Pretoria - Unisa graduate Mbali Zitha has a bachelor and Honours degree, but is yet to find a job.
Zitha was one of the unemployed educators who this week marched to the Department of Basic Education in Pretoria demanding jobs. It is believed the sector has 24 000 vacancies.
“It has been a painful experience since I graduated in 2018.” Zitha said.
“I left people in tertiary when I graduated, but today they are working and I am still waiting on the database. My grandmother who raised me died without seeing me go to work as an educator. I could not even buy her a bed.“
She is qualified to teach English, life orientation, and economics and management sciences.
Another Unisa graduate, Asnath Matso, said she had not worked since graduating in 2019, and was unable to provide for her children and parents.
She said she would have been employed had she studied through the Funza Lushaka bursary.
She is qualified to teach maths and English.
Lindiwe Sehlago, also a Unisa graduate, is qualified to teach English, isiZulu, nature sciences and life orientation.
She said: “This has affected me psychologically, because I was working hard and paying my school fees, and today I cannot find work but the country needs educators. I am hurt and disappointed.”
The unemployed educators, dressed in graduation gowns, joined forces with Mmusi Maimane’s Build One SA to picket outside the department’s offices in Pretoria.
Under the banner of the Unemployment Educators’ Movement of South Africa, they said the Department of Education was prioritising the Funza Lushaka bursary beneficiaries, despite its obligation to ensure that all educators were shortlisted and employed fairly.
They said the department’s employment strategy lacked transparency and formal processes, and therefore there were unequal employment opportunities for qualified educators across all provinces.
They sought to alert the department to alleged corruption in schools and districts where school principals, school governing body members and district officials sold posts to unemployed educators.
The group also complained that the department did not cater for educators whose subjects were phased out and had no plan or alternative solutions, making many educators redundant despite their experience or qualifications.
The protesters also claimed that subjects were often allocated to educators who were not qualified to teach them, which was an obstacle to providing quality education.
Maimane, joined by former Tshwane mayor Stevens Mokgalapa, called on the department to do an audit of the teacher intake process, the ratio of qualified educators to learners in the country, and subject allocation to unqualified educators.
He said it did not make sense to have more than 24 000 educator vacancies while many graduates were jobless, classes were overcrowded and the quality of education was so poor that pupils could pass a subject with a mere 30% mark.
David Ntloane from the Department of Basic Education, said they were dealing with the matter and engaging the educators’ movement and did not expect the involvement of Maimane’s organisation.
Pretoria News