Radio story on the conference

Aids campaigner Zachie Achmat has urged Africa’s Community of Mandela Rhodes Scholars to take up the struggle to repair the failed post-apartheid education system, Mike Loewe reports.

Achmat was the opening speaker for the conference of scholars which is being held at Rhodes this week.

About 100 academics and scholars from around Africa heard Zachie Achmat call for almost a third of fees paid to middle class schools to be spent on libraries for poor schools.

Achmat says ethical leadership and equal education have not materialized for the mass of our learners.

While President Zuma’s ANC government is committed to these principles, the last 15 years of freedom have actually witnessed, what he calls, the intellectual dispossession of most of our poorer kids.

Doctoral research by Ursula Hoadley shows that the new state spends 100 times more on middle class learners.

Achmat says school fees at poor state schools must be abolished.

But, where parents pay more than R2000 a year in school fees, he wants the state to deduct 30 percent from the fees raised by these schools.

This must be spent on building libraries and train librarians for poorer schools.

Mike Loewe
Algoa FM news
Grahamstown