House Chairperson, fellow South Africans, spaces of learning have turned into spaces of tragedy and trauma. According to the Police Minister, 22 learners lost their lives last year across the country. These incidences happened inside school premises where they are supposed to be learning and safe. The DA believes that national government should understand that our first responsibility is to care for our children, and if we fail at this, we fail at everything.
Government must be the first to meet its obligations followed by parents and communities, only then we will succeed. We have to accede that resources at schools are not only necessary, but crucial. We need to have adequate funding, not R7,1 million per year
that the Department of Basic Education allocates to promote social cohesion, safety and implementation of school sport. Because at the end of the day, one cannot stop to wonder what if the learners we lost were exposed to schools with adequate resources like libraries, decent school grounds, teachers who are supported, after school activities, communities that are neighbourly - maybe their lives could have been saved.
As South Africans we cannot be deaf to the fact that the legacy of apartheid, with parents leaving their children at school and working far from their families as migrants, destroyed the family structure. The socioeconomic issues which we face like poverty, unemployment and inequality equally put further strain on the family structure. The family structure plays an important role in building character and produce responsible citizens.
Fellow members, child-headed houses cannot be a normal phenomenon. Single parents having to juggle between two to three jobs, leaving home early and coming back late at night, whilst having no choice but to leave the children to fend themselves, cannot be a normal phenomenon because in the end, who does the parenting? Who disciplines? Whom do these children account to? Where is the government which is supposed to intervene? We need social workers;
we need psychologist to assist such families, including the communities and, Ntate Meshoe, churches as well. Government cannot hide behind the excuse of a lack of funds but continue to bailout state-owned enterprises, SOEs, year after year.
Without involvement of parents, the streets and gangs become "parents". As we all know, streets are a petri dish for violence. Children will often see violence and emulate it, and this results in it spilling into the school environment. We need to understand the root causes of violence and not only focus on the side effects. We need social workers and psychologists in our schools to identify these root causes before they become problems.
The difference between a child who goes to school in the township and those who attend fee-paying schools, is that one has more opportunities that the other - an opportunity to become a professional rugby player like Siya Kolisi; an opportunity to be a university graduate or skilled professional who can find work easily or an opportunity to be an entrepreneur. Access to such opportunities is often not afforded to learners in township schools. The majority of township learners attend dysfunctional schools in an environment located in a sea of poverty, with little prospects for a
better future, unless you are born a genius or extremely hardworking, you stand almost no chance to escape poverty.
On the other hand, the reason behind learners at fee-paying schools becoming successful is not necessarily that they are geniuses or more hardworking than their peers at non-fee paying schools. It is because they generally have stronger family structures, receive support from their teachers, have after school tutors and many after school activities and fewer children in classroom. These are the building blocks to a better future and that keep them out of streets and out of trouble - which means that even until today, after 25 years of democracy, the side of the city you are born in and your parent's bank balance still determines whether you will finish school alive. And if you do finish school alive, you will continue to live in poverty with no prospects for generations to come, and you may become successful, which many times is very rare.
We can say that without a shadow of a doubt that this government continues to perpetuate inequality with inadequate funding and budget cuts, which means that in township schools change and better prospects will always remain just a dream. What is also disappointing is that the President paid no attention to school violence in both his state of the nation address speeches this year,
which means that the ANC government shows no interest in the safety of our learners and does not believe it is a crisis.
We need pre-emptive and preventive measures. As the DA, we come here to also give insights in what could actually work. We are saying that we need Safe Schools' Call Centres in all provinces, because that is what we have in the Western Cape - and it works and the learners are utilising it. We need support for after-school programmes to keep learners occupied, safe and socially engaged, as we are doing with the Western Cape, what we call Game Changer Initiative. We need serious collaboration across departments. The departments of Justice, Health, Social Development and the SAPS must come on board.