Cape Town's security concerns will force parents to seek former white schools

In the notorious townships in the suburbs of Cape Town, South Africa, fears of crime and gang violence are forcing some parents to make difficult decisions to send their children to former white schools for long daily commutes.

Sibahle Mbasana told the BBC that her son once attended school in Khayelitsha, the largest town in Cape Town.

“Imagine your kids going through this regularly. There is almost no sense of security in schools, even if they can't do anything.”

This has been more than three decades since the end of the white minority rule in South Africa, but there are still black students who have to endure the enormous inequalities that are the cornerstone of the racist system.

Mrs. Mbasana believes that her three children are the heirs of this legacy – especially Lifalethu, the eldest son of her township school between the ages of six and 10.

One of the main laws in the era of apartheid was the Bantu Education Act of 1953, which was designed to prevent black children from reaching their full potential. This creates segregated schools, less funded and less resources, which have created fewer resources for schools in impoverished areas, and has so far been overcrowded and often suffered from high crime, drug use and violence.

Mrs Mbasana, who grew up in Eastern Cape province and moved to Khayelitsha when she was 18, decided she had no choice but to transfer Lifalethu, who is now 12, and her other son Anele, 11, to a state school some 40km (25 miles) away in Simon's Town, situationed on a picturesque bay on the Cape Peninsula which is famously home to South Africa's navy.

Their seven-year-old sister Buhle joined the boys at the school, which has better facilities and smaller class sizes.

“I tell myself [that] Boole won't go there [local] The school is because I've had a lot of things with two boys at that school,” the 34-year-old fashion designer.

She and her husband hope to keep their family completely away from Khayelitsha.

“We don’t want to live in a township, but we have to live here because we can’t afford to move out,” she said.

“Talk to anyone in the township and they will tell you that if you can, they will move out in the first opportunity.”

There is no doubt that despite poor infrastructure and barriers to large class sizes, township schools led by visionary principals and hardworking teachers still do miracles.

But it turns out that safety and security are insurmountable when gangs ask teachers to charge for protection.

The news website reported that teachers at Zanemfundo Elementary School in the eastern Philippines were allegedly near Khayelitsha and were told to pay 10% of their salary to ransomists who seem to operate impunity.

“It's not safe at all. We are in extreme danger,” a teacher told Groundup.

“These gangs come to the school to carry guns. Our lives are in danger. The teachers in the school demand transfers because they are not safe.”

According to the Western Cape Ministry of Education (WCED), it will now be stationed in schools and police patrol nearby.

But similar incidents have been reported in five other schools around Nyanga, Philippi and Samora Machel.

“My husband Sipho is working on the Navy in the town of Simon, where he travels, so I think it would be safer and more comfortable for my kids to go to that school,” Mrs. Mbasana said.

However, longer commuting on buses or minibuses brings more safety to schools that bring dangers and stress to themselves.

Mrs. Mbasana said: “My children got up around 4.30am and left at 5.50am when Sipho was transporting them. When they got on the bus, because Sipho might be working elsewhere, they left before 5.30am and arrived at home at 4.30pm.”

“They are always tired and want to sleep. They are strong because they do their homework, but they sleep much earlier than other kids.”

Lifalethu made national headlines last year when he was forced to return home from Simon's town to Khayelitsha because the bus he often took refused him to enter because he could not find his ticket.

The driver involved was subsequently suspended for violating the company's policy, which requires employees to assist schoolchildren with school uniforms who lost their tickets.

As the darkness fell, when Mrs. Mbasana had his worst nightmare, when Anele called for his brother not to be allowed to go.

But then a huge social media madness happened, and he discovered good luck several times – at one stage a good Samaritan brought the boy an elevator and he got him off at a gas station about 5 kilometers from his home.

From there, he hiked with a security guard to live in his area and was brought back to his comforting family by the police who joined the search for him.

His case highlights the plight of thousands of students from townships, some of whom make 80km round trips on public transport every day, or pre-arranged trips on public transport or with minibus taxis, attending school in the suburbs of the city – once accepted only white students in the age of apartments.

Affluent residents of these suburban areas often choose private education for their descendants, meaning that state schools there tend to provide space for people from further afield.

Donovan Williams, vice principal of state primary schools in the Bohemian-style region of Cape Town, said about 850 of his school’s about 830 students came from townships – many of whom were exhausted for prolonged periods.

“Some parents work in the area, and most parents spend a lot of money on transportation to get their kids better schools in the infrastructure,” he told the BBC.

“Sometimes they fall asleep in class.”

According to Amnesty International, South Africa is one of the most unequal school systems in the world – children’s outcomes depend heavily on where they were born, their wealth and their skin color.

Its 2020 report says: “Of the next 6,600 schools, children in the top 200 schools have made more differences in math. The sports field must be shedded.”

State schools are subsidized, but parents still have to pay for school fees, with fees ranging from $60 (£45) to $4,500 (£3,350) in the Western Cape.

Of the nearly 1,700 schools across the province, more than 100 are government-designated, free institutions for learners living in economically depressed areas.

The province's education department explained that it often had to make up for the government's funding shortages – more schools in middle-class areas turned to parents to pay for the fees.

West said 2,407 teaching positions were recently lost in the province as the government allocated only 64% of the cost of a salary agreement negotiated with teachers nationwide.

The reduction in positions means that when the contract ends in December, some contract teachers are not reappointed, while some permanent teachers are asked to move to school.

“We are in an impossible position, it's not our production, and the Western Cape isn't the only affected province,” Wced added.

The National Professional Teachers’ Organization of South Africa (NAPTOSA) said the decision was particularly devastating for schools in poverty and crime-crisis areas.

“Those typical township schools are your typical township schools. They are unable to replace the dominant appointments of those teachers, which are the schools with resource improvements, and parents have the ability to pay extra to pay for hiring more teachers.”

“They feel that tailors, their class size is bigger, and their teachers are more stressed.

“Kids, especially those who are less academically inclined, will slip through the cracks.”

Experts blame the ongoing educational differences on Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) government inherited from the apartheid regime in 1994.

“ANC has to face the fact that it cannot be delivered in its way.”,,,,, Tell the BBC.

He said that in the face of fiscal austerity, “there has never been an opportunity to develop a sustainable teaching platform.”

“Twenty years ago, the political interest in what happened in township schools has been lost. When it comes to teacher spending and the proportion of students, you can see how the department has been overlooked. The number of teachers in these schools continues to cause cuts in primary terms.”

Professor Fataar is equally frustrating about the future: “I can’t see, forbidden miracles, how we can increase the financial situation of poor schools.”

Parents like Mbasanas are trapped in towns and often at the mercy of gangs and have run out of patience.

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