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| ©Denis Farrell/AP Photo |
Human rights and education activists say the government is not prioritising hygiene in public schools in rural South Africa.
At a high school in rural northern South Africa, more than 300 students and their teachers share three toilets. The pit toilets at Seipone Secondary School in the village of Ga-Mashashane are covered by white toilet seats and enclosed by brick structures. However, some pit toilets still used at more than 3,300 schools in poor, primarily rural areas across South Africa are not. In January 2014, Michael Komape, a five-year-old boy, was found dead, drowned at the bottom of a pit latrine.
His family took the Limpopo province’s education department to court and was awarded 1.4 million rands ($72,644) in damages. Court orders compelled the South African government to address the issue urgently. The South African government has promised to replace all school pit toilets nationwide by March 31 this year, but this has not happened. Other small children have also drowned in pit latrines in the near-decade since, one girl as recently as last month and another boy in March. The toilets are cheaper and more practical for poorer schools because they do not rely on a constant running water supply.
At the Jupiter Pre-School and Creche in the same Limpopo province where Michael died, children as young as three are still using pit toilets that have no proper seat but rather a hole carved out of a concrete slab that opens to the pit below. The Equal Education, human rights group has inspected pit toilets in South African schools. Tiny Lebelo, an organiser with the group, expressed frustration that school safety is not being prioritised. The Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga announced that are still 3,398 schools using pit latrines, and the deadline to eradicate them has been shifted to 2025. Section27, a human rights group, supported the Komape family in their legal action against the local and national education departments and succeeded in getting a court ruling that authorities must provide updated information every six months on schools in the Limpopo province using pit toilets and the plans to replace them. The department has made some progress by reducing schools using pit toilets in Limpopo from 363 in 2021 to 210 schools now, but James Komape said the government had not kept its side of an agreement to remove pit toilets and “many children are still in real danger”.
At the Seipone Secondary School, the pit toilets are officially called ventilation-improved toilets and are known as “VIP toilets”. There is anger and now pushback from students, too.
