and corrupt administration that South Africans have yet had to endure. And we thought the Nats were incompetent wankers…
What is notable, though, is how the debacle reflects the poison of ignorance that spreads when education fails. The ANC is obsessed with theory, with jargon, with elaborate Marxist constructs. As if policy will miraculously translate into progress.
Rather get the textbooks to schools and teachers into classes. More of a challenge than all the airy-fairy cerebral prancing at the conference, but ultimately more effective.
The final, half-baked, response from the ANC Youth League says it all. ‘We demand that all be given the obligatory pass as the situation is stimulated by the government itself. The lack of support materials … comes with a lot of misfortunes to learners.’ The SA Democratic Teachers Union response is similarly crass and ill-considered. The only issue to their minds is that if their members have to work extra hours in order that learners can catch up, overtime pay is non negotiable, failing which they will strike.
The ANC can have as many policy conferences as it wishes. None will make up for the present lacuna in leadership.
Eish!
You do realise don’t you that no farms are to be bought for blacks to own? They are to be bought for the state to own and the blacks to tenant – on the same system which did not work in the Homelands, in Communist Russia and China, and in Haiti.
Communal ownership and subsistence farming can NEVER feed the 70 percent of the people living in the cities.
I’d really like Harris to explain how this bit of kneejerk glurge:
“The burning/shredding/destruction of some of those old textbooks that preach the views of those eurocentric fascists who spread false values and misinformation through their versions of history etc. , sometimes is the only answer.”
…applies to a biography of Nelson Mandela.
Once again I ask Tofolux to answer these 2 short questions:
1. Who is GSM – and et al?
2. Would THEY have any idea what on earth you are rambling on about?
@Michael Liermann
¨sometimes DESTRUCTION is the only answer¨
Even though these fabricated reports of ¨book burning¨ are designed to create fear and hysteria by the DA, one can understand why the destruction of these old textbooks makes sense especially if they contained apartheid´s version of education. Never again can we allow out kids to be indoctrinated en-masse.
@David
As I mentioned before, the late delivery of textbooks is unacceptable, but lets follow the proper channels to correct this, rather than engaging in gutter politics using the courts as the DA and their sidekicks have done. No Education Minister anywhere in the world has been so viciously attacked in this way.
Harris: Rather than changing from referring to Section 27 as a “DA cohort” to now calling them a “DA sidekick”, maybe address my earlier comment:
And again, you are resorting to your intellectually dishonest tactic of associating any organisation that takes on government with the DA. The organisation that brought the court action, Section 27, is a good faith organisation with partnerships with the TAC, Students for Law and Social Justice, Equal Education etc: http://www.section27.org.za/partners/
Instead you attempt to smear this organisation as a “DA cohort” with ZERO EVIDENCE! Have you no shame?
This so funny……….The burnt-ashes in the Seshego site are actually DA frabrication, one must be really smoking something toxic. FACT IS – Learning material was burn, shredded and some packed for disposal “SOME WHERE”. This is a fact, there’s a video footage, photos and et’ all providing portfolio of evidence to this, hence the Ministry couldn’t rebuke, denounce or nullify these reports DA or no DA. Put DA aside with their toilets and Khayelitsha neglect……….ANC has long lost its balls, its leaders starting with its so called president (I know what I’m doing…..???) Shower-man and his disgusting NEC are the worst this dead movement has ever had. Can you explain to me Mandela’s Biography being “eurocentric monopoly of intellect” and “neoliberal propagation”? Is Mandela and his story really a propagation by Apartheid spies? If YES, surely there’s no room for ANC in the lives of our childrenDepriving a black child a chance to be educated reminds me of 1976 – what is really the difference between Angie Motsekga/Jacob Zuma/Casel Mathale and Malan, Botha, et’ al?????
@Dave Harris
“Never again can we allow out kids to be indoctrinated en-masse”
I agree wholeheartedly, DH.
Better make sure that they give SABC TV “News” and SAFM radio an extremely wide berth, then.
Doesn’t anyone worry about the wasted COST of all those books being trashed or rotting in warehouses?
In my day each school had a cash allocation to order books direct from the publishers and had to be frugal about the orders. The headmistress would have to work out how many pupils were taking which subjects, and how many second hand textbooks there were.
