Schools 'need real toilets'

PIT LATRINES TO MOBILE LOOS: STATE'S FAILURE TO DELIVER SAFE INFRASTRUCTURE CONTINUES >>> Pupils still face cracked seats, missing doors, chemical exposure.

- Liezl Human

CONCERNED. Lydia Kola, principal of Mashashane Primary School, has been looking forward to a solution to the school's sanitation problem for several years. Pictures: Liezl Human

(Liezl Human)

More than 10 years after five-year-old Michael Komape fell into a school pit toilet and died, teachers and pupils in parts of Limpopo are still battling poor sanitation.

Some schools still rely on pit toilets in spite of official promises to eradicate them. In others, toilets are filthy and broken; in one school teachers urinate behind bushes.

GroundUp visited schools in Limpopo, in the GaMashashane area, several villages west of Polokwane. We found that sanitation facilities in schools were deteriorating. A school we visited still relies on pit toilets.

Other schools have filthy Enviro Loos, or waterless toilets, in disrepair and in urgent need of maintenance.

Others have had mobile toilets, supposed to be a temporary solution, for years. Often there are no hand-washing facilities and no running water.

In March 2018, President Cyril Ramaphosa and then-minister of basic education Angie Motshekga launched the sanitation appropriate for education (Safe) initiative which aimed to eradicate pit toilets in schools and provide schools with adequate sanitation.

Since 2018, the department of basic education (DBE) has set several deadlines for eradicating pit toilets in school. It missed the 2023 and 2024 deadlines. In 2023, human rights organisation Section27 condemned the “devastatingly slow pace” of the DBE to eradicate pit toilets.

Komape died in January 2014 after falling into a dilapidated pit toilet at his school in Chebeng, west of Polokwane.

His family sued the government and after a long legal battle, won the case and was awarded damages.