The long day of a rural teacher
“Everyone is complaining about being tired”
It is 4:30am and Mdantsane resident Andiswa Mbana* is already up, preparing for work. She takes a bath, wakes up her two daughters aged ten and six, prepares their lunch boxes and her own lunch, and gets the girls ready for their school transport which comes at 6:30am.
Before she leaves the house, at about 5:20am, she tells her elder daughter what needs to be done when the children come back from school.
She then rushes to a bus stop to catch her first taxi at 5:30am to the taxi rank in Highway which takes 20 to 30 minutes and costs R8.50.
Then at 6:00am she spends R13 on another taxi to East London city centre. There she gets a ride from a colleague to Tsholomnqa High School, 58 kilometres away, where she teaches. Her colleague charges her R60 every day for the journey both ways.
When her colleague is sick, Mbana has to hitch a lift and pay R30 to R40 each way. She writes “Tsholomnqa” on a piece of cardboard and stands by the road until she gets a lift.
Mbana is one of hundreds of Eastern Cape teachers who have to travel for hours to and from work.
“I used to rent a house not far from the school, but I left because it was not safe for women,” she said. Flats in East London were too expensive and she finally bought a place in Mdantsane. Mbana is a single parent, and both her daughters are at a private school. With the house payments, she can’t afford a car.
“I’m not the only teacher who has to hitchhike to work. We are many, we are just suffering in silence.” she said.
Mbana said at 8:10am she was supposed to start teaching, but she arrived only at 8:30am.
“Today is Friday and as you can see I’m already tired from the travelling. Better days are Monday and Tuesday, then Wednesday to Friday we are just here for the sake of being here. Everyone is complaining of being tired, but we always push,” she said.
She quickly grabbed an apple and rushed to her class.
“I will eat at 10 during the break. There’s no time now. I’m already late,” she said.
Mbana said she did not like to leave her children in the morning without knowing if school transport would arrive and if they were safe after she left.
She said she left school at 3pm but got home at 6pm.
“I cannot stay for afternoon classes. If I have marking I take it home and then I will sleep at 1am,” she said.
Mbana’s friend Asenathi Booi* travels 160 km everyday from Mthatha where she rents a flat to Mevana High School outside Libode, near Port St Johns.
She leaves her house at 5am to go to Mthatha and then gets transport in a bakkie she and other teachers hire for R1,000 a month.
“There are lots of teachers who work in Libode, Ngqeleni, Port St Johns, Coffee Bay, or Mqandulo, but live in Mthatha, because of a lack of places to rent where they work and because it’s not safe,” Booi said.
Booi has worked at the school for three years. Most teachers don’t stay long because of the travelling, she said.
She hoped to move to a school in East London.
She said teachers were tired from the travelling and this affected teaching and pass rates, and that the government should pay teachers an allowance and build flats for them to rent closer to schools.
South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU) Eastern Cape spokesperson Sindisile Zamisa said teachers were leaving rural schools and one reason was distances travelled.
He said since 2004 SADTU had asked the Department of Basic Education to give teachers a rural allowance but without success.
Questions sent to the Eastern Cape Department of Education spokesperson Malibongwe Mtima on Monday had not been answered at the time of publication.
* Both teachers asked GroundUp not to use their real names for fear of victimisation.
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Letters
Dear Editor
Could we perhaps have an article devoted to a week in the life of, say Malibongwe Mtima, or some other bureaucrat in the Education Department to set aside articles such as this?
The frustration one feels on behalf of hard-working teachers does not seem to be shared by those who are charged by government with administering the resources, and it would be instructive to learn why this should be the case. The silence with which requests for information are met does not seem to carry any burden of shame for those whose job it is to answer the questions. We are left to draw the conclusion that this apparent lack of shame is indicative of an attitude which prevails in the Education Department as a whole.
So, to answer my own question, it is unlikely that we shall hear an equally honest account any time soon of a week in the life of anyone whose livelihood seems to be predicated on depriving children and their teachers of the resources which are rightfully theirs.
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