Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics - or Honesty?
In the course of this term Education Minister Professor Bengu
met representatives of the South African Democratic Teachers'
Union (SADTU), the SA Onderwysunie (SAOU) and the National Professional
Teachers' Association (NAPTOSA) to discuss salary increases. These
talks were conducted as part of the activities of the notorious
Education Labour Relations Council (ELRC). The teachers' bodies
walked out of the discussions because salary increases that had
been promised at a previous meeting where "agreements"
had been reached could not be honoured by the minister. SADTU
threatened strike action in June if the demands of the unions
were not met. These events followed the presentation of the national
budget in parliament in March 1997. Then already it became more
than obvious that the budget had been drawn up to satisfy the
conditionalities prescribed by the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund. The funds set aside by the government for the purpose
were totally inadequate to meet even the meanest of improvements
in education. The budget ad the talks between the minister and
the teachers' bodies exposed a tissue of lies, damned lies and
so-called statistics that must arouse feelings nothing short of
contempt for the ways in which the education ministry, the government
and certain sections of the teacher corps regard priorities in
education in related fields.
In the March budget revenue account of some R162
billion, an amount of R40 billion was set aside for education.
Of this R4.5 billion was earmarked to provide for university,
technikon and similar institutional needs. That sum in itself
meant that these institutions would have their subsidies heavily
cut during the current financial year, deepening a crisis that
has bedeviled every tertiary institution for several years. An
amount of R34.5 billion was allocated for schools. The seriousness
of this situation was underlined by a shocking feature of the
national budget. Even more taxpayers' money would be used to cover
debt.
The amount that the government would need to meet
the interest on State debt and to repay a small amount of loan
capital was nearly equal (at R39.9 billion) to the total budget
for education. To put that fact in more general terms: it showed
up in stark fashion both South Africa's utter economic subservience
to local and foreign moneylenders and the government's inability
to foster the interests of the people, and their education needs
in particular, as a first and overriding priority. There are
other claims upon the national budget. But, while this state of
affairs persists, and it will do so for many years, the promises
that may be made by education ministers will be like the proverbial
pie-crust - unless far-reaching upward changes occur in the country's
economic development. The collapse of services in health and social
welfare, the frightening deterioration in employment, housing
and the safety of citizens, the mounting theft, corruption and
bribery in public (State) and private institutions share many
of the causes of the rot in education.
So the schools are left with some R34.5 billion to
provide for their needs in the current financial year. This is
LESS than the amount spent in 1996-7. It cannot cope with the
effects of the falling purchasing power of the rand (inflation)
nor with the increasing number of children for whom provision
has to be made.
There have been repeated boasts that South Africa
allocates from its budget more than four times as much as highly
industrialised countries do to education: that is, 22+% as against
4-5%. This is regarded as a feather in this country's cap. But,
once again, such a statistic is a white lie if it is intended
to indicate generous funding of education. The economy of this
country is woefully weak. South Africa is so heavily drained by
world capitalism that nearly half the number of people who could
be economically active are fated to be unemployed. This restricts
the creation of greater wealth; it reduces the budget upon which
the government might otherwise be able to rely. There is an irreducible
amount that needs to be spent just to keep the highly discriminatory
rickety schooling system going. Even the most basic spending on
education takes up a big percentage (22+%) of what is left for
the country to carry on its own national business. That statistic
can and does mislead if it is read wrongly. The claim based upon
it by the government is a shameful damned lie.
These facts go together with the World Bank and IMF
instructions that, to reduce budget deficits and, thus debt interest,
the government must cut spending on health, education and social
welfare. It is indeed doing just this with reckless abandon. Users
of these facilities (parents, patients and the poor and needy)
have now to pay for services that once were free. We need to repeat
that those hypnotic pupil-teacher ratios of 35:1 and 40:1, for
secondary and primary schools respectively, are the invention
of the World Bank, its means of making redundant tens of thousands
of teachers even while it is a known fact that there is a drastic
shortage of schools and teachers throughout the country. Such
ratios are not the result of applying to real school situations
the experience, intelligence and insight of honest knowledgeable
educators. The education ministers who sacked teachers and cut
student-teacher numbers at the colleges between 1991 and 1993
were driven by the Bank's plans. Those plans are part of the ESAP
(the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme) put together by
the WB-IMF "firm" for this country. The government's
pseudonym for this ESAP is GEAR - it's "growth, economic
development and redistribution" programme.
