SADTU’s Mugwena Maluleke: Education hampered by bureaucracy, resist ANAs

SADTU General Secretary Mugwena Maluleke says unions will resist the government’s intentions to go ahead with Annual National Assessments, the same way they fought against apartheid.

He says the department of education is beholden to corrupt service providers who stand to make money out the assessments at the expense of schoolchildren.

He says the education bureaucracy is South Africa’s biggest challenge to providing good quality education, and says citizens should be wary of the China/ South Africa trade deals that have been linked to education.

Mr Maluleke, good morning and thanks again for talking to us.

Good morning, sir. Good morning to your listeners and thank you for your time today.

Why is SADTU so vehemently opposed to the annual National Assessments? The Department of Education has already made the case that you can’t start a process and then stop it midway, and the postponement would not have made sense for next year because children have studied this year and next year they would be moving to their new grades.

Well, let me take this opportunity to clarify a little bit. The unions (in particular, our union – SADTU) is not against the National Assessment. What we are against is an annual national assessment that is not informing the intervention programs, which we need so desperately in our country, to improve the levels of numeracy and literacy.

We are against the annual part of it because we need the necessary resources to empower the teachers in terms of the proficiency level that we need in language, numeracy, and mathematics – something we know we have a problem with and therefore, we need to be attending to it.

Testing and after-testing, and teaching for testing is not education because there’s no particular learner is going to be disadvantaged by the fact the ANA is not going to be reaching this year because there’s no contribution in the promotion of these particular leaners.

What actually happens is that the teachers leave the syllabus and teach for ANA and after that, they’re going to switch ANA off after writing in September, and now concentrate on the syllabus – two different things in the same way. We are not against assessment.

We want it to be remodelled. There, we’re in agreement with the government that it will be remodelled and then we can write a new system next year over a period of three years or two years, to give us time.

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Why do you think Government is so adamant that it will go ahead? They’ve already insisted that they will conduct the Annual Assessments before the end of this year, that by December that would have happened with or without the unions.

There are three reasons why the Government is adamant on this particular issue. After having agreed with us and reneged on the agreement (1) is that, they’ve been under pressure by the service providers that are raking millions and millions out of the public purse in the form of about more than R300m that is spent on this particular annual testing.

(2) The fact is that the Government has now become situated when it comes to ideas. Even if something is wrong, it must be done because at the end of the day, it is a Government process.

They have this belief that once you are a Government, you must behave like a dictator and say this has to happen whether the people are going to be there or not; it is going to happen. (3) There is pressure now to say you must destroy SADTU because as you see, the City Press put it very nicely.

‘It is time that we must stand up to SADTU’, so the issue here with these three things is that it’s unfortunate because the unions have chosen a poster that says ‘let’s talk. Let’s review. Let’s remodel, and have a National Assessment’.

It was informed by the fact that we need long-term relationships with our employer and so it was our position as the union to say, it’s important that we do something that would have an impact on the teaching and learning in our country.

Not do it for formality purposes in terms of saying ‘people now like ANA. Therefore, if you don’t do ANA, people are going to ask you why you are not doing ANA’ because they are not where we are – we are at the core place of the implementation of policies. Actually, the teachers are not saying ‘remodel’. They are saying ‘do away with it’. We are saying ‘remodel’ because every leadership will need an assessment.

In an interview I had with you, you said Government was selling the country short. To quote you said, “I will not allow the country to be sold for two cents”. No, I would not have thought that education would be part of such a serious charge on your side. You said that you would fight this in the same way in which Apartheid was fought. What did you mean when you said ‘the country’s being sold’?

Firstly, the Department of Education (as I said the other time with you) imposed an issue of Mandela. They come back, they retreat, and they say ‘no, it’s not part of that’ but when you see them writing secular…coming up with pronouncements and saying it’s part of the trade, you must be afraid as a country.

Education: internationally, globally, in any forum where trade is being discussed, education is not a tradeable service because education is a public good.

