Where this Limpopo school should be is only dust – eight years later

A Limpopo school allegedly “signed into existence” by the provincial government in 2010 has still not been built.

The DA’s Limpopo provincial leader, Jacques Smalle MPL, national spokesperson Solly Malatsi and the party’s Mountain View constituency head, Beyers Smit, visited the community in Masodi village, Limpopo on Monday morning.

Smalle said in a statement on Monday: “There is only one primary school in the village, and it is overcrowded with 1,500 learners. Here 64 children are crammed into a classroom with up to four learners sharing a desk. This school already has a shortage of four classrooms, and the situation continues to worsen.”

He said other learners were forced to walk up to 7km to attend school at other villages, “crossing a river and a national road, which has already resulted in the deaths of at least seven learners”.

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The party explained that Ratunku Primary School should have been built for the children in Masodi eight years ago, but in its place was an open space that had actually become a hazardous area where incidents of rape and robbery had been reported.

“It is appalling that nearly a decade has passed without a single brick being laid where the school should be. The national department of basic education admitted in June that it had failed to meet every single one of its Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI) targets.

“Out of a targeted 115 schools across the country, only 22 were built.”

The opposition said the ANC could not be trusted with the “futures of our children when they cannot achieve their own objectives”.