LARRY CLAASEN: Sadtu can’t claim the success and disown the failures
The largest teachers union claims there is no evidence that it captured any of the provincial education departments. But it’s there in black and white
SA Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu) general secretary Mugwena Maluleke makes a few valid points, even if he undermines his message by invoking a mysterious, undefined "evil". In his response (published today, opposite) to the FM editorial of January 10, Maluleke says that a 2016 ministerial task team investigation of the alleged selling of teaching posts found no evidence of clear wrongdoing on the part of the union. That is right. But Maluleke neglects to mention that the task team did find evidence of Sadtu being in "de facto control" of the public education system in six of SA’s nine provinces. It is only in the Free State, the Northern Cape and the Western Cape that the education departments were still in control. And yet Maluleke says that "no evidence" was found of this control. If Sadtu members want to make sweeping claims about that report, I recommend they read it first.
But the seven-member task team, chaired by Dr John Volmink, went further. It concluded that Sadtu...
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