Trying to map the progress, or lack thereof, of the Eastern Cape government’s undertakings to “eradicate” the dangerous pit toilet system still prevalent at so many of this province’s government schools is an impossible task.
It’s a moving target and every time anyone in government opens their mouth a different figure comes out.
What we do know is that the National Development Plan’s 2025 deadline to eradicate all pit toilets at SA schools has come and gone. But in this province in particular, children are still suffering, and some even dying, as a result of unsafe and unsanitary school ablution blocks.
There are so many acronyms for so many programmes supposedly aimed at addressing unsafe infrastructure at government schools that the head spins.
The two most important, when it comes to sanitation seem to be the Sanitation Appropriate for Education (SAFE) initiative, and the Accelerated Schools Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI). Trying to haul out any meaningful statistics from these two programmes would defeat even the most talented research fellow.
If one just takes into consideration government statements over the past year on the issue, the mind is already boggled.
Fake figures and paper promises fool no one
Basic education minister, Siviwe Gwarube, excitedly announced in April 2025 that under her stewardship the SAFE initiative had ensured that 96% of pit toilets across the entire country had been eradicated. This included the Eastern Cape where 93.3% of pit toilets had been eradicated.
She said that out of the 1,439 schools that had been identified in 2018 as having pit toilets, 1,343 had received upgraded and safe sanitation infrastructure. So as of April last year, according to the minister, there were only 96 schools left in the Eastern cape with pit toilets.
Alas, in the 10 months between her proud pronouncement and premier Oscar Mabuyane’s February 2026 state of the province address, the number of schools that still had pit toilets had inexplicably shot up to 427.
But, said Mabuyane, never fear, his government intended upgrading the sanitation at 300 of these schools by the end of financial year leaving just 127 schools suffering the indignity of pit latrines.
Just three months later, the provincial education department this week told the legislature that 846 out of the 4958 schools in the province (17%) still had pit latrines. So, in just over a year, the Eastern Cape went from 96 schools (Gwarube’s figure) to 427 (Mabuyane’s figure) to 846 (education administration head Sharon Maasdorp).
And according to Maasdorp only 66 — not 300 as promised by Mabuyane — would be upgraded in the current financial year. She conceded that — at this snail pace — it would take another decade to eradicate pit toilets.
Something doesn’t add up. It is time the department properly audited school infrastructure and came up with an appropriate plan to urgently address identified backlogs. And the legislature needs to jack up its oversight to prevent such arbitrary and nonsensical figures being bandied about.
Fake figures and paper promises fool no one.
Daily Dispatch
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