Hundreds of blind and deaf pupils in Polokwane are living in squalor at a derelict temporary school with almost no water, collapsing mobile classrooms with holes in the floors and ceilings, exposed electrical wires, broken toilets and missing taps.
Rubbing salt into their wounds is the fact that their neighbour, Hwiti High School, is a fully functional school with running water.
Pupils at the school, Setotolwane Elsen (learners with special education needs) Secondary, told the Sunday Times how they have in the past had to fetch water for drinking, bathing and flushing from a pipe at a nearby cemetery.
In winter, classrooms get so cold that pupils’ fingers are too numb for them to read braille. In summer, stifling hot classrooms force them to learn outside or cancel classes.
A recent visit by the Sunday Times to the school during the last week of exams revealed horrific conditions. An overwhelming stench came from the boys’ dormitory toilets, where the floors were covered in urine. Showers and taps had no water.
“It is traumatising,” a partially blind 20-year-old female matriculant told the Sunday Times, referring to using water from a cemetery. “We have lots of thoughts about it, especially that there are dead people there, we share water with them [the dead] because we have no choice.”
The school has 259 pupils, 254 of whom are boarders and five day scholars. Some 168 are deaf, 51 completely blind and 40 partially blind. Some pupils also have albinism.
Staff and pupils moved out of their previous premises in Mashashane in 2016 after that building was declared “unsafe for human habitation”.
‘Temporary’ basis
They were moved to the present site at Hwiti High School on a “temporary” basis. The two schools are separated by a fence.
Hwiti pupils have access to running water. However, Setotolwane pupils live in hazardous dormitories and study in old, makeshift classrooms.
For the past eight years they have been waiting for the Limpopo education department to move them to a safer building.
The Polokwane municipality sends water tankers to the school, however pupils said delivery was inconsistent, forcing them to sometimes fetch water from the cemetery. They claimed there had been no running water at the school since last year.
Staff and pupils are served by three 5,000l tanks and a single tap behind the girls’ dormitory.
Representative Council of Learners (RCL) secretary Thabo Mahlangu, 18, a grade 11 pupil with total blindness, spoke on behalf of the pupils.
“It has been very terrible. The water situation has been the worst. We are not happy at all. It is already a norm, but it is not easy to get used to it.”
The Sunday Times visited the ablution facilities at the boys’ dormitory. The restroom comprises “dry” showers opposite a row of dilapidated toilets. Puddles of urine between the showers and toilets led to the urinal, where urine flowed on the floor. The ceiling was damaged and birds were nesting in the roof.
Every morning the boys wash there in plastic buckets and brush their teeth. “The stench is terrible,” Mahlangu said. “It is a quick in and out situation because you are inhaling the stench while brushing your teeth.”
Highly vulnerable
Deaf and partially blind pupils said their totally blind peers were highly vulnerable when there was no water. One recalled helping a totally blind pupil remove faeces from her hands with toilet paper.
“The poor kid was so scared. She mistakenly touched the wall and rubbed the poo on it. We [girls] wiped her hands with a tissue. There was nothing else we could do. We had no water.”
Pupils are accommodated in three old dormitories. Some rooms have no doors. Pupils were writing their exams in mobile classrooms with damaged ceilings and pink insulation hanging from the roof. The floors in some of the classrooms were sunken.
In April, deaf pupil Tebogo Williams, 14, died following an outbreak of chickenpox, although an environmental health practitioner’s investigative report does not confirm the cause of death.
Around the time of Williams’s death, RCL president Solomon Mabula, 19, who is partially blind, declared a boycott of classes in protest at the lack of water.
It is understood that the day before the protest, the single tap supplying the school was down to a trickle. It later dried up and so did the tanks.
An insider said the school had to divert money from its grocery budget to refill the water tanks.
School government board (SGB) member Robert Maake said: “Our school has been without water for quite a long time, but when we contacted the Polokwane municipality they told us that they do not know us because the premises we are occupying belong to Hwiti High School.”
He said the Limpopo education department had promised to drill a borehole, but had not done so.
Maake said the school was supposed to have occupied the temporary premises for three or four years and then move into new premises.
“We were supposed to get out in 2019 or 2020, but we are still here and there is no maintenance at the school whatsoever.”
A letter from a provincial education official written in April 2016, seen by the Sunday Times, reads: “The process of temporarily relocating Setotolwane Special School ... will enable the proper renovation process at Setotolwane Elsen. Based on the above, you are therefore informed that you will be temporarily relocated to Hwiti High School w.e.f 12/04/2016.”
Plan changed
But the SGB alleged that the renovation plan was later changed to building a new school. However no mention of this has been made in any budget speech by MECs of the education or public works departments over the past eight years.
SGB secretary Mosoane Sekwane said that on May 2, SGB members visited the education department about the situation.
The minutes of that meeting show that the SGB delegation was told the school was not listed for education infrastructure, but were assured that the matter would be addressed.
A report into the chickenpox outbreak compiled by an environmental health practitioner from Capricorn District Municipality in May noted: “Most female hostel doors had no handles; overcrowding in some of the rooms; male laundry rooms had no taps.”
The report added: “Bathrooms were found in unhygienic conditions, there was wastewater flowing all over the bathroom floors; the facilities were in poor state and may be hazardous to learners (ie missing tiles from showers, damaged shower floors, poor drainage system, toilets not working). There was a strong offensive odour from some of the toilets.”
A source said: “It is shameful to see what [the education department] is doing to disabled children. It is so disgraceful. It is heartbreaking when you go there because what they are doing is inhumane. This is a violation of human rights.”
It is shameful to see what [the education department] is doing to disabled children. It is so disgraceful. It is heartbreaking when you go there because what they are doing is inhumane. This is a violation of human rights
— Source at school
SGB deputy secretary Mothiba Lesetja said: “There are crumbling walls and ceilings and exposed electric wires, which put, particularly our blind children, at risk.”
The SGB said summer temperatures in the mobile classrooms affected teaching as there were no airconditioners.
“When it is too hot, teachers take the pupils outside the classrooms to teach under the trees or stop the lessons,” a source said.
The school had tried to buy fans but “unfortunately they blow away the papers in the classroom. It causes chaos and it makes noise.”
After the Sunday Times’ visit to the education department offices on November 20, it sent a team to start a water maintenance project. The department has scheduled a meeting with the school for the end of this week.
The SGB said the municipality resumed refilling the school’s tanks during the Sunday Times visit, “but they would arrive when we have already bought water”.
Polokwane municipal spokesperson Thipa Selala said: “The school was getting water before through Hwiti but it might be that the line [pipe] that they are connecting to has a problem. They must fix that line and identify the problem.”
He suggested Setotolwane apply for a separate water meter.
The principal of Hwiti High School declined to comment.
Provincial education spokesperson Mosebjane Kgaffe said: “A contractor has been appointed and started work on [November 25] to do maintenance work at the school.
“A new site in town has been identified and the project has been handed over to the provincial department of public works and work has started to plan for the building of a new school in Polokwane town.”
However, Kgaffe could not say why the project was not listed in previous and current budgets.
• Ntokozo and Vicky Abraham are the founders of the www.thedeafdiary.com, an independent digital publication. The Setotolwane ELSEN Secondary School reporting project is supported by the Henry Nxumalo Foundation.
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