The change in the South African government in 1994 in Education.

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 The change in the South African government in 1994

I loved teaching and even being a principal, but after the new government came into parliament in 1994 we all felt lost. Everything we knew that we had learnt in the last 20 years suddenly did not matter anymore. The unspoken rules just disappeared and no one knew where they were going. We as principals felt like a captain of a passenger ship without a compass. It would have helped if the people in charge had a compass but even they had NO idea what they were doing.   

We were responsible for all the parents and children and we did not know where we were going. 

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Everything just disappeared. 

We had one district manager and two circuit managers who worked in three little small offices about 150 km from where we were. 

I told them about empty municipal offices in our town, and the building belonged to the government so they could move into a beautiful building with plenty of offices, and then the building would not go to waste. They moved there and it made it easier for us to go and see them as we did not have to drive far. Now they were only a block from my school.  

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The district manager took all the schools and put them together and divided them between the two circuit managers.  

He never kept in mind where they were situated, so we had this awful distance to drive to a meeting and the people of the other schools had the same problem as they were not divided by towns but by the names of the schools. 

When meetings were held it was absolutely chaos as the schools were divided into two groups of eight of which none were in the same area. The other schools that were normally on their own namely the schools of different cultures were added to the two groups and that is why there were now 16 schools in each group. 

I had to go to another town for my meetings while the people from there had to come to my school for their meetings. Do you now realise why I am saying it was like a ship without direction. 

Some of these managers or mostly all were political appointments and knew absolute nothing about education.

 The other culture schools principal's felt exactly the same way we did because they were well trained and very good principals. The reason why they were not with us from the start is because we taught in English and Afrikaans and they had schools in their own languages.  

It was not funny to us when they send a fax on a Thursday afternoon telling us to be at a meeting the next morning at 8 o’clock sharp. So whatever you had planned for that Friday was totally lost as you suddenly had to go to a meeting. They absolutely loved meetings. 

I learnt from the other culture that 8 o’clock sharp meant anything up to 9 o’clock and they would still be on time. 

After the meeting there were always something to eat and some of the principals would take an extra plate of food home to their spouses. 

I made a suggestion that we eat before the meeting and then there would be enough for everybody. This helped for two reasons, if they came late they did not get anything to eat and it meant that we could truly start at 8 o’clock sharp. After that they never came late again. 

My first meeting in the other culture town, I will never forget as the roads were all dirt roads and electric links ran across the road from one house to other houses.There were children walking around with school clothes at round about 10 o’clock in the morning. No one cared that they were not in school.  

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The first school we had our meeting at was a beautiful school with the best possible facilities you could want. Their school grounds looked terrible, but that was not their fault as our schools had three workers.  A lady and two men, all the schools from the previous government had three workers but they never gave these principals workers for the garden or cleaning ladies, which was paid by the government, but they did not get any, and to me this was not fair.  

When they came to our school, they said the department gave you nice rugby fields and tennis courts and we have nothing. 

I told them we had nothing before and that all this was done by the parents of the school and that they still came and cut the grass and all our beautiful gardens are done by different classes with their parents. 

One December school holiday our district manager received his doctors’ degree. When I asked him what his thesis was about, he ignored me and I realised that it must be like a professorship. 

  -To be continued- 

Have a nice day from the Wild Coast!