It must be offered by Government. In any other trade you might find, you cannot sell the country and say ‘we are going to do your language if you give us 1/2/3. We are going to do your culture if you give us 1/2/3’.

It must not form any part of State agreement because in terms of God, in terms of the WTO, and in terms of the United Nations, education is a fundamental human right.

It is the responsibility of the Government to do that, so it can’t be tradeable. Secondly, when they came and announced on this particular Mandarin story, we were afraid because we are seated in a country, which is highly polarised, and a country that is in an extreme state of racism.

A person in KwaZulu Natal must understand the person in Venda.

We need to build that brotherhood, that sisterhood, that brethren – we need to build it – and therefore, people must understand their own culture before they can stand up independently and with independent thought and say, ‘now we understand that we are together’.

The Afrikaners did that. They fought for their own language in the 80’s and where they even formed ‘Die Regte Afrikaners’ when they were fighting for their language. That’s how they built their universities.

They understood that they needed to stand up against the Anglos who were saying that they are a lesser nation than they are. Now we are saying, with this ANA thing, we will fight it the way we fought because you must not silence labour.

The moment you silence labour…Politicians by their nature are not permanent. They are only there for five years and they can do anything within those five years, unless they have somebody who’s guarding against them.

Is it your impression therefore, that in the case of Mandarin, that the country was being sold? You have given an example but it sounds like an extreme view to me.

Yes. The country was sold because you can’t trade on education. If you want an exchange, you can have an exchange. Therefore, you don’t come and punt it and impose it and say ‘no, we are not imposing. It’s not compulsory’.

They say they have approved nine languages. Have you ever seen a single secular that talks about the Arabic language, which has been approved? Have you ever seen another secular that says ‘people are going to do it in grade two or whatever’? We are not finished. We are only seeing the Mandarin part of it. I don’t want to veer too much from the topic today.

I’m merely saying to you that this possible if you silence the people who are social, justice [inaudible 07:39] trade unions and single society. If you silence them, you are likely to have politicians being influenced by the trade that they signed, but also because of corruption in our country.

It is clear that the service providers that are administrating and capturing on ANA are highly involved in this particular corruption. That’s why people think they must even destroy SADTU, because that is an obstacle towards corruption. Therefore, I’m clear about that particular situation. That’s why we’ve instructed our lawyers that they must go and apply for disclosure of information.

Who is raking out millions in terms of ANA? We want to know how the adjudication of the tender has gone. We don’t want to run the department, but we are saying we want money.

Children are dying in Limpopo because of the [inaudible 08:3]. Children don’t have desks and we have money to pay people to run an examination, which has no impact on our education.

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Mr Maluleke, the view can be expressed though, that SADTU itself is corrupt and cannot pontificate/preach to anybody about corruption. We’ve heard of the regional representatives selling jobs for instance, in KwaZulu Natal and in some instances, reports suggest that people are being killed for their positions.

Corruption is something that we must fight, whether it’s done by SADTU or any other person. You must fight against it because corruption is stealing from the poor and therefore, we must not allow it. If there’s corruption in SADTU, you must deal with it. People must not be afraid of exposing it. That’s why we say ‘appoint people to investigate’. The Minister has appointed the Commission for an enquiry.

It says it appointed an enquiry. We stayed away from that. We said ‘do it independently when we will come and make presentation because the name of our organisation has been tarnished by these particular stories, whereas we don’t have any benefit from this particular process of selling the posts’.

People are using that in terms of the positions they occupy in the AGB’s, as principals, and whatever position, but not SADTU. However, when SADTU is corrupt, we must not be afraid of dealing with SADTU.

That’s why we’re patiently waiting for the report to say ‘yes, SADTU…this particular person has received money’. We’d fire that particular person immediately as a member of SADTU because we don’t want corruption.

There is a view that Government should stand up to SADTU, that SADTU itself is actually, the biggest problem in the country and that it is destroying education. The country spends a lot of money, probably more than similar-type countries around the world – substantially more -, but then the returns are not good, especially in the public education sector. Whenever you ask questions about the quality of education, the answer/response is SADTU is to blame. It is the one retarding the progress of South African children. If that’s the intention of the Department, many people would therefore say ‘it’s about time Government stood up to SADTU’.

