24/07/2025
Short Political Reflection on the case of Sevens Fountain:
Public sector in this country is dying a slow and painful death. It is being killed by Neo liberal policies that prioritizing the funding of the private sector. It is being killed by out sourcing and Austerity measures, lastly the corruption of official who are looting state resources. Our local municipalities, public departments are in a bad state.
At the Masakhane Public school there are no toilets, no proper security and just like any public school there is a mass shortage of proper facilities.
The chronic underfunding of public schools by the state is a clear indicator of systemic injustice and the failure of the government to uphold the constitutional right to basic education. In South Africa, as in many other post-colonial societies, the legacy of apartheid education persists in the stark divide between well-resourced private or former model-C schools and under-resourced public schools — mostly attended by Black working-class children. This is not merely a budgetary oversight, but a political choice that reproduces class, race, and spatial inequalities.
Underfunding manifests in overcrowded classrooms, lack of infrastructure, textbook shortages, unqualified or overburdened teachers, and the absence of psychosocial support. These are not neutral administrative failures — they are political acts of neglect. The state’s unwillingness to allocate sufficient resources to public schools reveals which lives it values and whose futures it deems disposable.
Education is a tool for liberation and empowerment. By denying equitable resources to public schools, the state denies the working class, especially Black and rural communities, the opportunity to break cycles of poverty and marginalization. Instead of transforming society, schools become sites where inequality is reproduced. The result is a dual education system: one for the elite, preparing them for leadership and success, and one for the majority, grooming them for low-wage labor and political disempowerment.
In this context, activism for public school funding is not just about education policy — it is a struggle for justice, dignity, and real democracy.
Neo liberalism is bad and it is responsible for things like this.
