Damaging education to balance a municipal budget is short-sighted

Councillors allowed massive rates increases for schools to slip through when the City of Joburg’s tariffs for 2022-23 were approved in May. Only when schools started making noise did we realise possible consequences.

At one school, rates have gone from R40 000 to R425 000 a month. In my ward, a headmaster said his school would close, 24 livelihoods would be lost and 96 children would leave the institution they love.

The city issued a statement saying the rates hikes emanated from a long-standing decision by the minister of cooperative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) in terms of the Municipal Property Rates Act (MPRA).

All privately owned schools, preschools, early childhood development centres, further education and training colleges and universities were designated as business and commercial, attracting higher rates. Yet during pre-budget public participation meetings, private education institutions were not mentioned.

So, who could have known at that stage? The matter was indeed listed in voluminous documents later circulated to councillors on 13 March, after the last public meeting. However, it was not flagged or highlighted by officials or leaders.

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I can’t explain why this was not picked up by anyone, including councillors on the finance oversight committee, and organisations dedicated to monitoring rates. Some suggest that school administrators should have been on the alert, as the increases had been mooted for more than seven years. Further legal action is inevitable.

On 26 July, AfriForum and the city agreed in the High Court in Johannesburg that the matter will be heard in October. Until the issue is resolved, a court order prevents the city from taking credit control measures against schools which do not pay the higher rates, provided they keep paying at their previous levels.

Earlier in July, the city announced that private schools registered with the national department of education can apply for a 25% rebate. The matter is far from settled, Some advise that we should not comment as it is supposedly sub judice.

I share the view of media lawyer Dario Milo, who is quoted in Daily Maverick saying: “Relying on [the] sub judice rule is, in my opinion, the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

Constitutional lawyer Pierre de Vos in the same article says: “One of the most irritating phenomena of our political life is the manner in which politicians wrongly invoke the so-called sub judice rule to avoid accountability.”

Let us not avoid accountability. We messed up by not being alert to these massive rates increases for schools and by not yet striving to stave them off.

What is to be done? Coalition councillors are being blamed for assenting to the increases, even if they did not realise what they were doing. We are all obliged to vote according to instructions from our party whips.

The policy is, in fact, ANC-driven. All Cogta ministers have been ANC. Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and city leaders should heed the advice in the General Guidelines on the Municipal Property Rates Act (page 14): “Municipalities should seriously consider exempting both public and independent schools from rating.”

Damaging education in order to balance a municipal budget is short-sighted. Let’s fix this.