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- COSATU Today -
Our side of the story
Friday 3 July 2009
Contents
1 Workers' news
1.1 Strike vultures meet over SAFCEC carcass
2 South Africa
2.1 Davie Swart Case at Madibeng Magistrate Court on 7TH July 2009
2.2 Who is in charge?
2.3 ANC YL on nationalisation of mines and response to ANC SG
2.4 Closing Address to Teacher Development Summit
3 Announcements
1 Workers' news
<http://www.num.org.za/>
1.1 Strike vultures meet over SAFCEC carcass
Lesiba Seshoka, Head: NUM Media & Communications, 2 July 2009
Over a hundred construction shop stewards belonging to the National
Union of Mineworkers (NUM) are to meet this Saturday in Johannesburg in
final preparation of the national strike set for next Wednesday.
The meeting will tackle strategies and plans of coordinating the massive
strike aimed at the South African Federation of Civil Engineering
Contractors (SAFCEC) in which over 70 000 construction workers will
partake.
The strike, the first of its kind will go ahead amid threats by SAFCEC
of declaring it illegal. Meanwhile, the NUM has appointed a Senior
Counsel to meet SAFCEC attorneys in the Labour Court tomorrow.
"We are excited that SAFCEC has stopped issuing an interdict in the
media as they have now issued it to those who understand the law" says
Bhekani Ngcobo, the NUM Negotiator at SAFCEC.
"Our lawyers are now dealing with the matter, whilst we are
concentrating on mobilizing our workers for a complete shut down. SAFCEC
must expect no mercy from us by close of business tomorrow. Our doors
are now officially shut unless they bring the extra 3% to make 13%" says
Ngcobo.
2 South Africa
2.1 Davie Swart Case at Madibeng Magistrate Court on 7TH July 2009
Solly Phetoe, COSATU North West Provincial Secretary, 2 July 2009
COSAT U, led by its General Secretary, Zwelinzima Vavi, will be
demonstrating, picketing and marching to the Madibeng (Brits) Magistrate
Court on Tuesday 7th July 2009. The march will start from the taxi rank
next to Madibeng NUMSA Local Office from 8h30.
We call on COSATU members, churches, civil society and business people
in the area of Madibeng to join the fight against exploitation, racism
and killing of farm workers by white farmers.
We will be demanding the withdrawal of the bail against Davie Swart, for
his arrest, and for his case to be referred to the High Court in
Pretoria.
COSATU in North West Province is also requesting all its members to
attend the funeral of a farm worker who was killed on 22nd June 2009 at
Logageng next to Mafikeng on 4th July 2009.
For more information feel free to call Comrade Solly Phetoe, 082 304
4055.
2.2 Who is in charge?
Patrick Craven, COSATU National Spokesperson, 2 July 2009
COSATU has noted the constant stream of articles and 'expert' analysis
suggesting that President Jacob Zuma has become a 'puppet' or 'stooge'
of COSATU House and/or Luthuli House.
The theme was encapsulated by the City Press, which on 14 June asked:
"Zuma or Gwede - who is in charge?" It went on: "ANC secretary-general
Gwede Mantashe appears to be usurping the powers of President Jacob Zuma
in a blurring of lines between party and state. Increasingly, decisions
and meetings that ordinarily are handled at the Union Buildings are
taking place at Luthuli House. This raises the question: Who is actually
running the country - Mantashe or Zuma?"
This, and many other similar articles, arise from the new government's
insistence that all government ministers and departments should be open
to scrutiny and monitoring, to ensure that they are carrying out the
policies in the ANC election manifesto.
These policies are what 65% of voters voted for and for which they gave
a mandate to the government. So it is entirely correct for the President
to set up structures to guarantee that government delivers what the
people voted for.
These structures are both inside and outside government. Under the
Presidency are the National Planning Commission and the Performance
Monitoring and Evaluation & Administration structure. Outside government
are the ANC and its Alliance partners.
These are not in conflict but are led by the same President Zuma and
will all work together to ensure that the highest possible level of
accountability are adhered to.
There is absolutely no problem with this. It is fully in the spirit of
the Polokwane resolutions that the movement which fought and won the
election should take responsibility for monitoring the work of those it
deployed to government.
This will prevent the type of elitist, top-down method of policy making
that characterise the previous government, which contributed very much
to the changes agreed by the delegates at the ANC Conference.
