Mthandeni Dlungwane is the new broom at the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education, writes Sihle Mlambo.
Durban - It is hard to ignore the missing portraits of the new Education MEC at his Pietermaritzburg head office.
Of course, Mthandeni Dlungwane is barely a week into his unenviable task at the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education.
So, perhaps, his face won’t grace these walls for some time.
At the age of 40, Dlungwane has taken over the responsibility of heading the province’s biggest department, with a R45bn budget this financial year.
He is expected to hit the ground running, and even though he has taken over mid-year, he will still be responsible for whatever the pupils produce at the end of this year.
He is steering a department in crisis, marred by school violence, a crippling wage bill and consecutive years of a decline in the matric results.
But the missing faces - which include that of Premier Willies Mchunu - on those Burger Street walls are significant: a fortnight ago on the same walls one would have seen axed premier Senzo Mchunu and a week ago, you would have spotted recalled Education MEC Peggy Nkonyeni.
Both are in the political wilderness for now.
The faces of President Jacob Zuma, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga are lined up on the walls - missing and represented by small white hooks on the walls, are Mchunu and Dlungwane.
They are now stacked in a room in the same offices with portraits of many former members of the executive - including former deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe.
It is protocol that the portraits come down upon the departure from office, but the dumped faces on those walls mark a change in the political guard in KwaZulu-Natal.
Dlungwane, in many rights, represents the loud calls of the ANC Youth League in the province, who, after ushering ANC chairman Sihle Zikalala to victory at the ANC elective conference last year, demanded 40% representation in the provincial executive.
After last week’s recall, this has easily and perhaps unsurprisingly been achieved, with the entry of Zikalala as Economic Development and Tourism MEC, Dlungwane as Education MEC, Mxolisi Kaunda as Transport and Community Safety MEC and Bongi Sithole-Moloi as Arts and Culture MEC.
All four new entrants to the executive are former ANCYL leaders.
It’s just a little more than a week into Dlungwane’s reign when we meet him, a day before the politically significant Youth Day commemorations.
Besides his youthful appearance, he looks the part of his new responsibilities. He is dressed in a well-tailored slim-fit suit and sports a striped shirt with blue red and white tie.
Dlungwane is a former chairman of the ANC Youth League in KwaZulu-Natal. In 2011, under his leadership, the ANCYL - then led by the firebrand Julius Malema - was disbanded by the national structure.
Dlungwane had broken ranks with his political seniors in the ANCYL, choosing to support Zuma at the ANC’s elective conference in Mangaung instead of Motlanthe, whom the youth league had endorsed as the next president of the ANC.
Dlungwane defied the national leadership, publicly, saying the ANCYL was not disbanded. He became largely seen as a vehicle for #TeamZuma.
With his ANCYL leadership stripped by Malema and co, Dlungwane would later be sworn in as a member of the provincial legislature in September 2011, later serving as chairman of the portfolio committee of Arts and Culture, then as a member of the Education portfolio committee.
Politically, he held firm within the ANC, serving as branch chairman at his home ward for nearly a decade between 2001-2010 and as regional chairman in the Musa Dladla (Pietermaritzburg) region since last year. He is also an ANC KZN provincial executive committee member.
But who is the man behind the title and what informs his politics?
He was born in January 1976 at his rural home eNqabeni, KwaNxamalala, and is proud of his birthmark on his temple.
He considers himself an “ordinary rural person” and prides himself on his ability to mobilise for the ANC in the rural areas.
“My father was a bus driver and my mother, MaZuma, worked as a domestic worker, so I come from very humble beginnings. I used to walk to school, I herded cows, hunted, swam in the river and tilled the soil, I am an ordinary person from the rural area, I did everything that young boys did in the rural areas,” he said.
He would work the soil before going to school and speaks passionately about rural life, crediting political mentor, Thobani Zuma, for mentoring him as a mobiliser of rural politics.
“He is the one that taught me and mentored me in rural mobilisation; for me that kind of work was very important, in places where people were scared. We really worked so hard in that respect,” he says.
But it was his late father, Nduku, a Cosatu and UDF member, who inspired him at the age of 14 to get into politics.
“My father was a member of Cosatu and was a part of the UDF operations in our area.
“I was convinced that the cause that they were following was the correct cause. He was the one that recruited me to the politics of the ANC and he had a heavy influence on me,” he said.
Dlungwane holds a University of Natal (now UKZN) Master’s degree in social sciences, with a focus on development studies and town planning.
He attained the degree in 2004, but will not disclose his prior studies.
He speaks with conviction of wooing supporters from the IFP to the ANC in his rural town and surrounding areas that were once dominated by the IFP.
“We convinced people to realise how important it is for them to return home, to the ANC.
“Part of that is that people were being heavily intimidated at that time. We were the people who were wearing ANC T-shirts in the no-go areas... we ensured that today you can go to any place KwaVulindlela and everywhere there is ANC (now),” he said.
When clashes between the ANC and IFP became worse, Dlungwane fled from home in the early 1990s, fearing death.
“We knew that should it happen (they come for us), we could die, we knew the best option was to get out before they got to us because we could see (what could happen),” he said.
He went to live with extended family about 30km away.
“There is no place like home - that impact is not easy - I always imagine the feeling former combatants of Umkhonto we Sizwe were having when they were outside of the country. When I had that feeling just 30km from home, how much more with the former MK who were thousands of kilometres from home, some of these things we take for granted when people say that,” he says.
Dlungwane considers his rise to Education MEC as “organic” - dismissing any suggestions that he was parachuted to the position.
“For me it’s not a jump, I grew up in the ANC and I am taught in the politics of the ANCYL, led at all structures.
“I have led the ANC and I have been given the responsibility to be a chairperson of a portfolio committee (Arts and Culture), now the ANC has given me a responsibility of being a member of the executive council.
“For me the growth, if you can define it, has been more organic... I am humbled by the ANC to have such confidence in this person who has been brought up in the culture of the ANC, to be given a responsibility to lead this very important department.
“There is a lot of work to be done, I am going to be relying on the support of the ANC as we execute this task, I’m not going to be alone here,” he said.
Although he aims to bring his own programmes to the department, he will not abandon his predecessor’s plans and still has to meet education stakeholders in the coming weeks to “ensure we make it work”.
“I believe we have dedicated, good teachers - I believe the combination of all of us, we can work to ensure we improve quality of education in the province. One of the areas is to ensure that we increase the pass rate. We will introduce programmes, there is a turnaround strategy (in place), we want to ensure it continues being successful.
“We are not going to change anything that works, but we are going to change things that are not working,” he said.
“There are camps that we will have as we go to the holidays, that programme we support it and we will want to ensure that programme is successful so that young people of this province pass and attain pass marks that will take them forward and get more bachelor passes.”
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