Education the key to SA's future

He says that young people see corruption and government employment as the easiest way to disembark from the "poverty train" and "board the gravy train" without having to invest either time or money in studying.

Jansen says that this is extremely worrying, particularly when coupled with the fact that so many government officials are, at best, semi-literate and two of the "country's most influential politicians" can barely read or write.

Jansen points out that it's bizarre that rock-drillers at Lonmin's mines earn more than R12 500 a month when teachers, who are the custodians of future learning and have spent years studying, earn just a fraction of that.

Jansen may have hit one nail on the head but he's also missed a few.

Then, in another article currently in the media - you may have missed it - provincial government officials warn that at least 11 000 teachers in the Eastern Cape will lose their jobs because the province just hasn't got enough money to pay them.

Senior officials in the Eastern Cape's education department, including its own MEC, says it needs R3,4-billion to avoid firing the teachers. Opposition parties have urged that the department "to beg, borrow or make a deal" to secure the money. The officials themselves haven't come up with a plan other than to ask government for more money.

As Jansen says, there has been a shift in the "value" of public education where, for example, schools in the Northern Cape at Olifantshoek remained closed for months because the community wanted a tarred road in the town and wanted its mayor fired.

So the community stopped educating its children. What sort of logic is that?

Jansen says that education (and an honest day's work) is no longer seen as a route to flee the poverty trap and as a result it has less value to the community.

That's deeply disturbing because if education is seen as having no value then South Africa's future, as a powerhouse for economic development and a stable rainbow nation, is deeply threatened and it's just a matter of time before all our dreams are in tatters.

What really needs to be examined - in the words of activist and academic Mamphela Ramphele - is that South Africans themselves must now start demanding competent leaders. She was addressing delegates attending the 20th CEEMAN Annual Conference in Cape Town.

She says that there are many ways that South Africans can unite to demand competence from government and used the example of a small North West town, Sannieshof in Tswaing, where residents refused to pay rates and taxes because no services were delivered.

Ramphele stopped short of openly endorsing their actions - although she might have done so by implication - and went on to suggest that the private sector must now insist that the 1% levy on payroll be used for proper skills training instead of being wasted as it currently is.

She says that currently there are 800 000 vacancies for people with skills in South Africa and yet there are 600 000 graduates who cannot get jobs because they lack on-the-job experience.

I have no reason to doubt her figures but I have every reason to examine how a government, as rich as South Africa's, cannot see the total stupidity of its own approach to skills training and education.

Then with absolute amazement, I discover that President Jacob Zuma has been appointed as a United Nations "Champion" of education. The irony is absurd.

Here we sit with one top academic (Jansen) saying the education system has not only failed but that our young people have no faith in it. Then we have a second top academic, (Ramphele) saying that South Africans must use "other mechanisms" to demand better leadership (note: not the ballot box). Then we have a President who is honoured by the United Nations as a "champion" of education.

Fortunately some people in South Africa are mobilising their own resources to force changes: organisations like the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance, Section 27, Equal Education and the Legal Resource Centre to name a few. These organisations - and many others like them - are standing up and saying: "Enough is enough. We'll make this buck stop somewhere."

And that's the key to our survival. Every industry, every sector, every company (small or large) needs to mobilise itself and its associates to demand better government, better services and most of all, better education. And, to support this, every sector and every industry must start on-the-job training programmes for the young graduates who simply cannot get work.

Otherwise we're all on a highway to hell, with our tolls being paid in corruption, fraud and crime.