Pit toilets: Counting down the number of schools still using long drops  

Eradicating what could be considered a national shame is nearly complete.

Thousands of schools in South Africa suffered through using pit toilets, exposing children to unhygienic and dangerous facilities daily.

Six years after a campaign was started to rid the country of the archaic system, the number of ‘long drops’ in public schools is now under 250.  

Six years of gradual progress

Government departments have given themselves multiple deadlines, with Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube setting the latest deadline for March 2025.

Supplying a written response to a parliamentary question, Gwarube’s ministry provided an update on the project to end pit latrines.

The Sanitation Appropriate for Education (Safe) initiative was launched by President Cyril Ramaphosa in August 2018.

ALSO READ: ‘We don’t have bucket toilets in schools: Gwarube says department to clear pit toilet backlog in 2025

At the beginning of the Safe project, the department had listed the number of public schools still using pit latrines at 3,898, with the number increasing to 4,707 after further scrutiny.

The project raised R45 million in donations from private companies including Avbob, Anglo-American, Unicef, Sasol and more.

Then basic education minister Angie Motshekga said at the time that “a portion of these will be able to be dealt with in the current financial year through provincial education budgets.”

Numbers decreasing

In 2022, the Department of Basic Education said they were on track to make a dent in numbers, revising the figure to 1,083 which were due for completion before the end 2022/23 financial year.

To date, 1,332 schools received maintenance under the Safe initiative and 3,134 have been “provided with appropriate sanitation facilities”.

The Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal were among the provinces with the highest rate of completion, with 1,291 and 1,189 schools, respectively.

“This is in addition to provincial education departments’ infrastructure programmes that provide schools with sanitation infrastructure,” stated the minister’s response.

241 schools left

The number of schools still to be completed by the Safe initiative stands at 241. The Eastern Cape accounts for 151 of those, while 65 are needed in KZN.  

“This is a continuous project. You can’t say your backlog was over 4 000 pit toilets then and simply say well now we are done,” Gwarube said when assuming office.

“Once we have cleared that backlog, we have to continuously do an audit to make sure that our schools remain safe so that we can see if there are new pit toilets that are erected,” she added.

ALSO READ: SAHRC urges government to accelerate eradication of pit latrines and bucket toilets

Unecebo Mboteni fell into the pit toilet at his daycare centre in Unit 6 in Mdantsane in April and died in hospital a day after he was admitted.

Last year, four-year-old Langalam Viki fell in a pit toilet at a school in Vaalbank in the Eastern Cape and died.

Previous incidents

In 2017, Siyamthanda Mtunu, six, and in 2018 Lumka Mkweta, five, drowned in pit toilets in the Eastern Cape. During the same year, also in the Eastern Cape, five-year-old Viwe Jali was found in a pit latrine at Luna Primary School in Bizana.

One of the most infamous incidents was that of five-year-old Michael Komape, who drowned in a latrine at Mahlodumela Primary School just outside Polokwane in 2014.

His death led to various campaigns calling for the eradication of pit latrines in schools.

ALSO READ: Mpumalanga makes progress in removing pit toilets before next financial year

The Limpopo High Court in Polokwane handed down a judgment against the department in 2021 after a long court battle between Komape’s family and the department of education.

The high court ordered the department to provide a list of schools with pit toilets, plans to eradicate these and upgrade school sanitation in the province.

However, earlier in the year, the department of education in Limpopo had missed its own deadline.

Government vowed to do away with pit latrines in 2014 following the death of Michael Komape.

Additional reporting by Thando Nondywana