It’s sad that leaders don’t see they are destroying millions of futures

If there was ever a need to list all the failings of the ANC and rank them according to how devastating they are to the country, topping that list right now would be load shedding. It is impossible to ignore, especially with winter having arrived.

But the most devastating and lasting damage caused by the indifference of those in power is not the electricity grid. The real damage they have happily continued with is an education system that has produced millions and millions of functionally illiterate adults for three decades.

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The latest Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (Pirls) that says 81% of Grade 4 pupils in South Africa cannot read for meaning is a such a red flag on government failures that in any modern democracy, heads should roll.

The same report in 2016 put the figure at 78%, meaning there has been a further drop since the last report, despite President Cyril Ramaphosa having set up a panel to make sure that all 10-year-old children should be able to read for meaning across all language groups in South Africa by 2030.

It is mid-2023 – seven years to the set target – but the situation is only getting worse.

South Africa holds the truly undesirable honour of being the most unequal society in the world, according to the Gini Index in 2022. That means the earning capacity of the highest paid individuals, access to opportunities and other disparities show the biggest gap in this country than anywhere else in the world.

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Although economic empowerment is the most direct way of closing that deadly economic gap, the most sustainable and individually rewarding method of addressing economic disparities in the world remains that of educating the individual.

True self-actualisation, that ability to realise personal talents and partake meaningfully in the economic landscape, can only be realised when a person learns to decipher new knowledge, especially through education and, therefore, reading.

There are many reasons that Minister of Basic Education Angie Motshekga will advance for this dismal failure in changing things: the Bantu Verwoerdian education the ruling party inherited, limited resources in education, poorly trained teachers, early childhood development programmes not having been part of her department when she took over and the devastating effect that the Covid pandemic had on the ill-prepared basic education department.

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All of those are valid reasons. They contribute to poor education – but there is a point at which reasons turn into excuses. And that point has long passed for Motshekga and her party.

South Africa is not unique in having education problems. The whole African continent – with a few exceptions– has similar, or worse problems. The difference here is that South Africa is better-placed, resource-wise, to deal with that problem.

Yes, the country has been dealt a bad hand historically, but the power to change those odds has been in the government’s hands for 30 years, and half of those years Minister Motshekga has been at the helm.

What is sad about an individual not being able to read for meaning is that it must be one of the most frustrating things out there: being able to read a succession of words but you can’t take the information out of them.

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And frustration leads to resentment – of those who had the chance to change that situation for that individual but didn’t. It’s sad that leaders don’t see they are destroying millions of futures.