Cape Town - DA leader John Steenhuisen said his party would start litigation to find the most effective means to instruct the government to eradicate pit toilets for all pupils.
“We will engage with civil society organisations, public advocacy groups, and non-governmental organisations working in the education space to put together a strong case,” Steenhuisen said.
He made the announcement when the party launched its two-point plan to eradicate pit toilets at schools across the country.
This was after he and other DA leaders on Tuesday visited the family of Langalam Viki, who died after drowning in a pit toilet in a village near Queenstown earlier this month.
Steenhuisen also said the party’s committee member for Basic Education, Baxolile Nodada, would also be launching a country-wide campaign to eradicate pit toilets.
The initiative will include widespread oversight visits of all school infrastructure or a lack thereof.
Steenhuisen said his party has, over successive years, asked a number of parliamentary questions around the use of pit toilets in all provinces.
Steenhuisen noted that a judgment by the Limpopo High Court that ordered that a plan to eradicate all pit toilets in Limpopo has no bearing on other provinces and that the South African Human Rights Commission’s promise to take broader legal action has not been filed.
“The drowning of our children in pit toilets goes far beyond a human rights violation; it is a horror that no South African should ever be forced to contemplate.”
Steenhuisen took a swipe at the ANC-led government for cutting education budgets to bail out ailing state-owned entities and presided over government departments where billions have been lost to corruption.
He charged that the government did not care that young children did not have a safe place to relieve themselves in dignity without the threat of death.
“We cannot commemorate Human Rights Day until every child has access to safe and dignified sanitation in schools. As South Africans today commemorates our hard-won human rights, we must never lose sight of the basic rights of which millions are still deprived,” he said.
“Until all South Africans have access to three meals a day, until every citizen has access to housing and sanitation, and until all South Africans can live in dignity, we will never truly be free,” Steenhuisen said.
Cape Times