Given that the President of the country is also President of the ANC,
the absurdity of the City Press question becomes clear. The role of
Secretary-General, Gwede Mantashe, as part of the ANC collective
leadership, is to articulate the views of the organisation, which is
headed by its president, Jacob Zuma. How can the President be a 'stooge'
of himself?
The reality is that this new approach to governance is blowing a
refreshing breeze of transparency and democracy into the way decisions
are made and policies are implemented. It enables the people of South
Africa, through their representative organisations, to blow the whistle
on any back-sliding by government ministers or any attempts to smuggle
in new policies, in the way that GEAR and privatisation were imposed
without consultation in the late 1990s.
The Alliance has a central role to play in this process. It was set up
with the aim of becoming a political centre, which would be the main
driving force taking forward the national democratic revolution. For
many years it was thwarted from playing this role, and marginalised from
policy making. Not only the SACP and COSATU but the ANC itself were
marginalised and ignored.
Today the Alliance has never been stronger and healthier. It is involved
in discussions with government on all spheres of policy and is already,
just two months after the elections, making a positive contribution,
helping government to tackle the many huge challenges they face.
That does not mean that there will not at times be disagreements
between, or even within, the alliance partners. But this is an essential
part of the democratic process, in which policies are adopted by
consensus after extensive healthy consultation and debate.
Do the critics and scaremongers want to stifle this democratic process
and revert to a situation where government is answerable to no-one until
they go back to the polls in five years time?
The media, and the political commentators, will certainly not want to
give up its right to criticise and seek to influence government policy,
so why should far more representative bodies like the Alliance partners,
and the millions of South Africans that they represent, be denied the
same right?
The Alliance is in better shape than ever and it will be around for
many, many years, speaking for the workers and the poor majority of
South Africans.
2.3 ANC YL on nationalisation of mines and response to ANC SG
Floyd Shivambu, ANC YL National Spokesperson, 2 July 2009
The ANC YL is disappointed by the response of ANC Secretary General
Gwede Mantashe to the call made by ANC YL President for the ANC
government to start considering nationalisation of mines in line with
the Freedom Charter. The ANC YL has a right to call for the
Nationalisation of Mines, particularly in response to the global
financial crisis and job losses in the mining sector.
It is not a reflection of reality that the ANC 52ND National Conference
did not resolve on the issue, because Conference re-affirmed the Freedom
Charter as the strategic goal of the ANC, and the Freedom Charter is
categorical in affirming that "the Mineral Wealth beneath the soil,
monopoly industries and banks should be transferred to the ownership of
the people as a whole". The ANC YL is reviving this call because we are
very concerned by the massive job losses in the mines, while the big
mining corporations continue to make profits. We believe that
ultimately, the people of South Africa should share and benefit from
South Africa's mineral wealth. It can never be correct that our
communities, particularly next to Mines, live in absolute poverty whilst
the big mining corporations make big profits.
We would further like to request the SG of the ANC to directly engage
with the ANC YL if he has different perspectives, and withdraw from
engaging us through the media. We have since requested a meeting with
officials of the ANC to discuss all these issues, but SG chooses to
communicate with the ANC YL through the media.
The ANC YL will continue to canvass its views and call for the
realisation of the Freedom Charter objectives and we do not need
permission from anyone to think.
2.4 Closing Address to Teacher Development Summit
Dr BE Nzimande MP, Minister of Higher Education and Training, 2 July
2009
I am honoured to be given the opportunity today to close this
important event and to support and provide you with some views on how we
can collectively take this very important matter of teacher development
to a higher level. I am pleased to see teacher unions working
collectively with government and academics for a common goal. Working
together, it is possible for us to do more and better.
Despite the many changes and improvements in the SA education system and
the system of teacher education and development over the last 15 years,
our schooling system is still recognisably the system which was designed
and shaped by apartheid.
Great inequities continue and are tied closely to the racial divisions
of apartheid and the rural-urban divide. When we say 'rural schools' we
generally mean the schools in the former Bantustans and in farm schools
which cater to the rural poor. We don't mean the schools that white
farmers send their children to. These former Bantustan and farm schools
are the poorest schools and, on the whole, provide low quality
education.
In the urban areas, the schools in townships and informal settlements
are obviously still inferior to the former white schools in the quality
of education that they provide. Division on the basis of race seem to be
transmuting into class divisions as the private and former Model C
absorb sections of the black middle class.
