Address by the Deputy Minister of Economic Development, Prof Hlengiwe Mkhize, MP at the Randburg Parliamentary Office Top Achievers Function, Monte Casino
Honourable Member of Parliament, Mr Greg Schneeman,
Officials of the Department of Education,
Educators,
The Executives of Monte Casino,
Local Leadership,
Parents and distinguished learners.
It is an honour for me to participate in this august occasion to celebrate your outstanding achievement. Congratulations for your sterling achievement, you are indeed the winners. We are here to celebrate the determination to go an extra mile and achieve such honours.
Your generation has gone through a complex journey of curriculum and institutional changes of the post-apartheid education system. In 1994 we embarked on an uncertain journey to build a new non-racial, non-sexist and democratic and prosperous South Africa. Twenty years later, we have a lot to be proud of.
In the education field we had to overcome a system that was unequal, fragmented and designed to under-develop the black child and to teach the white child outdated ideas of racial superiority. Today, we can proudly say that we have a unified education system in which all children have a fair chance to access quality education irrespective of their race, gender or origin.
We have a single education system that aims to produce South Africans proud of their country, respectful of other cultures and tolerant of difference. Our children can compete in the globe and feel proudly South African.
Many more of our youth can access opportunities that were denied their parents and grandparents. We have more students in education than at any time in the history of South Africa. We have progressively improved our matric pass rates – achieving an unprecedented 73.9% in 2013.
Education reform has not been easy, but there are fundamental principles and values which anchor our transformation and take a long term perspective, as envisaged in the National Development Plan 2030. It is important for us to re-examine the Right to Education as enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. 1Section 29 of our constitution states that:
Everyone has the right to a basic education, including adult basic education. Admittedly, despite the progressive strides made towards ensuring that each child has access to basic education, penetrating questions remain unanswered:
1. Is the right to basic education limited to access? Or is excellence an integral component of that right?
2. Does the quality of our basic education system guarantee that right?
3. What is the impact of violence in our schools on the right to basic education?
In an attempt to protect and ensure the right to basic education, we have a responsibility to provide our learners with all the requisite support that will ensure that they not only access basic education but that they succeed. This includes: minimum standards of infrastructural requirements, dedicated teachers, availability of study material, safety in schools, and a security of a meal to ensure that the learners’ right to learn is upheld, as it was envisaged in the Freedom Charter of 1955: to “Open the Doors of Learning and Culture”.
While we all accept and respect Students Bill of Rights and Freedoms, I would like to remind each and every one of you, a call to responsibility, as in the Students’ Bill of Rights.
This Bill outlines the responsibilities that flow from the rights enshrined in our Constitution of the Republic of South Africa:
- My responsibility in ensuring the right to equality
- My responsibility in ensuring the right to human dignity
- My responsibility in ensuring the right to life
- My responsibility in ensuring the right to family or parental care
- My responsibility in ensuring the right to education
- My responsibility in ensuring the right to work
- My responsibility in ensuring the right to freedom and security of the person
- My responsibility in ensuring the right to own property
- My responsibility in ensuring the right to freedom of religion, belief and opinion
- My responsibility in ensuring the right to live in a safe environment
- My responsibility in ensuring the right to citizenship
- My responsibility in ensuring the right to freedom of expression
Success is a community effort. It requires dedicated learners, educators, parents, government officials, service providers, business, church leaders and the entire community. It also requires role models that reinvest in their communities and mentor the younger ones. We have seen South Africans from all segments of society working together to bring about improvements in our education system.
Having attained this momentous victory please do not falter but go forward to conquer the world and be the best that you can be. You inspire us to work more to fix the challenges in the education system and attain excellent results. I wish you well in your future endeavours and encourage you to work even harder in your future studies and careers.
I call on you to contribute to the continuous journey of building a democratic, non-racial and non-sexist South Africa. Be part of the solution rather than the problem. Care about your fellow human beings and the environment. Do not be pleased by success amidst failure. Many young people have died so that all of us today can enjoy a better life.
As Franz Fanon – an African revolutionary - once said, “each generation must find its mission, either betray it or fulfil it.”
In the wise words of U Tata Madiba, the founding father of our democracy:
“Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become head of a mine, that a child of a farm worker can become president of a great nation”.
Therefore if we are to build the society that we so badly desire than we must in word and deed reaffirm our unwavering commitment towards the right to learn of all humanity, not out of charity but because it is the surest route to our common good. It is on this basis that U Tata Madiba correctly asserts that “education is the most powerful tool you can use to change the world”.
Conclusion
To all of you the winners from the class of 2013, as you leave school, moving on to pursue post school opportunities, may you take charge of your education and cease your destinies. For you are all artists and the world is your canvas, may you paint a masterpiece that will leave the world and generations after you in awe.
I invite each and every one of you to read a book with a title, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful, by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter.
I thank you!
