-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [DEBATE] : Hamba Khale Cde. Poppy Buthelezi
Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 18:44:34 +0200
From: Salim Vally <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: debate: SA discussion list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: debate: SA discussion list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Poppy Buthelezi-'76 student leader, mother, socialist, community and
disabled people's activist. (1959-2007)
Funeral Service: Tuesday 18th September, St Hildas, Senoane (next to
Sekano Ntoane High School)at 3pm.
Poppy Buthelezi, who was shot by police during the 1976 Soweto uprising
died this week. She was ubuntu personified, a family friend said on
Friday. Buthelezi (48), who had been confined to a wheelchair for the
remainder of her life after she was shot in the back in the 1976
uprising, died on Thursday, said Cecil Moeng -- Buthelezi's spokesperson
and chairperson of the Socialist Party of Azania (Sopa).
"Poppy was ubuntu personified," he said. "It is difficult, very
difficult, very sad [for the family]."It is unbelievable ... we all
don't like the way Poppy left us ... she became so strong from 2000 and
now she is leaving us with a lot of sadness."
A bullet lodged in her spinal chord led to her paralysis during the
Soweto uprising in 1976 when students took to the streets in protest
against Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in township schools.
Buthelezi was a student activist at the Senaoane Junior Secondary School
at the time. "She died as a consequence of the wounds she sustained ...
the wound affected her spinal column," said Moeng.
He added that she was not one to wallow in self-pity "but took life
head-on"."... [Buthelezi] was part of those who organised physically
challenged people into self helping projects, and put their concerns
into [the] national agenda."
She is survived by her 17-year-old daughter. A memorial service would
take place on September 18 at St Hilda's Church in Senaoane 3pm.
Moeng said he was meeting with her family: her two brothers, two sisters
and grandmother on Friday afternoon to finalise the funeral
arrangements. -- Sapa
Cde Poppy Buthelezi unveiled a plaque that bears her name when the EPU
formally opened its offices named the Hector Petersen Centre at Wits
University's Education Campus in 2003. The Education Rights Project
dedicated its booklet on the rights of disabled learners to her
exemplary life and struggle. The article below was published last year
in the Mail and Guardian.
The Struggle to Learn-Thirty Years After The 76 Uprising.
Thirty years ago, Poppie Buthelezi, a spirited teenager, like many of
her peers in Soweto, refused fear to rule her life. Together with at
least ten thousand of her fellow students, Poppie took to the dusty
streets of Soweto on a memorable and cold morning on June 16th 1976.
The apartheid police were quick to respond. In the ensuing weeks, they
cut down close to one thousand mostly young lives. Thousands of
survivors resolved to continue the struggle from neighbouring countries.
Poppie could not join them. She was shot in the spine and has been
confined to wheelchair ever since.
Shortly after the massacre, Mazizi Kunene penned the following lines:
We have entered the night to tell our tale
To listen to those who have not spoken
We, who have seen our children die in the morning
Deserve to be listened to...
Nothing really matters except the grief of our children.
Their tears must be revered, their inner silence
Speaks louder than the spoken words, and all
being
And all life shouts out in outrage
Recently, Poppie, now a mother of a school going child, broke her
silence. In a poignant address at Wits University she chronicled the
burden of education costs, bureaucratic callousness and recounted a
litany of dashed expectations. Poppie echoed the views of Violet Nevari
who during the Poverty and Inequality Hearings of civil society in 1998
observed: "Our new government promised us free education but to our
surprise when we go to the school, the kid's don't have books or the
whole package".
There can be no doubt though that significant progress has been made, in
policy terms at least, on issues of curricula, language, desegregation
for the middle class and facilities relative to the apartheid era. The
latter is surely a low base to measure success by. Yet there was great
fanfare when the Minister announced that "schooling under trees" ended
last month. The majority of schools still do not have libraries and
laboratories and a significant number lack electricity, water and
functioning toilets. Tens of thousands of learners do not have safe
reliable transport to school and thousands walk great distances to reach
school. Learners who are disabled and those who come from refugee or
migrant worker families are often excluded. Our schooling system is also
not geared to cope with the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
Education officials and politicians are fond of repeating the
impressively high enrollment rates of South African learners,
particularly girl learners. These statistics though do not reveal the
ability of the system to retain learners nor does it tell us much about
the quality of education they receive. Unesco places the 'survival rate'
of South African children reaching Grade 5 close to 65%, lower than
Zambia, Tanzania and Swaziland. Studies also indicate that progression
rates decline even further in the later grades.
One of the most crucial areas in schooling is the training and supply of
well qualified teachers. Previous policies around the rationalization of
teachers, the closing of teacher training colleges together with the
pandemic and the lack of financial support for prospective teachers has
led to a crisis. Annually, the attrition rate for teachers is 21 000 and
yet only about 5000 students qualify as teachers every year. The
pandemic has severely impacted on teachers as a group. The HIV
prevalence rate among teachers peeks at 21,4% for teachers in the age
group 25-34.
Most commentators view the matric examinations as the only indicator of
the schooling system's success or failure, ignoring other often more
vigorous evaluations. The Grade 6 Systemic Evaluation Report released in
December did not receive the scrutiny devoted to the matric results.
Learners obtained a national mean score of 38% in Language, 27% in
Mathematics and 41% in the Natural Sciences. Learners from poor
communities fared badly as well as those where the language of learning
was other than their mother tongue.
