Eastern Cape Education Department on the cusp of eradicating school pit latrines – finally

15 Jan 2025

The Eastern Cape has ‘100 or so’ schools with pit latrines left to fix before this sad chapter in the province’s education history can be closed.

Saying the province has “massive support” from Minister of Basic Education Siviwe Gwarube, Eastern Cape MEC for Education Fundile Gade said this week that they had only “100 or so” sanitation projects left before pit toilets at schools were eradicated.

“We started with more than a thousand [pit toilets],” he said. “We are getting massive support from the minister’s office,” he said.

Gwarube said on Tuesday that President Cyril Ramaphosa had given her department and the provincial departments until the end of the financial year on 31 March to eradicate the last of the pit toilets at schools.

“We are working around the clock,” she said. The biggest challenge was implementing agents who were not “moving at speed”.

Gwarube said implementing agents were “essentially hamstringing” the creation of safe and dignified schools and said those getting in the way of progress should not receive government work again.

“The Eastern Cape and Limpopo need our support,” she said.

Read more: Gwarube sets bold deadline for school pit toilet eradication, but progress is sluggish

Gwarube said the department was also implementing a “real-time data” project on school infrastructure to enable it to move with speed and be more responsive. For this project, she said, the department would partner with Vodacom.

Read more: Eradicating pit toilets, one click at a time – Gwarube launches Safe Schools App

Answering a parliamentary question in December, Gwarube said: “The Department of Basic Education together with the provincial education departments and implementing agents, has made significant progress under the Sanitation Appropriate for Education (Safe) Initiative, completing 3,147 sanitation projects since its inception.

“The remaining 228 projects identified for purposes of the Safe Initiative are scheduled for completion by March 2025. Delays in some projects, caused by underperforming service providers, are being addressed through contract terminations and the procurement of replacement service providers.”

She said that there were, however, pit latrines at schools that had not been identified for the Safe Initiative and these would also be “urgently replaced with suitable sanitation facilities”.

“While notable progress has been made through the Safe Initiative, the persistent issue of pit latrine toilets underscores the complexity of addressing public school infrastructure backlogs in a sector with historical underinvestment, competing budgetary demands and implementation challenges at provincial levels.

Accountability

“Accountability mechanisms will need to be strengthened to prevent systemic negligence and to ensure the safety and dignity of all learners. In this regard, I intend to review the regulations relating to Minimum Uniform Norms and Standards for Public School Infrastructure to ensure that they are clear, provide for clear oversight mechanisms and can lead to improvements in infrastructure delivery at a school level,” Gwarube’s answer continued.

“I must also highlight the recent developments announced as part of the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, which outlined the integration of multiple conditional grants, including the Education Infrastructure Grant and the School Infrastructure Backlog Grant. While this reform aims to streamline resource allocation, it reduces the ability of the DBE to directly influence infrastructure delivery at a provincial level. Consequently, provinces will play an even greater role in the implementation of public school infrastructure projects, including sanitation projects.”

The renewed push to eradicate pit latrines at Eastern Cape schools is miles removed from the subdued complaints about lack of budget to do so submitted to both the provincial legislature and the Public Protector.

Read more: Service delivery collapse: ‘Gatvol’ Eastern Cape resident reports provincial-wide failures

A year ago, Gade told the Eastern Cape Legislature that only 21 pit toilets had been removed from schools in the province in a year and that 113,041 learners were still left without appropriate sanitation.

At the time, the rate at which unsafe pit toilets were being addressed in the province showed a significant decline since 2020. In that year, pit latrines were eradicated at 147 schools; 465 schools were given appropriate sanitation in 2021; in 2022, 132 schools benefited from the programme.

Gade said 77 of the schools that still had pit latrines were in the Alfred Nzo District. With its seat in Mount Ayliff (eMaxesibeni) and bordering on KwaZulu-Natal, this district is the smallest and poorest in the province.

Other districts with high numbers of schools with pit latrines are the two OR Tambo Districts; Coastal (around Port St Johns and Coffee Bay) and Inland (around Mthatha) with 55 and 58 schools each, and the eastern part of the Amathole District (covering the central part of the province) with 56 schools.

At the time, Gade said they needed R2.5-billion to eradicate pit toilets, but had received only R1.8-billion. DM

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