South Africa's Deadly School Toilets
Five-year-old Lumka Mkhethwa fell into a school pit toilet and died in March 2018. There’s a photograph of Lumka in her school uniform in a report of the tragedy. She’s smiling. She’s got her backpack on. Her yellow checked school dress and blue jersey are a little too big. Like all children starting their first year of school, her parents probably bought them that way so she wouldn’t grow out of them too quickly. Barely two months into the school year, Lumka was dead.
In 2014, five-year-old Michael Komape met the same fate at his school in Limpopo. His mother, Rosina, fainted when she found her son in the pit full of faeces.
Lumka’s death prompted President Cyril Ramaphosa to ask the education minister, Angie Motshekga, to do an audit of schools with unsafe ablution facilities and present him with a plan to “rectify the challenges” within three months. A report was given to the president in early May. In June, Minister Motshekga said in a Talk Radio 702 interview that it will cost R10-billion to replace the pit toilets. listen A court in Limpopo has also ordered that the Limpopo Education Department produce its own plan to provide safe school toilets across the province by July 31.
The national department's report has not yet been made public. In the meantime, Passmark took a look at the education department’s publicly available data on pit toilets in South Africa’s schools.
“Plain pit and bucket latrines are not allowed at schools”
The pit toilet into which Lumka Mkhethwa fell at Luna Junior School – in Bizana, a rural area of the Eastern Cape – should never have been there.
New toilets had been built at the school, so the old pit toilets should have been demolished.
Upgraded ventilated pit latrines, known as VIPs, which meet the school infrastructure regulations standards, had been built at Luna Junior School, Mr ER Mafoko, a department of basic education official, told the
parliamentary committee on basic education in April. But, the old pit toilet in which Lumka died had not been demolished.
Shorter text for mobile: Upgraded ventilated pit latrines, known as VIPs, which meet the standards of the infrastructure regulations, had been built at Luna Junior School, Mr ER Mafoko, a DBE official, said at a sitting of the parliamentary committee on basic education in April. But, the old pit toilet in which Lumka died had not been demolished as it should have been. [6]
Luna Junior School is not unusual in having pit toilets. In fact, in the Eastern Cape there are
1,426 schools whose only form of sanitation is pit toilets.
That means that one in every four of the public schools in the Eastern Cape has only pit toilets.
Two-thirds of these are primary schools and all of them are in low-income, mostly rural areas. Around
300,000 children attend these schools.
Even more shocking is that there are 37 schools in the Eastern Cape with no toilets at all.
All schools should have been provided with adequate sanitation by 29 November 2016, that was the deadline set in the school infrastructure regulations in 2013.
The map shows the pit toilet situation as at December 2016 using data from a response to a parliamentary question in February 2017. It's the only publicly available list that names the individual schools. There are 1,559 schools on this map, 1,507 with pit toilets only and 52 with no toilets at all. In the year since this data was published the number of schools with pit toilets has been reduced by 81, the number with no toilets by 15 – a total of 96 schools. But the Eastern Cape is in the process of merging and closing small, “unviable” schools, so it isn't possible to determine whether new toilets were built or if some of the schools were closed.
The map [1] shows the pit toilet situation as at December 2016. This is the only publicly available list that names the individual schools. The Eastern Cape, particularly north of East London, is a mass of dots that represent the schools with pit toilets or no sanitation at all. There are 1,559 schools on this map, 1,507 with pit toilets only and 52 with no toilets at all. In the year since this data was published the number of schools with only pit toilets has been reduced by 81, the number with no toilets by 15 – a total of 96 schools. But the Eastern Cape is in the process of merging and closing small, what are termed “unviable” schools, so it’s not possible to determine from the data whether new toilets were built at schools or the schools were closed.
In January 2014, five-year-old Michael Komape met the same horrible fate at Mahlodumela Lower Primary School, near Polokwane in Limpopo.
In Limpopo, two out of every three schools have pit toilets.
About 250,000 children attend these schools. And, much like the Eastern Cape, two-thirds of the schools are primary schools, and
in rural areas.
Two years after Michael’s death, Mahlodumela Primary was still listed by the DBE as having pit toilets, even though
EWN and
The Citizen reported in 2014 that new toilets were being built at the school. Passmark tried to confirm whether the pit toilets at Mahlodumela had been replaced with the Limpopo Department of Education and the national department of basic education (DBE), but neither responded to questions sent to them.
