Port Elizabeth - Schools in Port Elizabeth’s Northern Areas reopened on Wednesday after having been closed for more than a week amid protests over teacher and infrastructure shortages.
Loyiso Pulumani, spokesman for the Eastern Cape’s education department, said that all the schools had opened on Wednesday.
This followed meetings on Tuesday between the education MEC Mandla Makupula and parents, school governing bodies, and principals of the schools in the areas that had been affected by the protests.
Pulumani said: “The department has assured parents that vacancies will be filled with Afrikaans speaking teachers and we will even look outside the province to fill those vacancies.”
He said that he had not heard of any incidents at the affected schools in the Northern Areas.
However, police reported isolated incidents of vehicles being stoned on Stanford Road. “It is small individual groups of children that are throwing stones, trying to see if they can hit a car,” said spokesman Captain Johan Reeder.
Pulumani said there were no reports of objects being placed in roads or burning tyres. He described the situation as “tense but calm” and that police were monitoring the situation.
The protests that erupted on Monday and continued on Tuesday followed the closure of 23 schools in the area by the Northern Areas Forum civil movement. Pulumani said on Monday that the schools had been closed by the forum at the start of the third term last week in anger at the issues plaguing the schools and not by the education department.
ANA