Let me agree to one thing – the fact that we spend money, comparable to other countries. Let me agree to that because I cannot deny that. I’m one of the advocates for us to spend more money in education because we believe that education is for the public good.

Government must invest in education. I don’t regard education as an expense. It’s an investment for the country. We’re building the nation here, so I fully agree with that particular opinion when the people are saying it.

Secondly, let me then say that SADTU must not be silenced for raising the issues that will protect of our children, and the future of our children is the future of our country and our continent.

We must support them when they raise issues, rather than want to destroy them because we will regret the day when there’s no voice to oppose laxity and inefficiencies in Government. We must not do that.

Thirdly, it is important that I clarify the issue of the post selling and other things that we are absolutely clear that it must be investigated. It must be investigated – everyone – and we’ll do that. I’m saying it is unfortunate that when you have a Department taking a stance that says ‘you must destroy an organisation’.

Go and read Chapter 9 of the National Development Plan. It tells you the problems we have in the country.

One of the problems is not SADTU. The problems that are there are systematic. If there are system problems, we need to attend to them and not check them, because we know the problem. They said the problem is intellectual development. Four-year children must be socialised in education.

Nothing has been done about that. They said teacher development is fundamental for us to improve the skills of our teachers.

Nothing is done. We need R25m/R30m to do that so you’re saying ‘we are not serious about that’. They have indicated that the infrastructure has an influence in how you learn. It must be attended to.

It’s there in the National Development Plan. You don’t test it. You must go and implement it. Blame SADTU today. Destroy it. SADTU’s not there next week. You are not going to have libraries in the schools.

You are still not going to have the toilets that you need. You are still going to receive teachers in September who are supposed to teach Physical Science and Mathematics in our schools.

You can kill it today, but I can tell you; the mere fact that people are not service-oriented…they are concentrating the money in administration of the political system, where you have ten ministers in a country that has 53-million people. It is really, a disappointment.

How much do you spend for one ministry, just to administrate the political office of the ministry? You spend more than R400m. How on earth are you going to have money, which you are supposed to spend on other things? I’m saying ‘let them go on and think that they can kills us’.

The country will learn that we, as a civil society, as social justice activists were the only people who were able to [inaudible 13:53] apartheid and therefore, the people will not lose. They are going to fight and say ‘we must not allow for professionalism to be destroyed by a Department that has no vision at all’.

You’ve used the words ‘destroy SADTU’ numerous times. Is it your view that there is an agenda to finally, break SADTU in the country and that Government is fully intent on doing so?

Yes. We have a very strong view, which was confirmed by the City Press where it always had it. When you have a dispute between Employer and Employee, it is a dispute between the two but when you have departmental officials going to the extent of going to lobby this to them to come and crush a genuine conflict between Employee and Employer, it is the beginning of the worst corruption. You are telling the student they shouldn’t have relationships with their own teachers. They must go there, stop them, and fight with them. When you start seeing a Government going to the National Association of School Governing Body, calling them and saying ‘provide scrap labour’ when Labour has a dispute with its own Employer, you must be afraid in this particular country. We are headed to human rights abuse by our own Government, which we are putting in place that we love so much and that we’d want to support but obviously, Marx was very clear that any Government is an instrument of oppression.

Therefore, we need to be very careful that we must not have too much faith in the people that are governing us that they will stand for our rights. We must stand for our rights. You cannot have a situation where the department has a sophisticated way of ensuring that students fight their own teachers that parents are going to now, offer to right that. Its scrap labour.

It is not allowed in labour because the dispute between Labour and Employer must be resolved through dispute resolution, so you can’t bring scrap labour into our schools.

Yes. We have a very strong view, which was confirmed by the City Press where it always had it. When you have a dispute between Employer and Employee, it is a dispute between the two but when you have departmental officials going to the extent of going to lobby this to them to come and crush a genuine conflict between Employee and Employer, it is the beginning of the worst corruption. You are telling the student they shouldn’t have relationships with their own teachers.

