By Johnathan Paoli
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in Gauteng on Friday criticised the provincial education department over “reckless and unjustifiable” irregular expenditure of R594 million linked to the procurement of mobile classrooms in the 2024/25 financial year.
In a statement, the party said the spending was flagged by the Auditor-General, which found the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) failed to comply with Construction Industry Development Board (CIDB) requirements when appointing contractors for the projects.
The EFF said the expenditure was an indication of wider governance failures, and came as public schools in the province faced severe overcrowding.
“The EFF asserts that Gauteng’s education crisis is not only the result of a lack of planning, but also of lack of political will and foresight from the ANC-led government. While hundreds of millions of rands are squandered on irregularly procured and grossly overpriced mobile classrooms, learners remain overcrowded, unplaced, and denied their constitutional right to basic education.”
According to the EFF, the department procured 905 mobile classrooms.
The party said a breakdown of the costs showed that each unit amounted to nearly R660,000 to procure and install.
It said that figure exceeded the cost of constructing a permanent brick-and-mortar classroom, and was more than three times the prevailing market rate, which it estimated to be around R100,000 per mobile unit.
“This level of overpricing raises serious concerns of maladministration, profiteering and unrepentant corruption,” the party said, adding that the funds could have been better spent on durable infrastructure that addresses long-term capacity challenges.
It said the department’s own 2024/25 annual report acknowledged a backlog of more than 2,500 classrooms across the province.
The party said that instead of addressing this structural deficit through sustainable investments, the department continued to channel “hundreds of millions of rands into temporary and inflated measures” that failed to resolve overcrowding.
The party also accused the provincial government of failing to honour political commitments.
It said that in Premier Panyaza Lesufi’s maiden State of the Province Address in 2023, he pledged that 18 new schools would be built in Gauteng.
In 2025, Lesufi conceded that only three of those schools had been completed and were fully functional, an admission the EFF said confirmed that the crisis was the result of stalled delivery rather than unforeseen circumstances.
Citing departmental figures, the EFF said that at the start of the 2025 application season, 41% of Gauteng schools were either full or oversubscribed.
Of the 857 oversubscribed schools, 579 were primary schools, meaning that the pressure on infrastructure was already entrenched at foundational learning levels.
The party said these multiple failures had fed directly into the 2026 admissions crisis, which had left 4,858 learners unplaced, mainly in densely populated urban areas.
Tshwane and Ekurhuleni were highlighted as particularly affected, with a high proportion of schools already oversubscribed during the 2025 application cycle.
The party also criticised the department’s learner placement policies, saying proposals to place learners from overcrowded no-fee schools into fee-paying public schools were ignored. Strict enforcement of feeder zone policies entrenched inequality and exacerbated overcrowding, it said.
It called for an immediate end to inflated temporary infrastructure contracts, alongside an accelerated programme to build permanent schools.
The department had not responded to the EFF’s allegations at the time of publication.
INSIDE EDUCATION