The Hunter Report of 1995 showed that from 80% to
90%of an education budget is devoted to salaries of teachers and
other staff. If any "saving" was to be made that area
had to be attacked. So the education ministry embarked upon damaging
Heath Robinson-type plans to make things "work". The
same Hunter Report found that in Natal and the Eastern Cape there
was a shortage of 40 000 teachers. Yearly reports showed that
the poor performance of schools in rural and urban townships was
due partly to serious overcrowding in those schools. But the ministry's
response in 1996 (in obedience to the WB-IMF injunction to cut
costs) was to retrench 6 000 and more teachers in these provinces
and more than 10 000 in others, and to overcrowd ALL the schools
in the country. At the same time it used the clumsiest kinds
of sophistry (white lies) to create an impression that these plans
would lead to such blessings as "equity", increased
productivity and sounder value systems in education. In the very
nature of things such claims are no more than poorly disguised
fabrications. The disastrous effects of this first stage in ripping
the heart out of the 340 000 national teacher-corps are only too
evident already at this stage.
Before the ministry embarked upon its vandalising
of the schools certain teacher organisations agreed to work the
schemes in collaboration with the provincial education ministers.
The "equity" mumbo-jumbo was used to inveigle the patently
ignorant representatives of the teacher bodies into agreements
- despite the fact that recent government reports had shown that
there were some five under-subsidised schools for every one that
was supposed to be adequately provided for. There was, in fact,
no way in which equity in providing educational facilities could
be achieved by "transferring" resources from one school
to five others. The ruse was baited, however with a typical, historical
lure: a promise of increased salaries over the three years following
the disgraceful 1996 agreements. It was claimed that the retrenchments
would yield a saving of some R4.6 billion. That would fund the
promised salary increases. But for the ministry and the mercenary
teachers the scheme ran off the rails.
In the nation-wide revolt that erupted against the
Bengu staff massacre, the damage that pupils, teachers and parents
and education generally would suffer was thoroughly exposed. To
cover up the whole fraudulent scheme the ministry in its na�ve
post hoc sophistry claimed that it really meant to redeploy
the "excess" teachers slashed from "overstaffed"
schools. It would transfer them to schools in need of extra staff.
How this would "save" money was anyone's guess. But
it was the ministry's and its collaborating teachers' conviction
that it would. It is now a matter of history that more than 16
000 teachers were not only retrenched; they were barred from ever
teaching again in a State institution. A handful were redeployed.
Others, who refused to be part of this shameful operation, were
harassed, threatened with disciplinary action or had their posts
declared non-existent. What was as reprehensible was the accusation
leveled against the opponents of the Bengu-bungle that they were
"racists". In one incident, during a protest march on
Parliament by more than 20 000 people in May 1996, education officials
and teachers who were party to the bungle hurled accusations of
racism at the marchers from the balcony of a jazz club where,
presumably, the prospect of salary increases was being celebrated
in the appropriate spirit.
And now another deplorable truth has emerged. The
teacher organisations that aided and abetted the assault on education
are claiming that the R4.6 billion supposed to be "saved"
by sacking teachers was to be used to fund claims for salary increases
allegedly promised at the time of signing the infamous Clause
Resolution 3 of the 1996 ELRC agreements. Such was the nature
of the trade-off in which the parties were involved. The South
African public was given to understand that the "saving"
was to be used to move resources to "disadvantaged"
schools. In education teachers are the most costly resource. To
shift some teachers from a well-staffed to an understaffed school
in another province would not save the ministry any expense. To
do the same within a province would not reduce that education
budget. To redeploy teachers in this way might shift resources
and secure some measure of "equity" in staffing and
pupil-teacher ratios but it could not bring about "a saving"
of money. Redeployment has not been implemented on any significant
scale simply because it was not the original plan. The cry of
"redeployment" was raised as a cover-up when the disastrous
effects of retrenchments were highlighted in public protests.
The net outcome of the Bengu-bungle at the end of
1996 is that the "saving" of R4.6 billion does not exist!
Professor Bengu cannot meet the promised salary claims. Nor has
the government been able to meet the cost of all the retrenchment
packages in the provinces most affected. Bengu's teacher accomplices
now threaten to go on strike if the promises of increases over
three years are not met. Another statistic provides the final
comment on this train of shoddy intrigue and the studied betrayal
of the children of this country. The ministry has revealed that
the net saving on the retrenchment of the first 16 000 teachers
was R320 000 - not enough to pay even one more retrenchment package.
This country needs tens of thousands of extra well-qualified
teachers and hundreds of schools properly equipped and run. It
does not need the party hacks who have been allowed to fill administrative
posts for which they are manifestly ill-qualified, as a reward
for their complicity in a shameless plot. Even less does it need
quasi-educators who can be party to what has emerged as one of
the most unconscionable deals ever concluded between government
and major sectors of the organised teaching profession.
[THE EDUCATIONAL JOURNAL VOL.67 #4, OFFICIAL ORGAN
OF THE TEACHERS' LEAGUE OF SOUTH AFRICA, JUNE 1997]
EDITOR: Mrs. HN Kies, 15 Upper Bloem Street, Cape Town, 8001
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