South Africa’s children deserve better

What looks like a dilapidated bus standing in the school yard of Sindawonye Primary School, next to the R75 road in Coega, Eastern Cape, is in fact a classroom for grade 6 pupils. And they’re the lucky ones…

The rest of the kids, from Grade R to Grade 5, must squeeze into two small classrooms, apparently made from prefabricated materials.

The school has no electricity, no flushing toilets and depends on a borehole for water.

This, sadly, is the situation facing tens of thousands of school children across the country.

Money which could – and should – be used to build proper classrooms, proper toilets and bathrooms, has been either looted by our political leaders, or misspent by incompetent civil servants.

ALSO READ: This is not a broken bus – it’s a classroom in an Eastern Cape school

What is especially shameful, is that it is some of the most vulnerable in our society, our children, who once again have to suffer.

No child should be expected to get an education in conditions like this. No child should have their future stripped away from them before they have even had a chance to make something of their life.

Perhaps it suits the ANC to have people who are uneducated and ignorant … condemned to surviving on government handouts for their whole lives.