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Eldorado Park school learners continue to suffer terrible learning conditions

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Eldorado Park school learners continue to suffer terrible learning conditions:

Dear Editor

Eldorado Park learners are being taught in a terrible and unconducive learning environment. This was discovered during the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) oversight inspections at Nancefield Primary School, Parkdale Primary School, and Kliptown Secondary School to assess schools’ readiness.

Nancefield Primary School has a severe shortage of chairs for the learners, even after the school had to borrow 100 chairs from a neighbouring school. This school also faces uncertainty because the company that provides the mobile classrooms is threatening to remove them due to non-payment by the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE).

In Kliptown Secondary School and Parkdale, learners continue being taught in asbestos classrooms which is a risk to their health and safety. In addition, the classrooms are overcrowded, there is a shortage of toilets, and there is no feeding scheme. There are over 1200 learners at Kliptown Secondary School, which has only 10 toilets each for boys and girls.

No nutritional support at Kliptown Secondary School is a slap in the face of those in desperate need of the feeding scheme. We will, therefore, be exerting pressure on the GDE to lower its quintile level and provide the needed diet.

The DA demands that the Gauteng MEC for Education, Matome Chiloane, prioritise the completion of Nancefield Primary School. Providing a permanent facility will remove the uncertainty about the school and it will ensure learners have access to a safe and secure learning environment.

The DA will further continue to put pressure on MEC Chiloane to accelerate the eradication of asbestos classrooms, which are a clear violation of human rights. We will insist that the department build more classrooms and provide regular and proper maintenance.

We will also be tabling questions in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature (GPL) to both the MEC for Education and Infrastructure Development to ascertain whether a contractor has been appointed to complete the construction of Nancefield Primary School.

Regards

Sergio Dos Santos MPL
DA Gauteng Spokesperson for Education

– MyZA

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From Sophiatown to Triomf

By 1963, Sophiatown had been physically razed to the ground. In a final act of psychological warfare, the government built a white working-class suburb over the rubble and named it Triumph (Triomf). They wanted to erase the very memory of Sophiatown from the landscape. For decades, the name Sophiatown disappeared from maps, replaced by the neat, sterile streets of the victors.

The “resurrection” of Sophiatown began officially in 2006, when the City of Johannesburg formally restored the original name to the suburb. Today, the neighborhood is a quiet, leafy residential area, but the ghosts of the “Paris of the Transvaal” are everywhere. The Sophiatown Heritage Centre, housed in the former home of Dr. A.B. Xuma (a former ANC president), is one of the few original buildings that escaped the bulldozers. Walking through the streets today, you can still find small markers of the past: a lone Victorian pillar, a specific tree mentioned in a poem, or the rebuilt St. Joseph’s Church.

The legacy of Sophiatown is not just one of tragedy, but of an indestructible cultural spirit. The music, the slang (Tsotsitaal), and the “Drum” era aesthetic continue to influence South African fashion and film today. It serves as a reminder that while you can bulldoze a house and rename a street, you cannot kill the soul of a place that once danced to the sound of a thousand saxophones.