They must go there, stop them, and fight with them. When you start seeing a Government going to the National Association of School Governing Body, calling them and saying ‘provide scrap labour’ when Labour has a dispute with its own Employer, you must be afraid in this particular country.

We are headed to human rights abuse by our own Government, which we are putting in place that we love so much and that we’d want to support but obviously, Marx was very clear that any Government is an instrument of oppression.

Therefore, we need to be very careful that we must not have too much faith in the people that are governing us that they will stand for our rights. We must stand for our rights. You cannot have a situation where the department has a sophisticated way of ensuring that students fight their own teachers that parents are going to now, offer to right that. Its scrap labour.

It is not allowed in labour because the dispute between Labour and Employer must be resolved through dispute resolution, so you can’t bring scrap labour into our schools.

Has the relationship between SADTU and Government broken down?

We don’t think it’s broken down. In fact, we are saying that we are trying to restore it. We talked to the Government. It may have been broken down at the Ministry level, but those who are our employers – being the Department of Education -, we are engaging with them.

We are saying ‘undo what the other people (in five years) have done, to destroy the relationship’. We do not want to say it has broken down. We are saying that it’s in the process of being rebuilt. Then we’re going to be robust.

We have to be brutal. We have to be frank with each other in order to build a strong relationship.

We don’t think it’s broken down. In fact, we are saying that we are trying to restore it. We talked to the Government.

It may have been broken down at the Ministry level, but those who are our employers – being the Department of Education -, we are engaging with them. We are saying ‘undo what the other people (in five years) have done, to destroy the relationship’.

We do not want to say it has broken down. We are saying that it’s in the process of being rebuilt. Then we’re going to be robust. We have to be brutal. We have to be frank with each other in order to build a strong relationship.

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Do you believe that SADTU has added any value in educating South African children? I’ll go back to my earlier question, because the view is that SADTU has actually, retarded the possibilities for many children in the country.

We have added more value, which will not be acknowledged because there’s a particular view out there, which says ‘you are to blame for any other thing that is happening, including the fact that the teacher has not been employed in the school’.

If you go into the department and ask ’why are you not employing a teacher there’, they hide behind a matchstick, hoping that they cannot be seen. You say ‘okay, fine. Why are there no toilets in Limpopo for the children’, and they say ‘SADTU’s the problem’.

‘Why was there no delivery of textbooks in Limpopo (they ended up in the river)? SADTU is the problem’. Okay, fine. It’s a blame game here, which SADTU is not going to be entertaining. The value we’ve added is more than what people may acknowledge.

Firstly, we have managed to ensure that we bring together all the departments that were separated. We have been able to ensure that share the policies in our country, despite the fact that we may not have agreed with them.

We continue to train our teachers and continue to produce the results in the rural schools. In the middle of poverty, we are still able to produce a distinction. We celebrate those particular leaners. We celebrate those particular teachers. These are the teachers of SADTU.

The teachers of SADTU are not the formal Model C School. They are in the rural areas. They are in the townships where there’s no electricity and no water. They are there, making a big difference in terms of the system that we must correct. When you have children who cannot deal with it because the outcome-based education was there, a teacher is no longer a teacher. He’s a facilitator.

The learner will only be able to speak and not write. We must correct that and bring the fundamentals of teaching into our system. It is not SADTU. We are fighting about the quality of education as well.

It’s what other people want – the quantity. Go there. Shine in the TV in January. We have achieved 80%. We don’t celebrate that. We are saying ‘there is no 80%. There’s 23% of the distinction here.

There’s 23% of people who go to university – that is what cannot be celebrated’. We must push each and every child to be able to be move vocational, and to be at your technical schools and the universities. I’m sorry to take your time, Tim.

Well, I appreciate the time you gave me, Mr Mugwena Maluleke. Thanks very much for the interview.

I really appreciate it. Thanks so much for your time.

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