‘I Am Forced To Speak Up'

A Cape Town principal pens a moving letter about his fear and frustration as schools reopen during the Covid-19 pandemic

- Kim Abrahams

Millions more children are returning to schools across the country – even as the Covid-19 infection rate continues to rise among both teachers and learners.

As the pandemic continues to hold South Africa in its steely grip, Envil Wertheim, principal of Aloe High School in Mitchell’s Plain in Cape Town, wrote an open letter to the department of education about the struggles his school faces.

In our school hallway hangs a picture of me smiling alongside Debbie Schäfer, the minister of education in the Western Cape, and head of education Brian Schreuder.

It was taken the day Aloe High School was invited to the premier’s official residence, Leeuwenhof, to receive an award for the most improved school in the province after our exceptional 2017 matric results.

My staff were lauded for their hard work and I was praised for being an inspirational leader.

But an optimistic leader is one I’m struggling to be right now. When I look around my school and consider the new batch of battles we are fighting, I’m concerned and angry.

It has little to do with how inadequately staffed we are or how the vast inequalities in our education system deny kids in impoverished areas access to better opportunities.

I won’t even discuss how the quintile system, which categorizes schools into five groups based on the relative wealth of their surrounding communities, entrenches poverty in our schools.

The very system that makes an absolute mockery of the department’s vision to “provide quality education for every child, in every classroom, in every school in the province”. These words offer nothing more than beautiful symmetry.