Parliament – Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga on Wednesday said it was unfair and offensive to accuse her of failing to act against the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) after a report on the “jobs for cash” scandal pointed to the union’s strangle-hold on provincial departments.
Motshekga told the portfolio committee on basic education she was offended by the charge by Democratic Alliance MP Gavin Davis as legally she did not have the right to interfere in provincial education departments.
Davis challenged the minister’s response to the report in that she planned to tell provincial departments to call in the police to investigate evidence of the sale of teaching posts that shook the education sector when it was uncovered two years ago.
According to the ministerial briefing, Motshekga had written to the heads of department in the six provinces where the alleged wrongdoing happened to implement the recommendations of the ministerial task team.
The report, compiled by a ministerial task team and released in May, had advised the minister to engage with her counterpart in police.
It found that the union had a strange-hold on education, effectively controlling six of the country’s nine provinces, and that cadre deployment in the department contributed to widespread corruption.
“The minister cannot hand responsibility back to provinces when they have been found by the report to have been captured by Sadtu, “ Davis said.
“There is a clear conflict of interest.”
Page 119 of the report asserts that the national department had real control only over three of the provincial education departments – the Western Cape, the Northern Cape, and the Free State.
“In all other provinces, Sadtu is in de facto control,” it found.
The union exerted control by ensuring that office-based educators signed up as members and using a “repertoire of strategies to coerce teachers, principals, officials and others to accede to its demands”, the report added.
The task team flagged cadre deployment as another factor contributing to Sadtu’s sway as it helped to ensure that big numbers of its members were placed in well-paid positions where they could advance the union’s interests.
Motshekga reminded Davis that the Constitution protected freedom of association.
She said that she had no interest in seeing the education sector weakened but felt that Davis had questioned her integrity by asking whether she had the political will to stand up to Sadtu.
“There is a need for a just balancing of the rights of teachers vis-a-vis our ability to run the sector in certain ways,” Motshekga said.
“With due respect, I would humbly appeal to members not to patronise us when we come here, as if you are questioning my morality.
“I have no interest in weakening the sector. We are willing to come and talk about the role of other unions (but) the member has an obsession with Sadtu… It is a problem when people speak to us condescendingly. The member is accusing us unfairly.”
Motshekga said she could not win because she could not interfere with the powers of provinces and if she were to call in independent investigators, she would be criticised for using consultants instead of internal capacity.
Deputy Education Minister Enver Daniels defended Motshekga, noting that she launched the investigation and that the department had always insisted that if there were criminal activity, prosecutions must follow.
Earlier this week, the South African Council of Educators released its own four-page report on the scandal.
It concluded that no evidence of wrongdoing could be found at 13 schools in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and North-West where complaints were probed. It noted that nepotism was rife in filling promotional posts in Mpumalanga, but that “it was difficult to unravel the corruption as tracks are well covered”.
Davis termed that report an amateurish whitewash.
African News Agency