The Star reports that a war of words erupted between the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the SA Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) following last week’s release of the 2016 matric results.
The DA launched a scathing attack on Sadtu for poor performances in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). The party’s basic education spokesperson Gavin Davies said: “It is no coincidence that the worst-performing provinces in matric 2016 were those where Sadtu is most dominant. The provincial education departments in the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal were all found by the ministerial task team in its ‘jobs for cash’ report to have been captured by Sadtu.” Sadtu general secretary Mugwena Maluleke rejected Davies’s views as those of an “arrogant white supremacist racist” who does not want to acknowledge the brutal legacy of apartheid in the provinces concerned. On the “jobs for cash” allegations, Maluleke was firm that none of them had been proved in a court of law. Professor Elias Mathipe of Unisa’s department of education said the DA was correct in raising issues of corruption, but should not blame Sadtu for some of the poor performances found in the three provinces as 2016 had been a peaceful schooling year “where Sadtu members did not disrupt learning like it was done in the past.”
- Read this report by Khaya Koko in full in The Star of 6 January 2017
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page