Children walk through floodwaters after heavy rain in the town of Parys in Orange Free state, South Africa on February 19, 2023. Flooding affected schools in rural and urban areas. (Photo by Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
HHeavy rains recently affected parts of South Africa, but not enough attention has been paid to the effects of flooding in public schools in townships and rural areas in South Africa.
The floods have damaged school infrastructure and disrupted educational services for students in disadvantaged areas. Without a functioning school, there can be no class time, which means that the educational, cultural and socio-political importance of the school is lost.
There is no sign that the government has a long-term plan for disaster management, maintaining public schools, building durable school infrastructure and safe locations to continue teaching, if the infrastructure is damaged. Unpreparedness and lack of urgency on the part of the government during this crisis shows that it does not see the importance of schools in the black community.
Unprepared, the government took short-term measures to help the victims, such as food packages, temporary shelters and container classrooms.
Some politicians take advantage of this because it provides an opportunity for their own personal gain. Tender accumulation is selfish and short-sighted and is supported by a culture of consumption. People are trying to make a profit by sacrificing poor children who are desperate to go to school.
It cannot be denied that the local government has tried to help people by organizing teams to evacuate the affected people. But the flood has revealed something profound about our town and city planning. Inadequate drainage systems mean (among other things) poor town and city planning. In some cases, the fault is a malfunctioning valve, which is meant to be purchased and maintained by the government, to avoid problems during storms.
American environmentalist Professor Wonmin Sohn wrote in a 2020 study that a well-designed drainage system can prevent major damage to urban infrastructure and private property, even in severe disasters. This shows the weakness of local government in South Africa. The destruction of public infrastructure, and the destruction of the local economy, cannot be considered as an unwanted natural phenomenon, but must be considered as a local government neglecting public duties.
On February 13, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a state of national disaster to provide an intensive response to the widespread flooding. But the solution provided by the government is only temporary, which shows a lack of urgency. From these responses, we will assume that we are living in an age where there is no way to monitor the weather so that safety measures can be taken before a disaster.
We cannot be blind to the fact that the lowest-lying areas are the worst hit by floods. This often means that suburban and urban homeowners bear the brunt. This brings us back to the effects of apartheid with its mission to put black people far away from areas they considered safe. One cannot ignore the historical fact that the apartheid planning of the city has caused black people to live in the suburbs and vulnerable to floods. This did not change after 1994.
Furthermore, while schools in privileged areas in cities and towns continued smoothly at the beginning of the year, this was not the case in some schools in rural and urban areas.
Students and teachers in cities and rural areas have to deal with muddy, almost non-existent apartheid-era roads that collapse during floods, making it impossible for them to go to school. Water damage to classrooms meant no furniture and missing books and stationery, as well as school records.
These are schools that have been waiting to get electricity from the government since 1994. Many do not have the means to back up their records electronically or the resources to conduct online classes to ensure students do not fall behind.
Rebuilding schools tends to be slow due to poor relations between education departments and local governments, and disaster management is sometimes not aligned with the urgency of protecting schools from natural disasters or rebuilding them if damaged.
All of these are signs of a country that does not have a long-term awareness of the value of education for the future of our country.
The government keeps normalizing the provision of containers disguised as classrooms for study and learning instead of building durable infrastructure.
Our public schools need a permanent and more sustainable solution to this life-threatening situation. Long-term, sustainable and strategic interventions should be implemented by the government to avoid or reduce the effects of floods in schools. The community has a responsibility to monitor these steps and ensure that they are completed.
Oyisa Sondlo is a sociology PhD candidate at the University of the Free State.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official policy or position Mail & Guardians.