The consequences of inequality in the South African schooling environment are dire and profound, particularly in African communities and to black learners in particular.

I am penning this opinion well aware that talking about inequality in terms of race and special interests tends to put people off. But if you are serious about the right to basic education and equal access to education, you will understand that the shape and the colour of education inequality in South Africa is black.

You will understand that privileged groups will do and say anything to protect their advantages and couldn’t care less about the axis of inequality. They rather shift the axis of inequality to higher education for their benefit. Children of wealthy and successful parents will continue to monopolise access to the best educational opportunities.

What is more, our government, politicians and the media seem to perpetuate this simplistic perspective about educational inequality. It is easy for them to find an excuse for a broken window of a dilapidated school and make hollow promises that they will build hundreds of schools in 2023, while at the same time blaming everything on theft and vandalism which they fail to prevent.

The yearly reality is that inequality in our public education is maximally maintained instead of being chipped away. The Covid-19 pandemic, by forcing school closures and learners having to study from their resource-deprived homes also increased inequality in education — particularly among learners from poorer families.

Tangible evidence available to ordinary South Africans is that instead of compensating for social inequality, our country’s education system appears to be aggravating it. You just need to look at media stories regarding black African students having to cram onto one desk to complete their matric. 

It is as if we read the same storyline at the beginning of each academic year, dovetailed by statements of demagogues, politicians and public officers professing that things will change for an African child when in fact they are legitimising their ineptness and failures to improve the basic education environment in South Africa.

Stories from learners and parents, for example, reflect how split-tongued our charismatic leaders are in failing to appreciate how backward they are in turning around schooling in disadvantaged communities.

In 2020 Amnesty International published its report, South Africa – Broken and unequal education perpetuating poverty and inequality, and noted that “the South African education system, characterised by crumbling infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms and relatively poor educational outcomes, is perpetuating inequality and as a result failing too many of its children, with the poor hardest hit.”

Nothing much has changed in 2023. We are still battling with poor infrastructure and sanitation in schools. Of course, the powers that be will blame Covid-19 for the lack of redress and improvement.

Even an idiot knows that in South Africa educational inequality is one of the sources of the “Great Gatsby Curve” in terms of which individuals and communities with high economic inequality tend to have low intergenerational mobility in income.

As to why our government, parliamentarians and politicians do not understand this simple reality — your guess is as good as mine. What is sad, and should be a concern to all South Africans, is that educational inequality by socioeconomic background will persist at current levels throughout the next generation.

In an article published by a journal aptly named Education as Change under the title “The Persistence of South African Educational Inequalities: The Need for Understanding and Relying on Analytical Frameworks”, Francine de Clercq asked the question: Could the education system be fundamentally improved and mitigate somewhat the socioeconomic inequalities from one generation to another?

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I have been an academic for years and have been in an education management position long enough to know that the playing field is not level and that it will never be level in our lifetime.

Constitutionally guaranteed public education calls for every child, no matter who their parents are or their community background, to have a chance to make something of themselves through schooling. That is why the little ones, when asked what they want to become when they grow up, say doctors, professors, and other notable professional careers because they know that then they have a chance in life.

Unfortunately, they are not aware that what their parents’ government is giving them access to is a doomed future of pit latrines, rolling blackouts and desert-dry water taps. From the word go, they are put in competition with learners from independent schools when the latter has a perpetual comparative advantage to score close to 100% in matriculation outcomes.

I become sick to my stomach and disgusted when our leaders in their commentary about the excellent performance of learners from independent schools decry the outcomes of our worst-performing public schools. Strangely, these are the very same people who had a chance of more than 20 years since the dawn of democracy to plug the achievement gaps and improve the educational performance of our public schools — as both leaders from the ruling party and the opposition parties.

The notion of us being a meritocracy where everyone has a fair chance to succeed is almost nonexistent in South Africa. Our government and politicians may differ from me when I say that equal education in South Africa is a myth, and a fantasy and wishful thinking of the Mandela era. But who cares!

Schooling reform is needed, and so is meaningfully addressing the current pervasive inequality, and fostering accountability. Unfortunately, our current accountability movement and public pressure for change is either dormant or inconsequential. This pales when compared to the pre-1994 anti-apartheid struggles for an equal and improved education system.

Those who used to fight hard for equal education and pressurise the state to improve the quality of the education system for all have alienated themselves from the crusade because they have reached the golden pot of privilege and possibilities. Some would not want to speak much against the persistent and pervasive inequality because their hands are still dabbling in the cookie jar. 

Perhaps we as the public are also to blame for failing to hold our government, politicians and public officials accountable and responsible for their service failures. We tend to look away or ignore the challenges of learners — most evident and more pronounced at the beginning of each academic year as collateral damage from corrupt practices and dereliction of duty disadvantaged learners from rural and impoverished communities. 

We are so captured and numbed by our allegiance to individuals and political factions that we fail to recognise that a legal process as basic as private prosecution can be used as a societal accountability tool for politicians and public officials who are criminally complicit in the ongoing inequality in schools.

We can resort to public interest litigation to hold our government accountable. At least there is light at the end of the tunnel that public interest may be awakened with the recent cases lodged against Eskom for rolling blackouts. At least NGOs like Equal Education and others never shun the responsibility of making the Department of Basic Education accountable.

In 2020, for example, Equal Education secured an important victory in the Gauteng high court against the minister of basic education and the MECs of education of eight provinces of South Africa after they had breached their constitutional and statutory duty to ensure the efficacy of the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP).

Victory for learners, in this case, was that the minister of basic education and education MECs were ordered without delay to ensure that the NSNP is implemented as they had a constitutional and statutory duty to implement the programme by providing a daily meal to all qualifying learners, whether they are attending school or studying away from school as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This may be one of the important victories that will remain overshadowed by the mountain of challenges in our education system. The Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (DPWI) in 2022 promised big changes coming to South African schools through its National Infrastructure Plan 2050 to improve school buildings and education-related infrastructure.

Don’t hold your breath! DM