(The following Debate was delivered during a Sitting of the KZN Legislature held today)
The empirical evidence before us is not ambiguous. It is overwhelming. Oversight reports, including the School Functionality Monitoring Programme Follow Up Visits report, have consistently demonstrated that while there is surface-level functionality within many schools, the system is being eroded by persistent structural failures. Failures in infrastructure provisioning, failures in human resource allocation, failures in timely financial transfers and most critically, failures in governance.
We are told that the system is improving because matric pass rates are rising. But what is the epistemic value of a pass rate, when beneath it lies;
• A school without water,
• A classroom without a teacher,
• A principal without a budget,
• A learner without transport and;
• A cohort that cannot read for meaning?
What we are witnessing is not systemic success – it is systemic resilience by those at the coalface, masking institutional decay at the centre.
At iNkosi Phuthini Secondary School, the principal – tasked with leading a public institution of learning – has no electricity. So, he runs an extension cord from a neighbour’s home. He purchases printing paper from his own salary. He sustains the basic administrative functions of a school not through state support, but through personal financial sacrifice.
And how does KZN’s Department of Education (DoE) respond to this extraordinary act of professional commitment? With a letter of non-performance due to the schools underwhelming 2024 NSC exam results. DoE senior management placed this principal on terms – yet months later were on the ICC stage celebrating KZN’s NSC results.
This is not merely irrational. It is an inversion of accountability so profound that it borders on the absurd. Those who compensate for state failure are being punished, while those responsible for that failure remain insulated from consequence.
The DoE’s attempts to hide behind Section 18 (2) (g) must now be confronted.
Section 18(2)(g) of the Public Finance Management framework empowers Provincial Treasury to intervene when a department demonstrates persistent financial mismanagement – specifically where there is;
• Unauthorised expenditure,
• Inability to adhere to budget ceilings or;
• Systemic failure in financial controls.
This is not a punitive instrument. It is a corrective one. It is not imposed arbitrarily. It is triggered by evidence.
It is the fiscal equivalent of placing a patient in intensive care -not to punish them, but to prevent systemic collapse. And yet, a narrative has emerged, carefully constructed and politically convenient, that suggests that the challenges in education are the result of this intervention. That because Treasury has stepped in, service delivery within the DoE has further deteriorated. This is not only incorrect it is gravely dishonest.
Allow me to illustrate this simply. The narrative being run by KZN’s DoE is this;
If you have R100 in your bank account, and you knowingly go on a date and spend R500, when the bill arrives, you swipe your card and the waiter tells you it has been declined, you cannot blame your banking institution because;
• You made the decision to overspend
• You acted beyond your means and;
• You ignored your financial constraints.
Treasury’s intervention is not the cause of the DoE’s financial distress – it is the consequence of their financial indiscipline. To then suggest that your bank should extend you the additional R400 – and that your failure to pay is their fault – is not just flawed reasoning. It is an abdication of responsibility.
This is precisely the argument being advanced by the KZN’s DoE yet the truth is far more uncomfortable;
• The department’s challenges predate Section 18(2)(g)
• Delays in Norms and Standards payments existed before the intervention and;
• Infrastructure backlogs, vacancy rates and dysfunctional procurement systems were all entrenched long before Treasury acted.
Treasury did not create the crisis. Treasury responded to it. The Democratic Alliance (DA) supports that intervention. Not because it is politically convenient, but because it is fiscally and morally necessary. Without financial discipline, there can be no service delivery. Without accountability, there can be no governance. And without governance, there can be no education system worthy of our learners.
But, critique without construction is hollow and the DA, as a responsible partner within KZN’s Government of Provincial Unity will continue to advocate for;
• A pathway to restoration. What is required now is not incremental reform, but systemic recalibration
• Re-centring KZN’s education system around those who sustain it – learners, teachers and school management teams
• Building of a funding model that is predictable, protected, and insulated from administrative dysfunction, so that no principal ever again has to subsidise the state
• Professionalising of district support structures, transforming them from compliance-driven bureaucracies into responsive, problem-solving institutions
• Consequence management at senior levels – so that accountability flows upward, not downward
• Digitising procurement and financial tracking systems, particularly in programmes such as the National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP), where every inefficiency has direct human consequences and;
• Full alignment with provincial Treasury’s Financial Recovery Plan – because fiscal recovery is not an obstacle to service delivery, it is its precondition.
There is a dangerous illusion that can take hold in governance – that systems are sustained by those who manage them. But in KZN’s education system, the opposite is true. The system is being sustained by those who endure it;
• By the teacher who teaches without resources
• By the principal who leads without support
• By the learner who learns despite the odds.
They are the ones carrying this system. Not head office, not senior management and not the architects of policy – but the custodians of practice.
KZN’s DoE must now decide. Will it continue to construct narratives that deflect responsibility or will they confront the truth with the intellectual honesty it demands? Will it allow financial mismanagement to be reframed as fiscal victimhood? Or will it insist that accountability begins where authority resides? Will it continue to reward bureaucracy and penalise dedication? Or will it build a system that recognises and supports those who make education possible?
This is the DA’s clarion call. Not for rhetoric, but for reform. Not for excuses, but for execution. Not for survival, but for excellence. Government must act decisively, courageously, and immediately because every day we delay is another day a learner is failed – and that is a cost our province can no longer afford.