If you drive through the Pretoria central business district in the morning or afternoon, you come across the first marker of the failure of South Africa’s education system.
That marker will make you think about Capitec founder Jannie Mouton’s R7.2bn buyout offer for listed private schools group Curro and his ambition to pour money into it and open it up to needy, talented children. It will make you weep for public education in South Africa.
That marker is the music blasting from minibus taxis ferrying children to and from schools. Your car windows may be tightly shut, but the volume is so loud it will still pop your eardrums.
I do not know why the taxi drivers do it, or why parents allow it, or how children as young as seven survive it, but it is horrendous. The drivers, their vehicles packed with pupils, crank their sound systems up to maximum volume. Most of these taxis are equipped with huge extra speakers, and the effect on the children’s hearing must be devastating.
Yet, in the greater Tshwane area, this is “fashionable” or attractive. And so, whether you are in a taxi to Mamelodi, Atteridgeville, Soshanguve or elsewhere, you will be assaulted by this vicious, loud racket.
These music-pumping, rules-breaking minibus taxis illustrate more than anything the failure of the public education system
It is not just the din that should offend us all. For me, these music-pumping, rules-breaking minibus taxis illustrate more than anything the failure of the public education system. Most of the pupils using these “scholar transports” have been enrolled in city schools because their parents have given up on the schools in their township. They believe that schools “in the suburbs” or in the cities — some in dangerous dilapidated buildings — are better.
You cannot blame them. In 31 years of democracy, we have failed to do the one key thing that successful countries across the globe have achieved: build and run schools of excellence. These schools produce the real wealth of a country — an educated, productive, professional class. A 2012 Unesco report highlighted that every dollar spent on education can generate between $10 and $15 in economic growth. We haven’t made that sort of investment.
Countries and territories such as Singapore, Macao, Taiwan and Hong Kong have little or no mineral wealth and yet, by focusing on education, have propelled their living standards to some of the highest in the world. In South Africa, school students frequently fail to achieve foundational literacy and numeracy skills (hence our dismal performances in global assessment tests). Though enrolment has risen, infrastructure is often poor (children still die in pit latrines) while teaching standards are low and held back by teacher unions.
In desperation, parents send their children to schools in the former white suburbs and in the cities, far from their homes. They are voting with their feet. They are saying their government has failed them.
It is in this context that one must assess the Jannie Mouton Foundation offer to take Curro private — and invest every rand back into classrooms and bursaries.
Mouton said the deal reflected a “game-changing donation” to quality education and “quite possibly the largest philanthropic contribution South Africa has ever seen”. He said that, over time, this would open the door for thousands more children to attend Curro schools through bursaries, broadening access to excellent education.
More than any other sphere of philanthropy, education is the most impactful and transformative. Mouton’s landmark offer should be applauded.
Yet it is also an indictment. It reminds us just how badly we have failed in 31 years of democracy. Good schools, great teachers and inspirational principals should be in every village and every township. Instead, the number of state schools has declined steadily since 2002, student-teacher ratios are obstinately high and spending on basic education is continually threatened by our failure to run a thriving economy.
Mouton’s decision to plough Curro’s profits into bursaries and enrolment of the underprivileged is yet again a reminder of the failure to build an inclusionary fee-paying or free basic education model that would lead to more working-class and poor people accessing quality education.
We need more Jannie Moutons. More than that, we need an effective, capable, accountable and responsive government.
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