Teacher education and development processes must assist us to overcome
the legacy of the past which has ensured that most poor children still
do not get the education that they deserve. These processes must help to
produce teachers that have the skills, the knowledge and the commitment
to give South Africa's children the opportunity to improve their life
circumstances and contribute to our country's development.
I am heartened to learn of the fruitful discussions over the past two
days that led to the declaration of the summit. The declaration
expresses the common will of the principal stakeholders and other
participants to work together to progressively achieve an effective and
integrated system of teacher development that is relevant to teachers'
working conditions, helps our teachers meet their needs for professional
growth and empowers them to prepare our learners to excel. I have no
hesitation therefore in fully supporting these intentions.
In stating this, I have taken account of the principles that underpin
the discussions of the last few days. In this regard, the summit's
working document identifies five principles, namely:
First, teachers individually and collectively have responsibility for
their professional development, and their efforts must be adequately
resourced by government.
Second, it is essential to create a clear, coherent and implementable
policy and regulatory environment for both teacher appraisal and teacher
development, which teachers and role-players can easily understand and
with which they can readily engage.
Third, schools are where teachers learn and practice their profession
and develop their skills, values and identities. In different schools,
teachers work in different contexts and have different needs.
Fourth, teacher development provision for state-employed teachers must
be properly funded as a national competence in order to meet identified
needs and priorities. In this regard, national and provincial education
departments must have strong and credible teacher development and
support capacity. This implies that the current arrangements for teacher
development must be rationalized and strengthened.
Finally, the strengthened, integrated national plan for teacher
development must provide a plan for the development of robust human
resource management and information systems. These must facilitate
equitable and efficient provision of teacher development and relate key
decisions affecting teacher development to the broader context of
teacher supply, utilization and demand.
My understanding is that the summit is agreeing on the need for a more
holistic approach to teacher development that involves all partners;
teachers, school management, provincial and national education
departments, non-governmental service providers, teacher unions, and
statutory organizations such as SACE, ELRC, the ETDP SETA and
Universities. In this regard, we should also consider what role SGBs,
parents and communities can play in supporting teachers and their
professional development. We must think creatively about these things
since communities, many of which contain retired teachers, workers and
professionals of every kind, often have skills that they can offer to
schools and to teachers.
I have noted how the summit has also agreed on a common definition for
teacher development; which is the interplay of the three elements of
professional development; psychological development; and career-cycle
development.
It is important that teacher development is embedded in curriculum
implementation; which focuses attention on content knowledge, teaching
and learning strategies, assessment, as well as learner support among
others. The notion of teacher development starts with curriculum
implementation - How well are teachers implementing the curriculum? How
do we know this (hence the need for evaluation)? How do we improve
(teacher development and support)?
This definition of teacher development reinforces again the notion of
integration and the partnerships that will required for successful
implementation.
This notion of teacher development as a coherent and holistic concept
requires us to focus on the need to develop innovative institutional
arrangements that can ensure a close link for example, between teacher
education and on-going professional development of teachers.
To this end, consideration must be given to the use of a diversity of
education institutions to serve as both sites of pre-service teacher
education and as sites of teacher professional development.
In addition, greater use of distance education and information
communication technology (ICT) needs to be considered to promote the
delivery of teacher education and professional development.
In the democratic era, teacher education became a national rather than a
provincial competence. This resulted in the former colleges of education
becoming incorporated into the higher education institutions. Given that
most teachers in SA are employed by provincial education departments, it
is important that the departments and the universities in their
provinces develop close, working partnerships and engage in some joint
planning. This is important to ensure that provinces have an adequate
supply of teachers, that the supply of teachers isaligned to curriculum
needs and that the training provided to student teachers is relevant to
the needs of the schools.
While the decision to make teacher education a national competence has
benefited the discipline of education, it is evident that there have
been some unintended consequences of the incorporation of the colleges
of education into the universities.
The resolutions of the Polokwane conference both commit government to
re-examining the issue of reopening some of the teacher training
colleges. The elected government, and especially the two education
departments, must do this.
The first step in any assessment of whether colleges should be re-opened
is to look at why they were closed in the first place. There were
basically two reasons. Firstly, the quality of the teacher training
provided by most of the colleges was considered to be very low.
