legislature taking legislature to the people, Kwangwanase
22 August 2006
Honourable Speaker
Members of the Executive Council
Honourable Members
Members of the public
Towards a KwaZulu-Natal free from illiteracy
I wish to invite Honourable Members to imagine being placed in a rural
Chinese village, where texts are written using Mandarin characters and Mandarin
being the only language spoken.
I doubt that there would be a handful of members, if any, who would be able
to read or write Mandarin in that or any other context for that matter. This
situation Mr Speaker is what between 1,5 million and 2 million citizens of
KwaZulu-Natal face on a daily basis because of not being able to read and write
in their own mother tongue. This represents between 17% and 22% of the total
population of KwaZulu-Natal.
Although the percentages of illiterate people living in rural districts -
between 26% and 46% - tends to be higher than the percentages of illiterate
people living in urban districts, which are between 8% and 12%, the absolute
number of people living in rural districts is lower than the number of people
living in some of the urban districts. In other words, the statistics indicate
that there is a higher concentration of illiterate people in eThekwini,
Msunduzi, Empangeni/Richards Bay and Newcastle, despite the percentage of
people who are illiterate being lower in these areas.
Mr Speaker, it is significant that the Legislature is meeting in the
District of Umkhanyakude. It is in this district that at 46%, we have the
highest rate of illiteracy in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. In the Age of
Hope, we can only but give hope to the people of this district in the message
we bring to this house today.
Illiteracy remains one the most devastating legacies of apartheid that we
have not yet dealt with in a decisive manner. Illiteracy is an affront to human
dignity and it cannot be left untouched. Section 29 (1) of our Constitution
declares that, "everyone has a right to a basic education, including adult
basic education". In that regard, then illiteracy is unconstitutional.
South Africa, as a whole and our province in particular, has committed
itself to the realisation of the education for all frameworks adopted in Dakar
in 2000 and the millennium development goals which call on all nations to half
the rate of illiteracy by 2015. We in KwaZulu-Natal want to do more than just
half illiteracy. We want to eradicate it by the end of the 2008/09 financial
year!
A Mass Campaign to eradicate illiteracy
When our people gathered to adopt the Freedom Charter in Kliptown in 1955,
they declared that, "the doors of learning and culture shall be opened". They
further stated that "adult illiteracy shall be ended by a mass state education
plan".
It gives me great pleasure to announce the Masifundisane Adult Literacy
Campaign to eradicate illiteracy in the KwaZulu-Natal province in the letter
and spirit of the injunction given to us by the Freedom Charter. We understand
a mass campaign to mean the mobilisation of large numbers of ordinary people to
a common cause of immense social value, in this case the eradication of
illiteracy.
Our country has enough experience of mass mobilisation. From the Defiance
Campaign of 1952, through to the mass organisations of the 1980s, we have
garnered sufficient experience and skill to mobilise our people toward a social
good. It is through mass mobilisation that we as a people removed what many
thought was the unmovable boulder of apartheid. Today apartheid is history,
tomorrow illiteracy will be history.
It is of crucial importance for us to understand where the masses are
located if we are to succeed in executing a mass campaign. We know that the
masses of our people can be found in various social organisations and
structures:
* in religious forums
* in villages, townships, informal settlements
* in community organisations
* in education institutions, etc.
We know that we cannot mobilise people into a monolithic force through
directives from the top. We have to organise the delivery of literacy teaching
and learning according to the specific identities, social locations and
geographic habitats of our people. This requires flexibility and adaptability
to the multiplicity of local contexts within which people live their daily
lives.
In this regard, I am calling on traditional leaders, the churches, the
mosques, the temples, the business sector, workers' organisations, education
institutions, government departments, community-based organisations, and all
organs of civil society to join us in this mass campaign to eradicate
illiteracy in our province. In the spirit of letsema-ilima, I call on
volunteers from all walks of life to give some of their time to this noble
cause. As the poet would say, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but
what you can do for your country."
