The DA has launched a campaign to eradicate pit latrines in schools, saying it intends to take legal action at national level to compel provincial education departments to provide pupils with safe toilets.
Its announcement, timed to coincide with Human Rights Day, follows the death earlier this month of four-year-old Langalam Viki, who drowned in a pit toilet at Mcwangele Primary School in Eastern Cape.
While public interest group Section 27 secured a high court order in Limpopo in 2021 compelling the provincial education department to eradicate pit latrines and provide schools with safe toilets, the ruling is limited to Limpopo and has no direct bearing on other provinces. The Human Rights Commission has also looked into the issue, but has yet to take legal action.
The DA is now seeking legal advice on how to tackle the issue nationally, and compel the government to erect proper sanitation facilities for all schoolchildren as a fundamental human right, said party leader John Steenhuisen.
The DA had for several years asked questions in parliament about the elimination of pit toilets in all provinces, and the replies indicated there had been little or no progress, he said.
“It is clear that while the ANC national government has cut education budgets to bail out ailing state-owned entities and presided over government departments where billions have been lost to corruption, it does not care that young children do not have a safe place to relieve themselves in dignity without the threat of death,” he said, shortly after visiting the bereaved family.
“The drowning of our children in pit toilets goes far beyond a human rights violation — it is a horror that no South African should ever be forced to contemplate,” he said.”
Section 27 announced on Tuesday that it will launch an online tracker later this week to monitor the progress made by the Limpopo education department in complying with the 2021 court order to eliminate unsafe and undignified school sanitation.
The Michael Komape Sanitation Progress Monitor, named after the five-year-old child whose death by drowning in a school pit latrine sparked the court case, will be used to track the department’s progress. Its first deadline is to replace pit toilets in all schools that rely solely on this method of sanitation by March 31.
“Learners should not have their lives threatened and cut short in violent and avoidable ways. The Department of Education has a constitutional obligation to protect the rights of learners at schools,” said Section 27.
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