Anger over ‘pop-up’ school

Residents of Kempton Park suburb Birchleigh are upset about a new school in the middle of the suburb.

Set to open today with well over 400 high school pupils expected, they said that, beside the tardy start date, the grounds are a mess and construction far from complete.

Nobody knew the piece of land, a vacant plot until early November last year, was going to become a school in double quick time.

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“We just woke up one morning and there were graders and diggers preparing the area,” said one angry resident. “None of us knew that the Gauteng department of education (GDE) had decided to build a school here.”

Nobody saw it coming, because nobody was told until after the fact. GDE director Mpoku Tau denied this.

He said all the necessary consultations and applications had been done and local ward councillor Amanda Davison was notified that a high school was coming to town.

The onus was on her to arrange a community meeting and share the news. But Davison said she only learnt about the school when she saw the palisade fencing being erected.

A land invasion?

In fact, she said she initially called the police believing that it was a land invasion.

“It was only then we were told the GDE would be building a new high school on the land,” she said.

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Given that the school will be housed in temporary structures for the first few years, no plans had to be filed with council either, and no application for services was received in time for taps and toilets.

“The city has no record of this application. According to our records there is no permission granted for the structures,” said Ekurhuleni spokesperson Zweli Dlamini. He confirmed that there were no plans submitted either.

Davison managed to obtain a copy of a rough drawing that indicates where the Wendy houses were to be plonked.

‘Gulag-like conditions’

When The Citizen visited the site, several neighbours descended on the property, mostly to take on Davison who they blame for the fiasco, along with the department. Davison has been playing piggy-in-the-middle, consulting with stakeholders, from residents to teachers to parents to the GDE.

Earlier last week, she took to scrubbing some of the classroom floors to help get the facility pupil-ready.

There is not a single patch of grass on the property and by Friday, two weekend days away from welcoming hundreds of pupils, there was only dirt, mounds of sand, unpaved areas, metal poles in the ground, filthy classrooms and portable loos. JoJo Tanks were installed to provide water.

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“It is shocking that the GDE considers gulag-like conditions acceptable for children,” said the Democratic Alliance’s Bronwynn Engelbrecht. “Who can learn in a dust-ball like this?”

She said the poor planning and back-of-a-cigarette-box planning was symptomatic of a broken system and showed just how little government cared. “It’s a disgrace.”

But Tau said the GDE acted swiftly due to the massive demand for schools in Gauteng