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Thousands of pupils in more than 800 Eastern Cape schools are still forced to use unsafe pit toilets, and the provincial education department says it needs another decade to eradicate them.
In many schools, even the pit latrines are unusable, forcing pupils and teachers to use bushes when nature calls.
The cash-strapped provincial education department has revealed to the Bhisho legislature that out of the 4,958 schools in the province, 846 still have pit toilets, with just 66 earmarked for upgrades this financial year.
In a response to parliamentary questions by ANC MPL Asanda Tebekana, the department revealed it could take more than 10 years to deal with the challenge, with a sanitation backlog of R3.6bn.
One such school is Vanani Farm School near Gonubie, with more than 420 pupils and 12 teachers.
For years, the grade R to 7 school, has had only two pit toilets for pupils, and one for teachers.
Acting principal Nonzwakazi Dingana said on Thursday that the situation had reached crisis levels, with teachers and pupils sometimes forced to use bushes due to the poor and unsafe state of the toilets.
Dingana said the facilities “posed a serious risk to younger learners due to their unsuitable design, including seat sizes far too large for small children in the foundation phase”.
“We are desperate … The call for decent toilets has been our cry for decades.
“They [officials] come, take pictures and promise to come back and fix things, but nothing happens.
“It’s always on our minds that an accident relating to such pit latrine toilets could happen. We live in fear everyday,” Dingana said.
The department’s administration head, Sharon Maasdorp, told the legislature that R354m had been ring-fenced to address pit toilets in 120 provincial schools.
She said 66 of those were earmarked for upgrades in the current financial year.
The remainder were in planning stages and “earmarked for implementation for the next financial year, based on budget availability”.
“The balance of the schools will be addressed in other years, due to budgetary constraints, as it will take over 10 years to address [a] sanitation backlog amounting to R3.6bn, should the department receive an annual average of R354m for sanitation,” Maasdorp said.
Most learners and teachers prefer to use nearby bushes
Another school in a similar situation is Greyspan Primary in Cacadu (formerly Lady Frere).
Headman Andile Lwanyana told the Dispatch their toilets were dangerous.
“Most learners and teachers prefer to use nearby bushes.
“If we could, we would just close them,” Lwanyana said.
They too, had been given only promises when they pleaded for decent toilets.
Two schools in Willowvale, Ziqorana Primary and Zanozuko Primary, would even appreciate pit toilets, as both schools have no ablution facilities at all.
Ziqorana principal Nomonde Mekeni said they were afraid of being bitten by snakes in the bushes.
The South African Human Rights Commission’s (SAHRC) Dr Eileen Carter said this was a human rights violation.
“The right to a basic education, including safe and dignified school infrastructure, is not a future aspiration dependent solely on phased implementation, but an immediate constitutional obligation owed to every learner.
“It’s over 800 places of learning that we already know are not fully conducive to the safety, dignity and wellbeing of children.
“Behind that number are thousands of learners who continue to be subjected to undignified and unsafe conditions while trying to access their constitutional right to education,” Carter said.
The SAHRC in 2025 conducted a probe into the state of school sanitation facilities in the province, highlighting violations of pupils’ rights to safety, dignity and education.
Their report also drew attention to the preventable deaths of three pupils since 2018, underscoring the dangers of unsafe facilities.
While in some schools the pit latrines had been eradicated and replaced with ventilated improved pit (VIP) latrines, the SAHRC was sceptical about those developments.
“While the Sanitation Appropriate for Education [SAFE] programme has replaced many traditional pit toilets, these replacements are frequently noncompliant with critical design and safety standards.
“This oversight has resulted in VIPs posing risks similar to the facilities they were meant to replace,” the report states.
The legislature’s education portfolio committee chair and ANC MPL, Monde Sondaba, said his committee worked with the SAHRC and the issue of sanitation facilities was a standing agenda item at their quarterly meetings with the department.
DA MPL Horatio Hendricks said the response confirmed that “unsafe and undignified sanitation remains one of the clearest signs of failure in Eastern Cape schools”.
“This crisis has already cost young lives and continues to endanger the health and dignity of learners,” Hendricks said.
“Safe sanitation is not an optional infrastructure upgrade. It is a basic condition for learner safety, health and dignity.”
EFF MPL Simthembile Madikizela said: “The responses provided by the HOD are neither convincing nor inspiring confidence among communities, parents and learners.”
Daily Dispatch
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