Deputy Chairperson, allow me to welcome the statement by the Deputy Minister and express the full support of the Northern Cape delegation for the intervention invoked by the Minister of Basic Education to address the challenges facing the Eastern Cape department of education.
We express our support for the statement and intervention because we are aware that our nation has a formidable task to use education to afford our people a chance to change their lives for the better.
As the National Council of Provinces, we would like to say that we were aware and indeed concerned that the conditions facing the department of education in the Eastern Cape were steadily worsening and becoming unbearable for many learners who had to endure the harsh conditions of dilapidated and unsafe structures; the difficulty of walking hundreds of kilometres to schools; and the sad reality of enduring the day without anything to eat.
Allow me to borrow words of wisdom from the great son of Africa and stalwart of our people, Isithwalandwe Nelson Mandela, who said:
Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor; that a son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine; that a child of a farmworker can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.
The great words of our former President bear testimony to our commitment and move decisively to break all barriers to ensure that our nation has an effective and efficient education system. They give expression to our historic resolve to use education to empower our people to break the umbilical cord of the repressive conditions fuelled by our divided past.
When the architects of our democracy wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution, they made a formidable declaration by giving our people a promissory note that assured them about our alienable right to education. We made this promise conscious of the fact that our education system suffered most under the repressive and discriminatory apartheid system. The lack of proper education facilities and resources along with apartheid's devastating effect on our social fabric had created a crisis in education and training of immerse proportions.
We welcome the statement and intervention by the Minister. [Time expired.] [Applause.]