Rabbie Serumula, author, award-winning poet, journalist.
Image: File
There is something deeply unsettling about a government spending R1.45 billion on mobile classrooms while knowing that Gauteng needs roughly 200 new schools.
Not because mobile classrooms are inherently wrong. Sometimes, a temporary solution is exactly what a crisis demands. Children cannot be told to wait for a brick-and-mortar school while engineers draw plans, tenders are advertised, and contractors argue over paperwork.
The problem begins when temporary stops being temporary.
Gauteng's learner population has grown dramatically since 1995, from about 1.4 million to 2.8 million. The province now faces a shortage of thousands of classrooms. The government says mobile classrooms are necessary to deal with overcrowding while permanent infrastructure is developed.
Fair enough.
MEC for Infrastructure Development and Public Works Lebogang Maile has pointed to the reality facing Gauteng: a rapidly growing population, pressure on existing schools and the lengthy process involved in delivering permanent infrastructure. The argument is understandable. Government cannot simply wish away overcrowding while waiting for every new school to be built.
But that defence only takes us so far.
Because when a school needs 30, 40 or even 45 mobile classrooms, perhaps we should stop calling the solution temporary.
At that point, the question is no longer whether government responded to an immediate crisis. The question is whether it planned adequately for a future that was staring it in the face.
And to be fair, this is not an argument that R1.45 billion was necessarily wasted. We do not know, from the figure alone, how much was spent on each mobile classroom, ablution facility, installation, transportation or associated infrastructure.
The more important question is what the spending tells us about how we govern.
South Africa has become remarkably good at temporary solutions.
When there is no permanent housing, we provide temporary accommodation. When municipalities cannot provide water, we send tankers. When roads deteriorate, we patch them. When hospitals are overwhelmed, we improvise. When schools are overcrowded, we bring in mobile classrooms.
We have become masters of managing symptoms.
But somewhere along the way, the temporary fix becomes the permanent reality.
And this is where the R1.45 billion becomes a story about what happens when government spends money buying time, but fails to use that time to build the things the country actually needs.
A mobile classroom is supposed to be a bridge between an immediate problem and a permanent solution.
But a bridge is useful only if it leads somewhere.
If a child enters a mobile classroom in Grade 1 and finds the same walls waiting for them years later, then the bridge has quietly become the destination.
And that should worry all of us.
Because we are not talking about containers, budgets and procurement documents; we are talking about children whose education cannot be put on hold while adults debate infrastructure plans.
Every rand spent on a temporary solution must therefore come with a more important question: when does the temporary end?
