Hoërskool Overvaal

Grade 8 is a long time ago for most of us, but just try to think back for a moment to your first year of high school. Now imagine you only had two teachers to teach all your subjects, all 12.One might teach English, Afrikaans, History, Art, LO, and Geography, and the other, Maths, Science, Biology, Accounting, Business studies and Technology. This sounds awful to me. And not only that, it is completely impractical. We all know that a jack of all trades is a master of none. A teacher that has to focus on teaching so many subjects will never be very good with any of them. Yet this is Panyaza Lesufi's solution to accommodating 55 English speaking pupils at Hoërskool Overvaal.

Late last week Lesufi published an article in response to the court ruling that Hoërskool Overvaal cannot accommodate 55 English speaking pupils. You can read that article here, but basically what it says is "race, race, racism, racists, race, racist." But to be serious, the article equates the whole situation to a racial incident, which can only be done by someone who sees the world only through the goggles of race. This tells us a lot about Lesufi's character. It seems he is someone who is stuck in the glory days of the struggle and alongside his other antics shows that he is more concerned with attracting the attention of the media than with doing his job.

But enough about Lesufi. Let us touch briefly on the actual argument before addressing the broader education problem in South Africa. The court judgement stated that the school did not have the capacity for 55 English speaking pupils. Furthermore it is completely impractical to have just 55 pupils in a school like this for reasons we have discussed above. It really is simply a question of practicality.

Now the parents of the 55 pupils have a legitimate concern regarding the fact that there are no English speaking schools in the area. But let us consider who as at fault for this. Not the school and definitely not the North Gauteng High Court. Lesufi with his choir of protesters are turning the high school into a scapegoat for the governments failings. Why was there not an English school built there long ago if there are so many English kids? Lesufi has a lot of criticism to dish out for someone who is not doing his job very well. 

But to be fair to Mr Lesufi, it is a job that is impossible to do well. It is impossible because of the nature of our education system. Firstly, the people at the top are politicians, not educators. This means that they don't really know what they are doing. We need educational experts running our education system, not unqualified bureaucrats. Second, we need a decentralised system. It is impossible to run thousands of schools from a central organisation, especially when that organisation is the government, who's leaders have no real incentive for performance in a country where politicians are held to very low standards. 

The simple solution is this: Government must get out of education. Because of our history and socio-economic circumstances we will need a transition period where the government still funds education, but this must be done through a voucher system where each child gets a certain amount each year for education, but the government has no say over curriculum or placement or language policy. A system where many people are looking for and finding a multitude of different solutions will always produce the best results. The freedom given to educators will bring positivity back into the learning environment and competition between schools and educational systems will only benefit learners.

The Hoërskool Overvaal saga is mole hill made into a mountain, but is is also just a symptom of a much bigger problem. A problem to which the solution is not more government control, but less of it. We cannot expect the organisation that is causing all these problems to solve them if they have more control. We need to free our schools, our teachers and our principles to provide quality education, without government interference.

Opposition Wins Again

Cheers erupted from the ANC caucus in parliament as speaker Baleka Mbete read the results of the secret ballot vote of no confidence against Jacob Zuma. 177 for. 198 against. The irony is that this group of jubilant souls were only celebrating their own demise.

To say the opposition lost would be technically accurate, but not at all a fair reflection of the bigger picture. The vote of no confidence failed, but the opposition won. You see, this was always a win-win situation. The very idea of the no-confidence vote was to put the ANC between a rock and a hard place. That is why we have had 8 of them already. Each time the ANC votes to keep Jacob Zuma in power they tie themselves ever closer to their greatest liability and alienate those who "love the ANC but hate Zuma." Every time the ANC caucus puts their weight behind Zuma they lose seats in the 2019 election.

I'm sure most ANC MPs know this, but are more concerned about saving themselves from the whip of party discipline than saving the party from the wrath of the voters and the mire of immorality. Though sometimes I do wonder.

On the other hand, voting Zuma out would also be a dangerous road and additionally, it would be an unpredictable one. No one really knows what would have happened had the required 50 ANC MP's broken ranks and had the president removed. It is far from inconceivable that it would cause an irreparable rift and possibly a split in the party. Far less likely, it would have been the turning point for the ANC to course correct and repair its once honourable reputation. But those possibilities are just what-ifs now. The ruling party has chosen the slow poison.

The only way for the ANC to escape this trap would be to recall Zuma itself. This would allow them to show some semblance of morality while not bending to the will of the opposition, though at this point it may even be too late for such a move to still be considered a show of strength. But this hasn't yet and certainly will not happen until at least the electoral conference in December. There are too many people high up on his side who would go down with him.

The country needs Jacob Zuma gone. But Jacob Zuma is not the extent of the problem. The ANC is the problem. You cannot separate Zuma from the ANC, and the secret ballot vote proved that. Zuma is not unique, he is a representation of what is happening in the rest of his party. Most of the ANC are as morally decayed as Zuma. If it were not so, he would not be in power. The whole party needs to go.

So while the DA and the EFF publicly mourn the retaining of President Zuma, privately they will be celebrating another hole fired into the sinking ship of the ruling party, all while its hopeless crew drown, shackled to their own pride.

Maimane's not so Big Moment

I am amazed, but not particularly surprised, that the Helen Zille tweet row has carried on for as long as it has, and that so few sensible voices have been prominent in the debate. I've had many thoughts on the issue since my post last week. These are a few.

First off, Zille needs berating for her own foolishness, not because what she said was wrong, but because someone with her experience in both politics and journalism should have foreseen the reaction to her tweets. She knows better than most how the racial propaganda war works in South Africa and has been a victim of it enough to have anticipated her moral lynching.

Zille's moment of naivety, however, by no means justifies the manufactured outrage from those who think only in terms of black and white. The dominant argument remains that Zille defended colonialism and thereby offended millions of South Africans who suffered because of it. It's even gotten to the point where the Black First Land First movement has decided to lay racism charges against her. I believe I sufficiently established the ridiculousness of these claims in my last article, but in case you were still in doubt I will further elaborate.

The now infamous tweet series started with a reference to how Singapore achieved major development by building off what the colonists left behind. The whole idea was how South Africa could emulate that, so the argument was never racial nor a defense of colonialism from the start, but merely about how to achieve development. One should not be surprised, however, at the racialist vultures who were hovering, waiting for any misrepresentable statement to cry racist over. Contrary to one popular argument, Zille did not say that there were good aspects of colonialism. She said that there were good aspects to the legacy of colonialism i.e. what we are left with because of colonialism. One can perfectly reasonably call colonialism abhorrent and evil and simultaneously suggest that there are consequences of colonialism that we can exploit to improve the lives of the people.

To sum it up in one question, Do you believe running water is a good thing, that written language is a good thing, democracy, electricity, modern travel? If yes, then you agree with Mrs Zille. The ANC agrees with her, the EFF, even Black First Land First agree with her. In fact, the ANC's own idea of the Developmental State is the same principle Zille was arguing.

Now, significantly, Zille's tweets are supposedly sufficient reason for her to be axed as premier of the Western Cape. We've already established why this is not the case, but let us try to convince Mmusi Maimane of this too. Apparently this is Maimane's chance to step out of Zille's shadow and show that he is the true leader of the DA by beheading his mentor and predecessor. Of course, this is a tempting opportunity, but it would cost him his integrity. Hopefully Mmusi will not fall into the trap baited by his enemies. So for many it is a question of whether Mmusi Maimane will man up and show that he is the true leader of the DA or stay in the shadow of Zille, but really the question is whether he will give up his integrity for cheap political points.