Education budget cuts are ‘a disaster’, says archbishop

Anglican archbishop of Cape Town Archbishop Thabo Makgoba says the government’s failure to increase funding for provincial education departments to cover the full costs of salary increases has thrown the education sector into a funding crisis.

The Western Cape education department said 2,400 teaching posts would be cut in 2025 because of a R3.8bn budget shortfall over the next three years.

“In the sea of unemployment in which we are drowning, cutting education budgets spells disaster. If we are to educate a modern workforce, we should be increasing investment in education, not reducing it. Adopting ‘austerity measures’ in the fields of education, health and social welfare is a recipe for trouble,” Makgoba said.

The artchbishop was speaking at the opening of the church's 37th session of the provincial synod in the Western Cape.

Makgoba, who heads the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, which includes dioceses in SA, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and St Helena — said the effects of unemployment, low wages and poor economic growth were seen in the shocking levels of poverty in the different nations.

“The unemployment rate in the other nations of our [church] province is just as distressing. In Namibia it is about 33.5% and in Lesotho and Eswatini, it is only a little better — 24.6% in Lesotho (but youth unemployment is extremely high, at about 30%-35%) and 28% in Eswatini.

“SA, a country blessed by natural resources, is blighted by the fact that nearly 40% of people earn less than R65 a day and 60% earn less than R125.”

He said in Lesotho, poverty was more severe, with a staggering 27% of the population living on less than R33 a day, while more than half lived on less than R56 a day.

“In Eswatini about 59% of people live below the national poverty line and 20.1% live in extreme poverty. In Namibia, about 27.8% of the population lives below the national poverty line.”

According to Makgoba, by any definition, great numbers of people are chronically poor and vulnerable. 

“And while unemployment on St Helena is lower, the cost of living is high, due to the cost of importing most of their requirements, forcing people to emigrate to be able to afford housing. We also cannot live lives of abundance if our environment continues to deteriorate the way it is doing as climate change alters weather patterns, creating different kinds of hardship.”

Makgoba urged parishes and dioceses to continue engaging in projects such as tree-planting to “rescue our environment”. He has urged South Africans to join the new cleaning and beautification of SA initiative.

He said a nationwide programme of cleanup and beautification activities, endorsed by the SA Council of Churches, would be launched on October 12.

“I want to encourage our young people especially to see cleaning up our suburbs, townships, cities and villages across Southern Africa as a ‘cool’ activity,” he said. 

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