By Edwin Naidu
Gauteng education MEC Matome Chiloane must feel like the Grim Reaper.
Weekly, he expresses sorrow over the death of one learner too many.
Throughout 2024, children have perished in horrific vehicle accidents and incidents of suicide, and currently six children have succumbed to suspected food poisoning.
Inevitably, Chiloane is the bearer of bad news.
The deaths of children under a democratic system, which is meant to nurture and ensure a better life for all, shows that for all the beautiful words and subscription to international conventions, it means nothing without delivery.
On Sunday, a Grade 1 learner from Karabo Primary School, who had been recovering in ICU following the tragic suspected food poisoning incident in Naledi, Soweto, a week before, died. On the same day, there was the mass funeral of the five other learners who lost their lives in the same suspected food poisoning incident.
As expected, Chiloane conveyed sympathies to the family and school community. How does one explain to these parents what happened to their children? It should not end with Chiloane.
The Bill of Rights, Section 28, outlines children’s rights, including access to food, shelter and healthcare. The child standing at the robot shows that this promise is not being honoured.
Children are entitled to be protected from abuse, neglect, maltreatment and degradation. Ongoing abuse of children, rapes and murders show failure in this regard too.
South Africa’s leaders are failing to meet the promises in the Constitution. A severe lack of accountability seems to match the corruption rot rooted in South Africa.
It does not help when the justice system allows frivolous corruption cases to be challenged for years without crooked people being put behind bars.
When the authorities find nothing wrong with a president keeping money under the mattress in contravention of exchange control regulations, one cannot believe in justice for all.
The crooked and corrupt seem to have a licence to chill with someone as ineffective at the helm as ShamilaBatohi, the National Director of Public Prosecutions. And we haven’t started on the former president’s legal shenanigans driven by everyone’s favourite blustering advocate who blows hot air but never wins cases.
Therefore, one has no faith in empty words on paper when the crooks escape without impunity while children are dying in our beloved country.
To his credit, Chiloane cannot do more than issue statements with crocodile tears. But at least he cares, shows empathy, and sometimes gets lawyers to probe incidents of wrongdoing in the schooling system. He gets things done.
But when children die, it becomes a national problem. As the custodian of all South Africans, by design, not necessarily choice, it is incumbent on President Cyril Ramaphosa to find out why children get a raw deal in South Africa. What is the government doing to honour its commitments in respect of children in the Constitution?
Under the fiery Barney Pityana and committed Jody Kollapen, the South African Human Rights Commission took steps to monitor government delivery on human rights. Unfortunately, their departure has weakened the human rights policing of government in South Africa.
With human wrongs dominating society, one would have expected the commission to visit Naledi and establish why children are dying.
It has a children’s unit, and Unicef funds its website. Still,all the feel-good stuff is public relations when the body established to support constitutional democracy does notbreak its silence when children are dying.
While the victims of crime transcend race, most children killed in taxi accidents, through food poisoning, falling into pit latrine toilets, drowning in drains, and the list can go on, are Black. What is the government doing?
One cannot help but feel that the lives of Black children do not matter.
Edwin Naidu is the Editor of Inside Education.
INSIDE EDUCATION
