Chairperson, hon Minister and hon members, I would like to confine my debate to the Adult Basic Education and Training Bill. The concept ``adult basic education'' emanated at the time when Fidel Castro took over Cuba from the Cuban leader Batista. Immediately his rule had begun, Fidel Castro made it a point to stop education in schools for a period of two full years. During that time when schooling was stopped - not education, but schools - the Cubans embarked on a campaign of the education and training of adults. After two years a 92-year old woman was able to read and write, and she was able to read the Bible. So the notion that it is never too late to learn comes a very long way.
Section 29 of the Constitution of South Africa provides that everyone has the right to basic education, including adult basic education. We are here today to give effect to this constitutional right so as to provide optimal opportunities for adult learning and literacy.
The main objects of the Bill are to ensure the viability of adult learning centres at educational institutions and to eradicate illiteracy by restoring the dignity and privacy of individuals. This Bill is going to assist especially women in the Northern Province to be able to enter into correspondence on their own, without involving a third person. When a woman in the Northern Province has to write a letter to her husband who is working in Gauteng, she has to ask a small boy to come and write the letter for her. So how does one express oneself when writing to one's beloved when one has to do it through a third person? We hope that this Bill is really going to assist us in that regard.
The second object is that of empowering millions of women who are victims of colonial oppression, affording them the opportunity to embark on economic development in a changing situation. The third object of this Bill is to ensure that there is equality between the oppressed and the oppressors.
When I talk about this, I am reminded of the situation during the era of Jan van Riebeeck, when most people were illiterate. A labourer would be sent to a farm over the mountain bearing a note. The note would not be sealed and would be carried on a wooden stick. The note would say: ``Beat him very hard''. The poor labourer would run to Piet Hoender's farm on the other side of the mountain to deliver the note and he would be beaten, after which he would run back to where he had come from. If he went somewhere else, he had a stamp on his back, and then whoever saw him would check the stamp and say, this is Piet Hoender's labourer and then he would be beaten again. So illiteracy has contributed negatively to the wellbeing of our people. [Interjections.]
There has been an intensive process of research and consultation which proved that an enormous number of adult people do not have basic education. This resulted in the initiation of policies by the Minister, including the Interim Guidelines for Adult Basic Education and Training Provisioning, 1995, in order to establish public learning centres and for the registration of private adult learning centres.
This Bill before us places an obligation on the heads of provincial departments of education to provide facilities for the use of public centres to perform their functions. If no facilities are available, the head of department, in terms of section 20(1)(k) of the South African Schools Act, Act 84 of 1996, should request the governing body of a public school to allow the reasonable use of facilities of the school by the public centre.
Kutani a ku na ku vula leswaku lavakulu a va nga dyondzi hikuva a ku na ndhawu leyi sweswi yi nga riki na xikolo. Ndhawu yin'wana ni yin'wana yi na xikolo. (Translation of Tsonga paragraph follows.)
[Now no one can say that adults cannot learn, because there is no place without a school at present. Each and every place has a school.]
In a case such as mentioned above, where the public centre uses school facilities to perform its functions, a representative of the school governing body and a member of the staff in question may be co-opted by the governing body of the public centre, but without voting rights.
The governing body holds a fiduciary duty towards the public centre and the management of a public centre must be undertaken by the centre manager, under the authority of the head of department.
In order to ensure access to adult basic education and training in the workplace by persons who have been marginalised in the past, such as women, the disabled and the disadvantaged, a joint effort by the skills development strategy and the Department of Labour will be put in place. The women in the Northern Province, though most of them illiterate, are able to vote. They are able to identify the ANC emblem and make their mark next to it. I hope most members would really like to go home. Let me not expand a lot. [Applause.]