Hunger in schools is real and ought to be acknowledged as such through action and deed.
School principals should never be allowed to reverse the gains the government has made over the years through the national school nutrition programme (NSNP).
According to a Stats SA report (2015) on hunger at schools, the Eastern Cape is among the three poorest provinces getting the huge chunk of the NSNP programme. This was a deliberate intervention.
It is therefore surprising that in the Eastern Cape where there are sky-high reports of hunger, a school principal would allegedly embezzle school nutrition funds to feed his appetite for fast food and expensive liquor.
As if that is not enough, our children’s money is allegedly spent on habitual eating at upmarket restaurants or eateries.
Disturbing media reports, as well as subsequent pictures on social media, alleged recently that the school principal at Ulwazi High School in Mdantsane has embezzled close to R1m of the school nutrition programme funds.
He is alleged to have bought nice things he did not need.
Shockingly, the principal would agree to being photographed as though he were on some million-rand eating competition.
They may not have bought the fast foods referred to in the media, but the money was allegedly misused. This is concerning on so many levels. This is wrong.
A few kilometres from Ulwazi, to the northeast, the select committee on education which I chair was receiving some scary reports from the auditor-general.
Ironically, the AG had revealed that four school principals had been placed on suspension for similar alleged transgressions.
The full complement of my committee had descended on the Eastern Cape to understand precisely how these challenges manifest in the province, and why there seems to be uneasiness when it comes to holding people to account.
The AG informed the committee that the Eastern Cape was a province that struggled with reporting on project performance.
The infrastructure programme, for example, has used its entire budget with only 10% performance of the programme.
In simple language, this means the money was used but the things it was meant to build are not there.
More worryingly, this means no work will be undertaken in Eastern Cape government schools until next year.
And it has only been about six months into the financial year, only God knows what the backlog would be when some cash finally flows into the infrastructure projects account.
The committee will neither tolerate nor accept this state of affairs.
The provincial department needs to ensure that the allegations are followed up thoroughly and that those involved are held to account in all of this mismanagement of money.
On our visit, hunger and infrastructure stories were harrowing.
At Matomela High School in the Amathole West District, the committee learnt that many pupils came from child-headed households.
The school’s Luyanda Bavuma said the school nutrition programme plugged those gaps — though not entirely.
Bavuma informed the committee that, as a strategy, the school gave leftovers and some packs for pupils to take home.
The challenge, he said, was that pupils were shy taking those packs as others made fun of them.
At Bodiam Primary School, the newly built toilets have sunk, forcing teachers and pupils to reopen the old toilets that were previously shut down as they were deemed unfit for use.
In Gqeberha, the less said about Greenville Primary School in Bethelsdorp the better.
The school is dilapidated and should not be allowed to operate.
I am citing these examples to illustrate that eating fast food should not happen when hunger and infrastructural challenges are as massive as reflected in those schools.
Parliament supports department budgets during appropriations, a process otherwise referred to as budget votes, never with fast food and alcohol in mind, but a poor black child whose parents invariably cannot afford a decent meal.
And some parents are no longer with us to fend for their children.
The AG informed the committee that it was becoming a habit not only for principals to embezzle funds, but some officials, who have entered into debt acknowledgement for money they were not entitled to within the department.
That debate we will have some other day, but the issue is schools.
We will not allow government interventions in that province to be frustrated by the same government officials who are meant to implement them — at huge salary costs.
A thinking school manager would resist any temptation to deviate money from the same people he gets paid to ensure are fed and taken good care of while in his care.
Before any principal is allowed access to the next million he/she should perhaps familiarise him/herself firstly, with the issues affecting the community his/her school is located in and, secondly, the motivation for which the school nutrition programme was introduced.
Greed and betrayal brought about by selfishness have come to characterise deterioration among school leadership in the townships.
Schools are required to have a senior management team, school governing body and the provincial structure which all can, and should, detect when financial transgressions occur.
It has come to characterise the failure of school governance.
Principals sometimes act as they please knowing that there will not be any consequences or accountability.
The committee I chair will follow this story to completion with hawk eyes.
Makhi Feni is the chair of the select committee on education, sciences and the creative industries in the National Council of Provinces.
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