Sectors such as Early Childhood Development, undeniably the most
important period for cognitive development, and Adult Basic Education
(ABET) remain in a parlous state. On April the 12th this year, the Adult
Learning Network led a march to the Western Cape Provincial Legislature.
Their memorandum highlighted the desperate situation in ABET and adult
literacy including under funded public adult learning centers and the
appalling conditions of service and pay for educators. Farrell Hunter,
the National Co-ordinator of the Network commented: "Nationally, the
state spends less than 1, 5% of the budget on adult education and
literacy. Adult illiteracy rates in the past decade have grown by five
hundred thousand and adults without a general education exceed ten
million. In 2000, our previous Minister of Education promised to "break
the back of illiteracy in five years". Our government has not lived up
to its constitutional obligations".
Despite the lack of official support, many community organizations
throughout the country have creatively attempted to make a difference.
Young, unemployed graduates in Bophelong in the Vaal established the
non-profit TSEBO education centre in 1999. In 2001 they participated in
a ministerial initiative in partnership with UNISA where a number of
members were trained as adult educators. This was the last time they
received support. Despite this TSEBO has trained thousands of learners.
Magdeline Hlanyane (67), Nokopane Moeketsi (73) and Mabuti Motaung (72)
were students of TSEBO last year. They were asked what inspired them to
start learning at their age. They responded by talking about assisting
their community and grand children, modestly adding: "As long as we can
read the bible, write our names, and sign at the bank that is enough. It
is pointless to say we will get a better job. We are too old". For
Thandekile Dodo, the co-ordinator of TSEBO the challenge is to receive
support in the form of venues and support material for the 1225 adult
learners registered this year and remuneration for the thirty
practitioners. Dodo's narrative of years of interaction with an
unresponsive bureaucracy would frustrate most people. The last official
response TSEBO received was a curt letter from the Department of
Education advising them to register as a private provider. Dodo, a
member of the Anti-Privatisation Forum is undeterred: "TSEBO has been in
existence for the last seven years and we will persevere, literacy is an
important tool in the struggle for social transformation".
There are many other examples of community initiatives over the years.
In 2003, residents of Khayelitsha and members of the Anti-Eviction
Campaign fed-up with the exclusion of learners established their own
school at a community centre. They called it People's Power Secondary.
After many years of intense lobbying and campaigning by civil society,
the government in 2002 reviewed the financing and costs of schooling. In
June 2003, recommendations from the review led to the department issuing
a 'plan of action'. This plan envisaged that by 2004, 40% of the poorest
schools would not charge fees and that exemption procedures would be
strengthened. The plan's proposal, two years later, has not been
fulfilled. In January some of the Plan's proposals were promulgated. The
latter calls for an annual list of schools designated 'no fee schools'
through the Government Gazette. This is likely to be done late this
year. The Act though does state that even if schools are designated
'no-fee schools' they can levy fees if the level of funding per learner
is below that contemplated in the 'norms and standards for school
funding'. School fees quite often remain a small part of the total cost
of education for parents.
Many social movements have understood that progress in schools cannot be
divorced from poverty and its consequences. They have realised that
economic policies and political choices more than education related
factors have produced increases in unemployment, poverty and
inequalities. We cannot expect children to come to school ready to learn
if they are hungry and malnourished; if they have been evicted from
their homes; if they and their parents do not receive treatment and care
if they are HIV positive or if they lack light by which to read at
night. And issues of access to schools are not the only considerations
affecting a learner's right to quality education. Faced with situations
of sexual violence and physical abuse one can hardly question why some
learners are pushed out from school.
While schooling can reproduce and reinforce class, gender and racial
inequalities it can also challenge these. Schools do make a difference,
committed teachers matter and an engaging curriculum is vital. Yet
without an understanding of broader policies that sustain inequalities;
educators, parents and learners can become convenient scapegoats.
Problems with our education system are not merely technical issues that
can be resolved at the school level or merely through the narrow
discipline of in-school research. Social and macroeconomic policies
impact on the classroom; and school performance is greatly influenced by
proper nutrition, health care, decent housing, transport to school,
early childhood development, the income and education of their parents.
This realisation and the lack of adequate public educational provision,
issues of exclusion and the quality of education prompted staff from the
academy together with activists from various social movements to form
the Education Rights Project (ERP). The ERP works closely with several
social movements and campaigns around many educational and social
issues.
The ERP's participatory research initiatives with the various emerging
social movements and community organisations, is a form of social
accountability. It asserts the need for civil society to have access to
collective self-knowledge, independent of government, in order to hold
the state to account for its policies and to check its statistics. The
praxis of grass-root organisations helps us to understand the failures
of policy outside its glossy political rhetoric. More and more people
are realizing that ultimately real education transformation will depend
on the capacity of the poor and their allies to coordinate their
struggles and become a powerful social movement.
Although many of the social movements are not always able to provide
sophisticated alternatives to the status quo, it is precisely the
constituencies they represent, that have brought about the most
significant changes in this country. Popular energies, which once
sustained the powerful pre-1994 education social movements, are again
resurgent. These new social movements have established continuity with
past struggles but have also shed the disarming and misplaced hope that
changes to the political dispensation and a progressive constitution is
sufficient to realise socio-economic rights and democratic citizenship.
Salim Vally in M&G, June 2006.
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