The fight for education

At Buyi Ed nursery school, a tiny, brightly-painted haven in the midst of the settlement, Priscilla Mbatha feeds, sometimes clothes, and struggles to teach a varied group of children from the informal settlement. The boys and girls, whose ages range from almost newborn to 10 years, learn to read and write, but many of them stop there, unable to move onto primary school.

The majority of the Masa Wanna population is non-South African, explains Charmaine McGinley of Daily Bread Organisation, which supports the school with donations and publicity. Many of the children passing through Buyi Ed are rejected from government schools because they are foreigners, while even South African-born children may not possess the documentation necessary to be registered.

McGinley and Mbatha do their best to overcome such bureaucratic obstacles, and the school has seen pupils successfully graduate to primary school, but their problems do not end there. Even the bus transporting children to nearby Witkoppen Primary School is inadequate. According to Mbatha, pupils are crowded “like fish” onto the bus, and she fears for the safety of smaller children. Lacking the money for school fees, clothes or even food, however, parents have no choice but to send their children to crowded government-funded institutions.

Despite the role it seeks to play in the community, the nursery school was burgled regularly before the erection of its surrounding wall.

Donations of clothes and baby care equipment – handed out by McGinley with a word of warning to prevent its sale by needy parents – go a small way towards assisting. But Mbatha and the rest of the Masa Wanna community remain desperate for upliftment and transformation.

“They’re the forgotten people,” said McGinley.

Details: www.dailybreadcharity.org; Facebook: Daily Bread Org.