By Charles Thomas
Hardly a few weeks into its rule, the Government of National Unity (GNU) feels emboldened enough to launch punitive budget cuts aimed largely at the education of the poor.
In the Western Cape alone, this has resulted in the Western Cape Education Department deciding to disappear more than 2400 teachers from the system beginning 2025.
Education MEC David Maynier then has the gall to state that, “We are not firing teachers, and we are not retrenching teachers.”
This is pure sophistry – the 2025 educational year will start with 2400 fewer teachers!
And then, of course, we have the well-worn excuse that, “We (the DA-run WCED) are doing everything we can to fight for our teachers, but are being short-changed by the national government.”
But this time the national government includes the DA!
As far as the mass of South Africans are concerned, the transition from apartheid to neo-liberal governance in 1994 did little, if anything, to change the living conditions of the poor.
Thirty years into the “new” dispensation, we continue to see the rise of a small elite alongside the ongoing immiseration of the masses.
In SA, Members of Parliament are remunerated to the tune of more than R1million per annum.
A Cabinet minister gets a salary of more than R2.6million a year, while a MEC will be paid R2.1million per annum. It should be remembered that the national executive was significantly enlarged following the elections, which means effectively, an enlarged feeding trough. If the country needs budget cuts, surely this should be where we start.
Starving education of resources means more than just belt-tightening for the poor. It means denial of life-enhancing opportunities for our children. It effectively sentences the mass of our people to endless, generational impoverishment.
It is a frontal attack by the ruling class on the life-chances of the majority of South Africans. This cannot be allowed to happen.
Cape Times