National Basic Education Department to be approached to intervene in Phoenix High School crisis

Repeated attempts by AfriForum’s Private Prosecution Unit to get the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) to meet with the Phoenix High School’s Governing Body (SGB) have fallen on deaf ears. It has become abundantly clear that political considerations to the detriment of the school community overshadow the very real prospect of hundreds of learners being left without a place to learn and develop. The next step for the unit is to approach the National Department of Basic Education for its urgent intervention.

The unit first wrote to the GDE as well as the provincial government on 4 October imploring it to meet with the SGB. The school has been trying for nearly a decade to resolve issues related to the ownership of the land upon which the school is built, which now threatens the very existence of this facility which serves a disadvantaged community.

The Phoenix High School is located in Vereeniging. It is the former Hoër Tegniese Skool Vereeniging but was changed to an English medium school in 2013, and renamed Phoenix, to serve the disadvantaged community. About 900 learners attend the school.

The school has fallen into disrepair because of the uncertainty created by the land ownership question. The SGB further states that the GDE has withheld laptops, tablets and other advanced learning material citing the uncertainty of the school’s future, which is directly linked to the land question.

In a follow-up letter, the unit head, Adv. Gerrie Nel, wrote: “We remain steadfast in our commitment to protecting Phoenix High School’s and its learners’ rights. Years of inaction and the ostrich approach to this issue create the ineluctable inference of a deliberate failure in the hope that this will go away. We will support our client’s endeavours to ensure a better future for the school and its learners, and we will not go away.

“We reiterate our request for a high-level meeting between the government and the School Governing Body to address the school’s current predicament. We implore the government to interrogate and remedy the historical wrong where government land found its way into private hands and reiterate that this peculiar transaction now clearly prejudices the future of a no-fee school and its learners.”

Upon his recent election as premier of the province, former Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi vowed to “prioritise education as a catalytic driver of the province’s economic development”. Such apparent commitment stands in stark contrast to the posture adopted when dealing with Phoenix High School. The irresistible inference is that there are considerations which outweigh the educational needs of nearly a thousand children, and those considerations are invariably political.

The transfer of the land occurred peculiarly. The peculiarity of the transaction may explain the unwillingness of the GDE and politicians to deal with the plight of the school.

The land is owned by Erf 4 & 6 Duncanville Vereeniging (Pty). Mohammed Essop Dockrat is one of its directors and signed the lease of the land to the GDE on behalf of the lessee. The developer, which has conducted site inspections at the school and handled town planning matters on behalf of the landowner, is A4 Advisory and Consulting with Attiya Dockrat as its sole director. Records show this business share the same business address and operate from the same premises as Sedgars and Sedtrade.

The Dockrat family have previously been tied to alleged corruption controversies involving senior ANC figures, Ace Magashule and Fikile Mbalula.

We are left with no choice but to raise this issue at a national level in the hope the plight of the school is taken seriously. Consideration is also given to approach the courts to force the GDE, by way of a mandamus, to just do their duty. “It has become characteristic of government to ignore problems in the hope that it will go away or be replaced by something even bigger,” says the spokesperson for the Private Prosecution Unit, Barry Bateman.

“The failure of the GDE to address the precarious position the school finds itself in and the peculiarity of the transaction where government-owned land was sold to a private entity only to be leased back, will not go away.”

At an event in August this year, Minister Angie Motshekga said that the “transformative nature of basic education requires us to increase opportunities to access education for … the poor and the vulnerable … We must find innovative solutions to bridge the gap between … rich and poor schooling communities.”

In July, at another event, she said: “We must look at critical transformative tools such as access to schooling amongst poor households and quality education provided to … impoverished neighbourhoods.”

“Phoenix High School, its learners and their parents fall squarely within these categories that require attention. We will ask Motshekga to do what the GDE has failed to do for nearly a decade,” concludes Bateman.