Western Cape Education MEC Debbie Schafer received an unpleasant surprise at her Bergvliet home yesterday when members of advocacy group Equal Education came to picket there.
Protesters demanded that she respond to a recent social audit of 244 schools.
Schafer was not impressed when the scores of pupils, some sitting under blankets, arrived at her home and she took to Twitter to respond.
“I won’t accept things on an illegal March to private home that you have not given me at my office (sic).”
Western Cape Premier Helen Zille also weighed in and tweeted: “I firmly believe that @equal_education has done nothing about the CORE problems in education except exacerbate them.”
Equal Education’s Western Cape head, Nishal Robb, said it had been more than two months since the findings of the audit were presented to district officials but there had been no response.
He told the Cape Argus that the department’s response had ranged from saying they had never received it to “rubbishing the methodology”.
The audit showed among other things that many of the participants were experiencing corporal punishment at school and that several of the schools had been vandalised in the past year.
Schafer’s spokeswoman Jessica Shelver said the ministry had continuously requested the full report from EE but had not received this.
Robb said they gave the department a CD with information.