Today is the deadline for ending pit latrines in schools. Here’s how government has done

Temporary toilets rented by the education department next to the pit latrines at Rivuybe High School in Valdezia village, Limpopo. Archive photo: Thembi Siaga

• Monday 31 March is the national Department of Basic Education’s pit toilet eradication deadline.
• Minister Siviwe Gwarube announced earlier this month that nearly the entire backlog had been cleared.
• But SECTION27 says some schools have been missed because the last audit was in 2018.

Civil society organisations have raised concern that many schools with pit toilets may have been missed by the Department of Basic Education (DBE). The deadline to eradicate pit toilets is Monday, 31 March.

This follows years of court action after five-year-old Michael Komape drowned in a pit toilet at his school in Limpopo. The Komape family was represented by public interest organisation SECTION27. In 2021, the High Court ordered the Limpopo Department of Education to provide plans to eradicate pit toilets from the province’s schools.

In March 2023, the national department missed its deadline to eradicate pit toilets, and repeatedly extended it. More recently, on 11 March, Minister Siviwe Gwarube said that the department was “moving closer and closer to ensuring that the entire backlog that was identified will soon be eradicated”.

Addressing the National Council of Provinces, Gwarube announced that 93% of the pit toilets identified by the department’s Sanitation Appropriate for Education (SAFE) initiative in 2018 have been eradicated. She said that the eradication of pit toilets was about the “safety” and “dignity” of school children.

Audit outdated

But civil society organisations are worried that the 2018 audit is outdated and not all schools with pit toilets have been identified.

“We are really concerned that this does not include hundreds of schools that may still be operating under the department’s radar because proper verification exercises are not being done and proper updating is not being done,” said Demichelle Petherbridge, attorney at SECTION27.

“We know that there are hundreds of schools that are still operating with proper toilets together with unused pit toilets that still have to be demolished. We don’t think that this 2018 audit covers all those schools,” she said.

Petherbridge said that following the 2021 judgment, the Limpopo department’s progress reports submitted every six months “varied greatly”, nearly doubling the number of schools with only pit toilets from about 290 in 2022 to 564 in 2024.

“Because every time they verify information, new information comes to light. And it really questions the quality of the audits they’re doing,” she said.

“We recognise the department’s efforts in trying to complete the SAFE backlog, but on the ground there are still many schools that are in need that do not seem to form part of this number.

“We think a way to solve this is to do another proper national audit and to be transparent about it. Make those school names available on the DBE website so that civil society can monitor,” she said.

Petherbridge also raised concerns about some of the mobile toilets used as an interim measure while the Limpopo department builds permanent toilets. She said some of schools they are monitoring have mobile toilets in a “terrible” condition. In some cases there are not enough toilets for all the learners, and they’re not getting cleaned adequately. “You’re not using a pit toilet, but you are using terrible unhygienic mobile toilets,” she said.

GroundUp recently visited a school in Vhembe, Limpopo, and reported that nearly 900 learners still relied on six filthy pit toilets.

GroundUp sent the department questions about the schools not identified under the SAFE initiative; whether the DBE will be conducting a new audit to find out whether all pit toilets have been eradicate; and the challenges at schools with mobile toilets.

Ministerial spokesperson Lukhanyo Vangqa said the minister will make an announcement “on the SAFE Initiative eradication deadline” on 4 April.

“The announcement will substantively address the questions raised herein,” he said.

The Limpopo Department of Basic Education had not responded by the time of publication.

What the official statistics show

Using official sources of statistics The Outlier has created graphics showing government’s progress eliminating pit toilets in schools. The Outlier has given GroundUp permission to use these graphics. In the near future we will be trying to verify how closely these statistics match reality.

Note that the discrepancy in numbers between the map and graph below is because the graph is as of mid-2024 and the map is as of 21 February 2025.

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