“Because of the state of these facilities and because there are no other toilets on the premises, the children have to go to the bush whenever they need to relieve themselves”
Zintle Dawedi
Osborn department head
Osborn High School
A cold wind whistled through the grade 11 classroom at Osborn Senior Secondary School. Not because someone forgot to close the windows, but because there were no windows. In fact, there was no door either, no desks, no chairs and most of the ceiling was missing.
Pieces of ceiling lay on the floor in chunks.
The school is a far cry from what it was when Nelson Mandela arrived with what was then Iscor, that had donated R3-million, to open the school in 2000.
The scene - the same in almost every classroom of the high school built among the rolling hills of Mount Frere - is a poor reminder of the legacy of education Mandela left behind.
But the broken floors and windows are not the school’s head of department Zintle Dawedi’s main concern. It is the complete lack of toilets and running water. The unbearable stench of sewage that confronts anyone approaching the schools is evidence of this.
“Because of the state of these facilities and because there are no other toilets on the premises, the children have to go to the bush whenever they need to relieve themselves,” Dawedi said.
None of the toilets were working, they had no water and were filled with faeces and rubbish. In the boys’ bathroom a urinal and a basin were broken off the wall and in the girls’ bathroom the floors and parts of the walls were covered in faeces.On the outside the walls were badly cracked and the cement floors inside the classes were so badly damaged tables and chairs were unstable.
Dawedi said they were still waiting for assistance from the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the custodians of Mandela’s legacy.
“They were here in 2012 but only to look around and inspect if we needed anything. But since then they never came back. The school is really struggling, it is in bad condition.”
Grade 12 pupils writing their final exams were also concerned, saying that teachers blamed the state of the schools on their inability to study.
“Many of us want to study late into the night at school, but because there is no electricity we cannot study as much as we would like,” said Sinethemba Ntondini, 19, of grade 12.
Lebo Mokete, corporate affairs manager of steel company ArcelorMittal, previously Iscor, said requests are received to contribute towards improvement of facilities such as schools: “In this instance the school was handed over to the Eastern Cape Department of Education.We ArcelorMittal South Africa is not involved in the management of schools.” – Mkhululi Ndamase and Riaan Marais