It will take the Eastern Cape education department 37 years to ensure all schools in the province meet the basic infrastructure and equipment standards.
This was revealed by education MEC Fundile Gade, who told a media briefing in East London that the provincial government’s plans to eradicate the infrastructure backlog in all its schools by 2030 was almost impossible to achieve.
The province, which has budgeted R1.9bn for school infrastructure this financial year, would need a staggering R14bn a year, for the next five years, to achieve the target.
The ambitious plans were part of the Eastern Cape’s Vision 2030 Development Plan, set more than a decade ago.
The National Development Plan (NDP) was presented to the nation in 2011, and in 2014, the provincial government, led by then premier Phumulo Masualle, appointed the Eastern Cape Planning Commission to facilitate and develop a provincial development plan that would focus on the province’s challenges.
The goal, among many others, was to address the deficiencies in rural regions which were left underdeveloped during the apartheid era, with the eradication of poor infrastructure being one of the pillars.
In 2020, the province had a school infrastructure backlog of R82bn, a figure now sitting at R72bn.
In response to this, Gade said, the provincial government had to reduce the number of state schools from 5,285 to 4,976 as part of the department’s rationalisation programme.
Year after year, the department claims it needs billions to address the school infrastructure backlog, yet it continues to underspend and return hundreds of millions to the National Treasury
He said officials had looked at the schooling landscape and which schools were likely to not exist in the next three years due to the outward migration of people from villages to semi-urban and urban areas.
“We realised that while we are handing over new schools on the other side, there is a problem that we have.
“They may not be mud schools in terms of the classification, but equally they are inappropriate. That’s why we then bring back the issue of the R1m-per-school beautification programme, so that you can take a sizeable number of schools that must be beautified per year.”
One of the schools earmarked for the beautification programme is Healdtown in KwaMaqoma, which celebrated its 170th anniversary on Friday.
Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane told the Dispatch his government was worried about not meeting the 2030 deadline.
“It talks to the issue of planning based on logic and planning based on empirical evidence. So we must go back to the drawing board and assess how have we been performing.
“We’ve performed exceptionally in the last six terms, building 100 schools a year, something that we’ve never achieved before. That shows that the system is maturing, we are gaining momentum ...
“Yes, 2030 vision is bigger. It’s a country that we are envisaging. Remember we are in a revolution of building a united, nonracial, non-sexist, democratic and prosperous SA that we are not going to achieve over 30 years.
“It’s damage that has been caused over 100 years.”
According to a 2023 report by NPO Equal Education, of the 3,677 state schools in SA with inappropriate infrastructure and in dire need of an upgrade, 1,538 were in the Eastern Cape.
The report investigated how school infrastructure affected teaching and learning, 10 years after the national basic education department adopted the legally binding norms and standards for school infrastructure.
Built in 1988 by the community, Nondwe Senior Secondary School in Dadamba, Willowvale, is one of the many Eastern Cape schools in desperate need of intervention.
The walls have cracked, with paint peeling off, roofs leak and the school community and villagers have to improvise to ensure teaching and learning continues without interruption.
Despite numerous promises from officials, the school has not received significant improvements, leading to concerns being raised about the learning environment.
After many years of promises, it was only towards the end of 2024 that a block of five prefab buildings arrived at the school after a visit by the Bhisho legislature education portfolio committee.
School principal Zolani Dinwa said the prefab classrooms came without any furniture.
“We have to go around begging. We are nothing but a charity case.”
Dinwa said temporary classrooms built by the community 36 years ago were no longer safe and he feared the rundown buildings could collapse.
“You cannot have such unsafe infrastructure for almost four decades — it cannot be.”
The school, named after AmaXhosa Queen Nondwe Sigcawu, has 560 pupils from grades 8 to 12 and last year achieved a 72% matric pass rate, an increase from the 63% of the previous year.
“All we need is to have a proper school,” Dinwa said.
Educators Union of SA general secretary Siphiwe Mpungose said the union was disappointed about how long it had taken the government to eradicate the backlog.
“This shows that the government talks left yet moves on the right. You might know that this is not the first target it will miss.
“They have missed all previous targets for the backlog, and what is confusing is that each and every year the money is being allocated, yet nothing shows.”
EFF MPL Simthembile Madikizela said at play in the provincial education department was “not a crisis of resources but a crisis of governance, planning, and accountability”.
“Year after year, the department claims it needs billions to address the school infrastructure backlog, yet it continues to underspend and return hundreds of millions to the National Treasury.
“This contradiction exposes a deliberate lack of urgency and a culture of misleading the public.”
During the 2021/2022 financial year, the department forfeited R205m in education infrastructure grant funds due to its failure to implement projects.
The next year, it again returned more than R100m it had failed to spend.
“Instead of tangible action, we see inflated tenders, ghost schools, delays in contractor appointments, and budget rollovers — all while learners sit in overcrowded mud classrooms and teachers work in inhumane conditions,” Madikizela said.
Daily Dispatch
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