Like the Eastern Cape, there are so many schools with pit toilets in Limpopo they form a blur of dots on the map. Also, two years after Michael’s death, Mahlodumela Primary was still listed by the DBE as having pit toilets, even though an EWN report from 2014 stated that new toilets were being built at the school and images published in the Sowetan showed new toilets under construction. Passmark tried to confirm whether the pit toilets at Mahlodumela had been replaced with the Limpopo Department of Education and the national department of basic education, but neither responded to questions sent to them. However, in March Education Minister Angie Motshekga told the media that there are nearly 500 schools across the country that have been provided with better sanitation that also still have it latrines. [2] What’s more schools that cater for, five-year-olds in grade R need special smaller toilet seats. The country’s schools are short of 30,028 toilets that are appropriate for little children, said Mr Mafoko. [6]
In 2016, an assessment commissioned by the Limpopo Department of Education found eight schools with
no access to toilets in the province.
This contradicts the DBE’s official
infrastructure data for 2016 which listed zero schools with no sanitation and 941 schools with pit toilets only. By 2018 the department’s
infrastructure report listed 916 schools with pit latrines only in the province and another 1,608 schools that had pit latrines as well as other forms of sanitation, bringing the total number of schools in the province with pit latrines to 2,524.
This contradicts the DBE’s official infrastructure data for 2016 which listed zero schools with no sanitation and 941 schools with pit toilets only. By 2018 the department’s infrastructure report listed 916 schools with pit latrines only in the province and another 1,608 schools that had pit latrines as well as other forms of sanitation, bringing the total number of schools in the province with pit latrines to 2,524.
Pit toilets are not localised to Limpopo and the Eastern Cape. In fact,
one in every three public schools in South Africa has pit toilets, according to data released 10 days after Lumka died.
But Minister Motshekga described that data as “provisional” and said the provincial education departments would verify and update the numbers by April 1.
The minister should have had up-to-date information on the state of school sanitation because she should have been receiving annual updates from the provincial education departments in line with the 2013 infrastructure regulations. Also, since 2011, regular National Education Infrastructure Management System (NEIMS) reports on ablution facilities have been publicly available on the DBE’s website.
If the figures have been updated, they have not been made publicly available and Passmark’s requests for information from the DBE have gone unanswered. According to the 2013 infrastructure regulations, the minister should already have up-to-date information on the state of school sanitation. In fact, she should have been receiving annual updates from the provincial education departments. The regulations state: “A member of the executive council must, within a period of 12 months after the publication of the regulations and thereafter annually on a date and in the manner determined by the minister, provide the minister with detailed plans on the manner in which the norms and standards are to be implemented,” state the regulations. Also, since 2011, the National Education Infrastructure Management System (NEIMS) reports on ablution facilities have been publicly available on the DBE’s website.
The new numbers given to the president have not been made public. But let's look at what we know from the information that is available.
Schools with no toilets
In
2011, there were 913 public schools with no toilets in the country. Every province had schools with no toilets, but nearly two-thirds (551) of them were in the Eastern Cape.
From 2011 the DBE introduced the Accelerated School Infrastructure Delivery Initiative (ASIDI) which was tasked to provide basic sanitation to schools with no access to toilets using funds from the R8.2-billion School Infrastructure Backlogs Grant. Interestingly, in 2011 ASIDI had identified 939 schools in need of sanitation, 26 more than the NEIMS report. By February 2018 the number of projects had increased to 992.
By
March 2018 the number of schools with no toilets was down to 37 – all of them in the Eastern Cape.
That means 95% of the schools with no toilets in 2011 have been provided with toilets over a period of about six years, at an average rate of about 12 schools a month.
The ASIDI programme was responsible for around half (453) of these projects. Three-quarters of them were in the Eastern Cape (171), KwaZulu-Natal (101) and Limpopo (75). Another 387 projects, 85% of them in Limpopo, were under construction and due to be completed in the 2018/19 financial year. And 152 were at the planning, design and procurement phase. [3] It is not known where the funds for the sanitation at other schools came from.
Schools with pit toilets
In 2011, nearly half (11,450) of South Africa’s 24,793 public schools had pit toilets.
78% of those schools were in just three provinces, the Eastern Cape (28%), Limpopo (25%) and KwaZulu-Natal (25%).
By March 2018 the number of schools with pit toilets had been reduced by about a quarter to 8,679.
The biggest drop was in the Eastern Cape, where the number of schools with pit toilets dropped by 40%.
Progress in KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo has been much slower, since 2011 pit toilets have been eradicated at only 343 schools in Limpopo and 227 in KwaZulu-Natal. Now two-thirds of the country's schools with pit toilets are in those two provinces.
Over the past six years the number of schools with pit toilets in the country has dropped by 2,771. That’s an average of about 462 a year, or just over one school per day.
At the current rate that means it will take around 19 years to eradicate the pit toilets in the remaining 8,679 schools.