In the spirit of the 1980s slogan of "each one, teach one", the
Masifundisane Adult Literacy Campaign is to be driven by the desire to involve
every one of our people who is willing and ready to contribute to this historic
mission.
The naming of this campaign as Masifundisane has been deliberate. In his
speech to departing Conrado Benitez Brigadistas in Varadero on 14 May 1961,
Fidel Castro had the following to say:
âYou are going to teach, but as you teach, you will also learn. You are
going to learn much more than you can possibly teach. Because while you teach
them what you have learned in school, they will be teaching you what they have
learned from the hard life that they have led. They will teach you the âwhyâ of
the revolution better than any speech, better than any book.â
In this quotation, it is evident that those who will teach the illiterate
how to read and write will also learn from the life experiences of those they
will be teaching. Castro's statement is fundamental in its implied assertion
that illiteracy does not equal ignorance. All involved will learn, they will
teach one another. Hence the appropriateness of "Masifundisane" "let us teach
one another.
The campaign will adopt the metaphoric structure of six "brigades" as our
primary form of organisation. We shall name the various brigades after deceased
prominent South Africans. We still need to consult the families of these heroes
and heroines before we make the names public. Because of the significance of
the literacy campaign, the provincial cabinet took a decision to name the
premier as the campaign commander.
In this regard, the premier will be the chief patron of the campaign and
will be regularly briefed by a Provincial Committee on Literacy, which will be
made up of the Office of the Premier, the Department of Education and key
stakeholders, and chaired by the MEC for Education, Honourable Ina Cronje.
The Provincial Literacy Committee, through the assistance of a Provincial
Literacy Secretariat which will run the day-to-day activities of the campaign,
will consult various organs of civil society to ensure maximum participation in
the campaign.
The Masifundisane Campaign will proceed on a staged basis, the first stage
beginning in September 2006 and ending in March 2007. The first stage will
largely be a gearing up stage, but will also target the first 40 000 illiterate
adults from age 15 upwards.
In regard to Government departments, I want to issue a directive that
requires them to ensure that by August 2007, there are no illiterate adults in
any of our provincial departments. All government cadres should be able to read
and write. Those government employees who are literate should volunteer to be
tutors in this regard.
A context-based literacy programme
Mr Speaker, I wish to briefly state my position in regard to the content of
the literacy programme under Masifundisane. The campaign has adopted the Global
Campaign for Education's International benchmarks on adult literacy (2005),
cited in the final report of the national Ministerial Committee on Literacy
June 2006, which states:
Literacy is about the acquisition and use of reading, writing and numeric
skills and thereby the development of active citizenship, improved health and
livelihoods and gender equality.
This understanding clearly requires us to go beyond merely learning the
alphabet and to locate the word in the world, as it were to teach literacy in
the context of the daily lives of those we are targeting through our campaign.
It requires us to teach the alphabet in the context of teaching about
citizenship and democracy, gender equality, health, HIV and AIDS, economic
functionality, social security and other key issues.
At the end of the campaign, a person should be able to read basic texts,
including religious texts, storybooks, school reports and instructions on
medicines. They should be able to write a simple biography of themselves in
order to define themselves, other than being defined by someone else. They
should be able to fill forms, such as social grant forms and bank forms.
Mr Speaker, it is these good tidings that I felt compelled to bring to the
people of Mkhanyakude and the people of KwaZulu-Natal. The people of our
province should see in concrete what it means to be a developmental province, a
province that puts them and their livelihoods at the centre of everything we
do.
As the song writer says:
God's spirit is in my heart. He's sent me to give the good news to the poor,
tell prisoners that they are prisoners no more, tell blind people that they can
see, and set the down-trodden free.
In the spirit of the Preamble to the Constitution, let us free the potential
of our people. Let KwaZulu-Natal be the first province to be declared a
territory free from illiteracy
I thank you.
Enquiries:
Thulani Sithole
Deputy Director: Media Liaison
Tel: (033) 341 3428
Cell: 082 3173727
E-mail: sitholtn@premier.kzntl.gov.za
Issued by: KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Government
22 August 2006
Source: SAPA