Students, we were told, were not encouraged to become critical and
creative teachers with the ability to take initiatives to improve their
own practice - and often with poor subject knowledge compared with
university graduates. Secondly, the training provided in the colleges
was very expensive when measured on a per-capita basis, mainly because
most colleges catered for fairly small numbers of students.
The next thing we should examine is why there is dissatisfaction with
the current arrangements - something which has led to calls for the
re-opening of colleges. As far as I can tell, the main reasons here are
also two-fold. Firstly, the 150-odd colleges were scattered across the
country and were more accessible - especially to rural communities. The
universities are much less accessible, both geographically and in terms
of their enrolment requirements - including, but not limited to, the
issue of fees.
Secondly, it is clear that we have been having problems producing enough
teachers to meet the needs of the schooling system. Following the
incorporation in 2001, service bursary schemes for teachers, which were
previously offered to all students entering the teaching profession were
withdrawn. This resulted in a radical reduction in the number of teacher
education students. One of the major impacts of this has been a reduced
supply of new teachers coming into the system. Not surprisingly, the
closure of teacher-training capacity in the form of the colleges has
been blamed for this.
To resolve these problems do we need to reopen the colleges? Or can we
use the current providers of teacher education (i.e. the universities)
and expand their capacity to include rural delivery sites, make their
enrolment practices more user friendly to poor people and continue
expanding our new Fundza Lushaka bursary scheme which has already
demonstrated its ability to expand enrolments? We need to examining
these issues carefully and we will do so.
Another thing that strikes me about the university education faculties
is that many of them have limited expertise - or even interest in
primary school teaching. It is worth reflecting that not one SA
university has a Chair in primary education - and most spend little
energy on teaching students to teach reading, writing or numeracy; they
also conduct little research in this areas. Despite very extensive
research evidence that mother-tongue instruction could improve the
quality of learning of our youngest learners, universities have been
closing down or cutting back their African language departments. Does
this make sense in the wake of a successful national liberation
struggle?
What we must assess is whether the universities can overcome these
weaknesses - with the assistance of government if needs be. Would it be
a good idea to introduce incentives to ensure that universities
strengthen their primary school teaching capacity - especially for the
foundation phase?
I believe that it is necessary, in the time ahead to examine these
various options in detail and to consider the educational and economic
implications and benefits of each, in the light of local and
international studies of best practice balanced by the needs of our
teachers and education system as a whole. We must keep in mind that,
given the current deepening economic crisis, any decisions we make will
also have to take into account the issue of finance.
In so doing, I would like to suggest therefore that we examine the best
South African and international practice in teacher education and
professional development. The ELRC, and others have undertaken
considerable research about a number of countries and we should distil
the relevant lessons from those experiences. In particular we should
consider the experiences of countries such as Cuba, India and Mexico
which have explored innovative models for teacher education and
development, including the use of distance education and ICT.
Before I leave you, let me speak about something that is often left
silent in technical discussions about teacher development. Although
teacher education courses must provide a good grounding in content and
methodology they must be careful to take seriously their
responsibilities to address issues of both values and professional
ethics. If teachers are not really committed to educating their students
and putting a lot of effort into this, no amount of re-organisation,
curriculum change, school management theory or quality assurance will
help.
Teachers must see themselves, in the context of national renewal and
development, as the nation's main instruments to achieve transformation
and liberation. Most SA children are disadvantaged - they are the
children of the working class and the poor - and a good education is one
of their only pathways out of poverty and towards a more fulfilling
life.
And once they get into schools, teachers need to support each other by
working as collectives to ensure that they refine their skills and also
help to keep each other's spirits and commitment high. This collectivity
in each school is as important for teacher development as are training
courses and should be taken seriously.
After the four days of deliberations, as a collective I trust that we
will emerge from the Summit with a better understanding of the gains
that have been made over the past decade and a half and also that we
will have a clearer of the challenges ahead. We have identified major
weaknesses and obstacles that impede progress and have agreed on some
specific actions that should be taken and these are embodied in the
joint declaration.
I am hopeful that any tensions or contradictions that have emerged from
the summit can be resolved in the spirit of working together for a
common cause. Similarly, I trust that we have also clarified our
respective roles and responsibilities and commit ourselves to a
realistic programme of action that will lead to the overall goal of a
quality teacher development system that is functional, coherent,
effective and, most of all, valued by our teachers.
I thank you.
3 Announcements
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