High court orders KZN education department to pay overdue ECD subsidies

The Legal Resources Centre (LRC), representing two early childhood development (ECD) forums in KwaZulu-Natal, secured a significant victory in the KwaZulu-Natal Division of the High Court in Pietermaritzburg on Tuesday, 23 June, when the court accepted a draft order compelling the provincial education department to pay outstanding subsidies to local early learning facilities.

This follows long-standing challenges for ECD centres in KZN stemming from the department’s widespread failure to pay subsidies to registered facilities on time. Some centres are reportedly facing up to a year of unpaid subsidies.

Focus will now be on the KZN Department of Education’s compliance with the court order.

The applicants in the LRC’s case included the Friends of South Africa Early Childhood Development Forum and the KwaZulu-Natal Early Childhood Development Alliance (KZN ECD Alliance). The draft order accepted by the high court compels the provincial education department to:

• File a searchable report with the names and addresses of all ECD centres in KZN that are recipients of the conditional grant or equitable share subsidies, setting out the total subsidy amounts outstanding for each centre, within one month of the date on which it is served with the order;
• Pay the full amounts owed to each ECD centre within one month of filing the initial report; and
• File an updated version of the report before the last day of every third month, beginning on 31 October, until all payments are up to date.

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What happens now?

The government respondents in the case failed to appear in the high court on Tuesday. Kiara Govender, an attorney at the LRC in Durban, noted that the matter had gone largely unopposed throughout the legal proceedings.

“What’s interesting is that we have never heard from the department at any point. We repeatedly asked for timeframes, and we asked for reasons for non-payment, but we never heard [anything],” said Govender.

She noted that the first response the legal centre had seen from the department was in media reports after Tuesday’s court victory.

Muzi Mahlambi, the spokesperson for the KZN Department of Education, said the department had noted the judgment and would engage with it and implement what was “feasible”.

“We will further engage the court to have an appreciation of the difficulties that we have as the department that may impede us being fully compliant with the judgment,” said Mahlambi.

The LRC expects the final court order to be issued in the coming days, at which point the legal centre will serve it on the government respondents, kicking off the timeline for the education department’s reporting obligations.

“We are hopeful, and I guess we have a good outlook because of the terms of our draft order,” said Govender. “We are allowed to set the matter down for further relief if we are not satisfied with [the department’s] compliance [and]... reporting. I think if it does come to that, that is what we would end up doing, because I don’t think a response only at this stage and to the media is what anyone would have hoped for.”

She added that the LRC would track the KZN Department of Education’s compliance by contacting ECD centres and checking whether payments were made.

Who benefits?

The outcome of the court case has been celebrated by ECD practitioners from across KZN, with hundreds of representatives gathering outside the high court in Pietermaritzburg on Tuesday to protest at the non-payment of subsidies.

Lawrence Mngomezulu, the deputy chairperson of the Friends of South Africa Early Childhood Development Forum and principal of Umusa Uyasilandela ECD Centre, said some practitioners had travelled from 10pm the previous evening to ensure they could be outside the court at 8am.

“It was exciting to see everybody coming out to support, but also [painful], because if you look at them, they came to support because they also suffered because of the [KZN] Department of Education. You can see the effect of that is huge,” said Mngomezulu.

He said the payment of subsidies had worsened in recent months, with many ECD centres facing non-payment since February. Some centres had instead received “back pay” for 2025, when the KZN Department of Education allegedly paid them less than the subsidy amount of R24 per child per day.

“Some centres started receiving what was being referred to as back pay to make up for a discrepancy between the nationally prescribed rate of R24 per child per day and what was being paid in the previous financial year in KZN, just R18.95.

“It was only a few centres that started receiving back pay to make up this discrepancy ... and it was done without any explanation. Payments absolutely did not improve. If anything, things have become more confusing for centres,” said Govender.

Mngomezulu highlighted that the KZN provincial treasury had been monitoring the province’s education department since August 2025, using powers legislated under section 18 of the Public Finance Management Act.

This came after the education department had overspent its budget by March of that year. Citing the education department’s “inability to remedy its financial situation”, the KZN treasury stated that it was withholding all funding, excluding that related to the compensation of employees, conditional grants and transfer payments to schools.

“Whatever transactions [the KZN Department of Education] is making, they have to get approval from the treasury, so that may cause more delays,” said Mngomezulu. However, he added that the forum had positive engagements with the provincial Treasury around ensuring the education department’s payment of subsidies.

“We just hope that the Department of Education officials can have a heart and consider the children who are suffering because of this ... because if it goes on for longer, some ECD centres will just have to close,” said Mngomezulu. DM