Resilience is a quality that every South African possess; two KwaZulu-Natal schools showed their resilience after experiencing several challenges within a two-year period.
Durban, South Africa (05 October 2022) – In celebration of World Teacher’s Day today, Edufundi is releasing a short documentary that celebrates the resilience of two primary schools in Durban. These schools suffered a ‘triple blow’ over the last three years – the COVID pandemic in 2020, the social unrest in 2021 and the flooding in 2022.
The documentary, ‘Kwazilience: Celebrating Durban Schools,’ follows two principals who, despite the deep hardships, have ensured that their learners can continue coming to school to learn.
Edufundi – an NGO that mentors and supports teachers and school leaders across South Africa – has worked with both these primary schools. Ms. Mohale, a Foundation Phase Mentor at Edufundi, describes how they adjusted and continued to support the schools through the crisis period.
The impact of unrest and flooding on schools
Mr Sokhabase is the principal of Siphosethu Primary School, where there are more than 40 learners per classroom on average. He describes how the social unrest took them “ten steps back.” School buildings were burnt and “every record that you can think of that is supposed to be at school” was lost. His school also lost classrooms due to the floods.
Nearby is Sifunimfundo Public Primary School, where the principal Mr Sibisi recounts the impacts of the floods. Some learners’ houses were washed away and they had to live in community halls.
“The hardest time for me was the misplacement of learners,” says Mr Sibisi. At those halls, some children were competing for meals. Many came to school with no uniforms as they had been washed away. “They also now find that even at school they cannot enjoy those basic facilities like getting running water at school,” says Mr Sibisi. “So that also put a lot of pains, especially to the lives of these young ones.”
Aside from this, the school fence was damaged by the water, allowing people to enter the school premises. A robbery, shortly after the flooding, resulted in the school losing R130,000 worth of equipment.
Using resilience to rebuild
“We are lucky that we’ve got committed staff members,” says Mr Sokhabase.
Teachers pulled together, working overtime to ensure learners continued to receive education at the school. The Department of Education provided three mobile classrooms which were provided to learners. Mr Sokhabase himself does not have an office and works in a temporary tent on a small plastic table.
Sifunimfundo Primary School wrote letters and asked for assistance. Donations were plentiful including uniforms and school shoes. A company supported them in providing JoJo water tanks and mobile toilets for the learners.
“We must work … The culture of working must be in our blood,” says Mr Sokhabase.
Ms Mohali, and Edufundi at large, continue to provide support. “The show must go on, if I may put it like that. Our show, which is working with teachers, working in schools, working together with everyone involved,” she says.
Edufundi works in schools across South Africa providing mentoring support to both teachers and school management teams. This is known as the Edufundi Support Programme. We know that education in South Africa is currently in crisis. Our committed and experienced team is working to change this so that all of our teachers – and in turn the children they teach – can indeed achieve their full potential.
Take a look at the inspiring documentary below.
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