Durban - It is just past midday and the children at Khulangolwazi Primary School in Manguzi, northern KwaZulu-Natal, are finishing their lunch. They huddle beneath the large mango trees the rural town near the Mozambiquan border is known for, sucking on sachets of frozen fruit juice, seeking respite from the searing heat.
It is 38ºC and summer has only just begun. In a bare corner of the schoolyard, exposed to the sun, are a pair of small concrete toilet stalls and the scent of stale urine hangs heavy in the air.
'For small children the bush is an easier option than pit latrines'
Inside, the smell is suffocating. Flies and other insects hover over pools of murky liquid on the floor.
The two pit latrines housed within the stalls are broken and have been for the past three years. More than 700 children at Khulangolwazi have had to share the two broken pit latrines. Some of the older pupils do use them, but the younger ones, school principal Timothy Mathenjwa says, relieve themselves in the bush.
The latrines were not designed for little children. “They are too big, they cannot climb up,” Mathenjwa says. The bush is simply the easier option.
Head of department at the school, Thembile Khubekha, says girls are placed in an especially difficult situation when they are menstruating.
Earlier this month, the school received a handful of portable latrines. “But service delivery in the area is not very good and they could take them away at any time,” Mathenjwa says.
Sanitation is not the only challenge the staff and pupils at Khulangolwazi face.
710 pupils at a school built to accommodate just 200 children
It was originally a private school, Khubekha explains, designed to accommodate around 200 children. But the school was taken over by the department in the 1990s and now has 710 children. So classes of up to 60 children are squeezed into five-metre square rooms.
“You cannot teach like that,” says Khubekha, who specialises in English. The children battle to concentrate and the heat presents serious health risks in congested classrooms.
There are two slightly larger mobile classrooms on the premises but, made of metal, the heat inside is as overbearing as in the other classrooms. And so teachers often hold class outside, in the dust and sand.
The structure of the main school building is falling to pieces and ripped up floorboards expose patches of sand and dirt. There is no administrative block for the teachers, nor is there a kitchen, and the meals for the children at this no-fees school are prepared in a rudimentary structure outside.
Despite being in a state of utter disrepair, Khulangolwazi is considered one of the better schools in the area, a local tells us. He directs The Mercury to Mseshi Primary School, just outside of town.
28 creche children being taught in an outhouse
Mseshi, says acting principal Thokozile Mthembu, was built by the community around 1996 but the infrastructure is now failing. The classrooms have no ceilings, and plastic buckets are scattered throughout to catch water where the corrugated iron roofs leak.
The creche, which accommodates 28 small children, is a five metre by three metre outhouse with one window. Meals for all 130 children at the school are cooked over an open fire in a stone structure which acts as the kitchen.
Despite the desperate situation both Khulangolwazi and Mseshi find themselves in, the staff at both schools are clearly passionate about doing what they can with what they have.
At both schools, the children are courteous.
At Khulangolwazi, they diligently sweep the passages and at Mseshi, a carefully hand-written copy of the school’s code of conduct hangs on the wall.
At both schools, the staff beg for assistance. They say they have requested help from the department before but to no avail.
When contacted for comment this week, spokesman for the provincial department Muzi Mahlambi said the situation would be investigated.
“We will send people from our infrastructure department to go and investigate and intervene,” he said.
No time frame, however, was given.
The Mercury