Madam Speaker,
Honourable Premier,
Deputy Speaker,
Honourable Members of the,
Executive Council,
Honourable Members of the Legislature,
Invited guests from the education community including representatives of the Teacher Unions and Governing Body Associations Officials of the Department of Education.
Comrades and friends,
It’s an honour today to present to this house the education budget for Gauteng for 2013/14. This is the budget which will take us to the twentieth anniversary of our liberation. It also marks the 20th year of our democracy, and significantly in our context today the 20th year of education for all in South Africa, and, in Gauteng.
The opening of our schools to all of our children, the growth in opportunity this has meant for our people, and the contribution our schools and our teachers make every day to the growth and sustaining of our economy are all things we can be immensely proud of.
How far we have come, Honourable Speaker, becomes clear if we turn the clock back 19 years from 1994 as a mirror to today. Nineteen years ago, the schools in Soweto and many other parts of our province and the country were on the frontline of a popular uprising against apartheid that had lasted for almost twenty years.
There is no need to remind ourselves that school attendance by black children was not compulsory in those days, and indeed many children did not attend school regularly or at all.
Full Speech [PDF]
