BRYAN ROSTRON: Suffer the little children, the DA has decided

It is commonly said that under the DA the Western Cape is better governed than other provinces, and that Cape Town stands out as SA’s most efficiently run city. Yet under the DA administered province and city there is a suppurating scandal involving small children that is met with total indifference. If that happened elsewhere the DA would be spluttering with rage. It is a staggering saga of bureaucratic neglect and official abuse.

Such is the administrative apathy that a superb crèche in a poor community struggled for more than a year to get fire certification. As with other vital matters, the municipality showed no interest in the welfare of 105 children between one and five years old. Repeated requests were ignored. I have seen spools as long as 30 emails as yet another official presses the send button for someone else to take over. This has been going on for years.

In 2014 I wrote an article in a Cape Town newspaper, asking: “If there was a fire and children died everyone would throw up their hands and wail; how did this happen? The answer is simple: blizzards of emails have no effect.” It is still the case in 2023, and this official lethargy creates multiple hurdles for Wavecrest Educare in Hangberg, a deprived community in Hout Bay.

It’s an incredible Catch-22. The landlord, the City of Cape Town, has never provided a lease for all the 43 years this registered crèche has paid rent. The Western Cape education department, under which the crèche now falls, has blocked Wavecrest’s monthly R39,000 grant since last June, as it wants copies of the lease, building plans and the zoning agreement. But the relevant department has lost the building plans. As for zoning, officials too lazy to check their own records even email to ask for the address from the Wavecrest principal.

The department knows about these intractable problems as the principal has written to it, but it does nothing. As a result, the department owes the crèche more than R300,000. It only keeps afloat via the small fee charged to parents, many of them unemployed, as well as regular fund-raising events. But mainly the crèche survives because the dedicated teachers and staff have all taken a large pay cut from their already modest salaries.

Full disclosure: I have been involved with Wavecrest for more than 15 years, and do so because the staff are so dedicated and look after those 105 kids with love and care. So, yes, I am angry. What is the cause of this abject failure? In 2014, I wrote: “Is it indolence, indifference or incompetence — or something worse? Do officials get away with this because they are dealing with women; gentle, devoted and kindly women? Or because the beneficiaries would be children who have no voice? Either way, it is abusive. Officially abusive.”

In that instance, the DA MEC phoned early the next morning and some problems were fixed. Soon, however, everything reverted to the usual official apathy. This time, staggeringly, the very willing media office couldn’t raise a response for publication from either the city or the Western Cape education department, despite weeks of notice. Our local DA councillor was little help — he didn’t answer emails from the principal. After I and another funder contacted him, he sent two brief emails asking someone else to deal with it. They didn’t.

Some weeks ago, a senior executive of a global asset management company and chair of a local children’s trust, wrote to our councillor objecting to being “gaslighted” by officials when asking questions about all these egregious lapses. He concluded: “Sorry. This is absolutely not acceptable. This is no way to run a city.”

As for desk-bound officials, you have to conclude that they simply don’t care. There has been some small advance. On January 25, after endless emails, the principal was informed that the city was processing a lease application. Since then, not a peep. Fire equipment was finally installed last Friday. At the same time, the crèche has been informed that there is no news about the building plans or zoning. So, once again, after over a year of effort by the principal and many months of agitation from me, Wavecrest is left in limbo.

Contradicting the biblical injunction “suffer the little children”, in this instance, and perhaps because it is a poor community, the DA’s attitude seems to be, let the children suffer.

• Rostron is a journalist and author. His latest book is a memoir, Lost on the Map