Africa has collapsed precisely because of being indoctrinated into myths – Black American Africanist Myths, and Communist Marxist Myths being the most damaging.
Every country makes up historical myths to enhance national pride.
But this is the first time in the History of the World that a myth has been created for a WHOLE CONTINENT from a diaspora outside the continent.
@Reducto
Just like Afri(kanker)Forum and other DA sidekicks are self-proclaimed ¨civil rights” organizations, similarly Section 27 is another self-proclaimed ¨social justice¨ organization.
If you would be so kind as to give us full disclosure of Section 27´s funding sources, then only can you prove me wrong.
These ¨book burning¨ fabrications are just the old gutter politics from the DA to ¨divide and rule¨, nothing more.
You don’t even know anything about Section 27. The “DA sidekick” that supports NHI? http://www.section27.org.za/NHI/ Yeah right!
Face it Harris, you are a dishonest propaganda troll who seeks to smear any good faith organisation that takes on government.
@Reducto
“good faith organisation that takes on government”
But in reality a political lobby group for the DA.
FUNDING SOURCES for this organization please? Pretty please?
@Dave
How about you prove that Section 27 is funded by the DA? Pretty please?
You claim they are a sidekick, yet provide no proof.
Harris, please explain why a lobby group for the DA would support NHI? Something the DA vehemently opposes? You’ve basically found their guilty till proven innocent, despite all the evidence that already points to the opposite conclusion.
In fact Harris, you must surely be out of touch with reality. Is there any organisation that takes on government on various issues you don’t assume to be a “DA sidekick” till proven innocent? Even though in reality it is quite clear the organisation differs radically from the DA and pretty much converges on agreement on a single point (textbooks)? (See above re NHI)
As I said, you are a proganda troll seeking to smear such a good faith organisation, because it made the ANC you defend to blindly look bad.
@Otha, I think that you should be reminded of a few facts. SA stock market rose 16.09% in 2010, this is ahead of any of the G7 countries. SA rand was the second best performing currency against the US dollar ie betw 2007- 2011, SA tax revenue increased frm 100 bill in 1994 to 640 bill in 2010, SA debt to GDP is 32% against USA – 100% & UK – 90%, SA ranks No 1 iro regulation of security exchanges. SA ranks NO 1 in Platinum output, No 2 in Palladium output, NO 3 in Gold output, NO 6 in Coal output, No 9 in Wool. The number of tourists who visits this country has grown frm 3.9mill in 1994 to 11.3 mill in 2010. SA was named as the top tourist destination in the world in 2011, Travelers Choice Destination. OR Tambo is the best airport in Africa, SA has 45 mill cell phones users, etc etc.
Now really, Otha, how did your failed and corrupt apartheid state have any of these achievements other than to be propped up by Nazi states etc? Your insults and patronising is just that compared to the above and many many other facts. Guess someone needs a reality check.
I note that Harris has dodged my actual question and merely regurgitated something he vaguely remembers from reading the young reader’s edition of Paolo Freire.
Aha. Messrs Dave Harris and Tofolux earn their pay as dishonest propaganda trolls for the ANC yet again (very appropriate terminology, Reducto – thanks).
It’s all become so predictable.
And, Mr Harris, you say:
“No Education Minister anywhere in the world has been so viciously attacked in this way”
Quite so. In no country in the civilised world would ministers NEED to be so viciously attacked. Most of them do an at least half-decent job. Two thirds of the ANC leadership would have been jailed by now in any decent society. Whoops! I forgot! Two thirds HAVE. Well, sort of. When they fell out of favour with their bosses.
“No Education Minister anywhere in the world has been so viciously attacked in this way.”
You might have missed the following bits of information, Harris. They show that, when education ministers display incompetence, all around the world they come under tremendous pressure to resign – pressure from opposition political parties, the public and the media:
New Zealand: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/3784557/Education-health-ministries-rate-poorly
Sri Lanka: http://srilankafoundation.com/2012/07/z-score-fiasco-puts-the-government-in-an-awkward-position/
Poland: http://www.wbj.pl/article-59051-opposition-calls-for-polish-education-ministers-head.html
Turkey: http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/35nm07/
Yet you try to portray the South African public and the media and opposition political parties as altogether evil and racist for daring to criticize the South African minister of education. You are very dishonest indeed, sir.