Editorial

This weekend, as parents in Moshawaneng  village made the heartbreaking decision to withdraw their children from the high school 10 km from home and place them in the local primary school, they exposed a painful truth: South Africa’s promise of accessible education remains, for too many rural families, an empty vow.

 Under national and provincial learner transport policies, children who live more than a minimum distance from an appropriate school qualify for subsidised scholar transport.

These policies exist precisely to ensure that remote-area pupils aren’t shut out of education simply because of where they live. Yet in practice, thousands of children who meet those criteria are still denied reliable transport, or none at all, forcing families to choose between long, dangerous journeys and access to learning.

The story unfolding in this village, 130 high school pupils crammed into a primary classroom, with teachers drawn away to the distant school, is not an isolated anomaly. It is the unfolding consequence of a scholar transport system that is underfunded, poorly implemented, and, in many provinces like the North West, unable to meet demand.

Recent reports estimate that hundreds of thousands of qualifying pupils walk more than 10 km daily to school because the state has not delivered the subsidised transport they are entitled to. This failure is not just administrative, it is a constitutional violation.

In December 2024 the Makhanda High Court in Grahamstown affirmed in a landmark judgment that scholar transport is “an integral component of the right to basic education” under Section 29 of our Constitution, and ordered education and transport authorities to provide scholar transport to qualifying pupils without delay.

Yet implementation remains slow and patchy, with backlog and budget constraints cited as excuses for inaction.

The consequences are stark. Where transport does not reach, attendance falls, pupils are exhausted before they reach class, and dropout becomes a real risk. In villages like this one, parents are left with no option but to fold their children into spaces not designed to educate them, a primary school forced to become a makeshift high school, with pupils loitering because there are no teachers to teach all of them. This is the human cost of policy failure.

As a nation, we should be incensed that children’s right to education is contingent on their postal code. Government cannot continue to paper over these gaps with promises while pupils bear the burden. We owe our children more, and the Constitution demands it.

Amid these challenges, stories of individual resilience deserve celebration. One such story is that of Temogo Matong, a matric pupil from Morokweng, a remote village not far from this community. In circumstances that would break most spirits, Temogo maintained top marks and led his school’s pupils with dignity and ambition. His dedication reminds us that talent and aspiration are not confined to cities, but they should never have to overcome such systemic barriers just to attend class.

Our government must act with urgency: fully fund and implement scholar transport, strengthen rural school infrastructure, and ensure that no pupil is left loitering at the margins of education.

The right to learn is not negotiable, it is a Constitutional guarantee. Let us start treating it that way.