SA’s constitution places a positive duty on the state to respect, protect, promote and fulfill the rights of vulnerable groups, especially children.
These include the rights to basic nutrition, shelter, and healthcare.
It also includes what the courts have described as the “immediately realisable” right to a basic education.
The courts, including the constitutional court, have also repeatedly pronounced on several things the provincial education department has to do to achieve this immediately realisable right such as the immediate provision of decent learning school environments, consistent supplies of textbooks and other learning materials, essential nutrition and, of course, school transport.
As one judge so succinctly put it: if children cannot get to school in the first place, how will they access a basic education?
In December 2024, the high court in Makhanda handed down the definitive judgment on scholar transport which ruled that failure to provide scholar transport to all pupils “in the Eastern Cape who qualify” was unconstitutional.
At that time, the department said that while it recognised that not having enough funding was not a defence to an immediately realisable right, it was battling to pay for scholar transport for over one-third of the 115,000 children that qualified.
The collapse in scholar transport has happened every year for more than a decade in this province
The court had no choice in the face of this admission but to order it to find a way to provide scholar transport for all pupil who qualified to avoid the inevitable annual “desperate, often dangerous and inequitable situation” so many children faced.
So it was with some shock that at the beginning of this financial year, the department of transport once again budgeted for a steep deficit and admitted it did not have the funds to transport 40,000 qualifying pupils
Even with this admission, it seems utterly obscene that the government is not yet one month into its financial year and scholar transport operators have withdrawn their services due to non-payment, going back months.
More than 12,000 children in BCM alone did not make it to school last week causing more loss of valuable learning time which must now be caught up. And the second school term has barely begun.
The collapse in scholar transport has happened every year for more than a decade in this province.
It seems to demonstrate a contempt of the constitution that our leaders in parliament and the provincial legislature are sworn to uphold.
Government and its officials often rally around the phrase “no child left behind”. But, in the Eastern Cape, the predictable annual failure to transport tens of thousands of children to school, as required by our constitution and the courts, means almost every child is left behind.
It is just not good enough.
Daily Dispatch
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.