After storms and fires, a Mpumalanga school is left in ruins. Learners at the school have not been in class for months and parents are desperate.
Hluvukani Primary School in Xanthia village in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga has been inconducive to teaching and learning for five months. The school saw three disasters: two storms and mobile classrooms being set alight.
In 2012, a storm destroyed a roof and in 2015 and this year, mobile classrooms were lit on fire. The department then said they would relocate learners to a nearby school but this has not happened.
Those mobile classrooms were supposed to provide relief from the damage done by storms with the department saying that huge infrastructure issues persist. The department currently has no plan to rebuild the school.
Learners have been pleading for learning to continue but with roofs and classrooms damaged, it’s not possible. Instead, learners come to school and are left to play. One learner said:
If you can open the school, I would be really really happy. I want the government to help us, to rebuild our school and help us get back to our class.
A parent said, “It really hurts to see our children at home doing nothing. Now, they can’t read or write anymore. We tried to register them at those schools but the School Governing Body has refused to take our children.”
The other problem is that the alternative schools are far and parents do not have money for transport.
Since the department cannot afford to replace the classrooms, they have been urging parents to register their children at other schools and if there are enough registrations, they would apply for scholar transport. However, only 14 learners registered.
Because we don’t have any classrooms, we are pleading with the department to ask the teachers to teach our children even under trees because the teachers come to school, they sit outside the yard, they attend, they leave.
The department is now calling on parents to speed up processes to register their children so that learners don’t miss out on too much teaching and learning.