What is unfolding is not a crisis of numbers or administration. It is a deliberate political failure, engineered and maintained by those in power. Working-class South African children are being structurally locked out of public education while the state normalises exclusion through bureaucracy, press briefings, and hollow assurances.

We locate responsibility without hesitation. The Minister of Basic Education, Siviwe Gwarube, the Premier of Gauteng, Panyaza Lesufi, and the Department of Basic Education preside over this collapse. They do so knowingly. Year after year, they reproduce the same outcomes because exclusion has become policy practice, not an error.

The roots of this injustice are structural and violent: township and rural schools deliberately left underdeveloped, classrooms overcrowded beyond learning capacity, budgets that starve black education while protecting privilege, and admissions systems designed to appear administratively neutral while actively marginalising the children of workers and the poor. This is how inequality is institutionalised. This is how dispossession continues under democratic language.

We say this without apology: the ANC–DA governance arrangement is central to this disaster. It is a political pact that manages inequality instead of dismantling it, that preserves elite comfort while black children are turned away at school gates. This arrangement has collapsed the social mandate of the state and replaced it with crisis management and blame-shifting.

The situation in Gauteng, particularly in Ekurhuleni, is nothing short of criminal. For learners to be expected to return to schools without electricity is an open declaration that black children’s futures are disposable. It is an insult to dignity, a sabotage of learning, and a betrayal of constitutional obligations.

We therefore demand immediate, decisive action. EMPD and all relevant authorities must restore electricity to all public schools without delay. More than that, the state must guarantee placement for South African children as a first principle, not a negotiable outcome.

We reject this crisis, we reject the political choices that produced it, and we condemn, in the harshest terms, a system that sacrifices South African children while those in power remain insulated from consequence.

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This failure sits squarely with the Minister of Basic Education, Siviwe Gwarube, and the Premier of Gauteng, Panyaza Lesufi. Their administrations have turned school admissions into an annual spectacle of confusion, queues, and exclusion, while issuing press statements instead of delivering classrooms.

The Department of Basic Education governs through excuses.We further condemn the situation in Gauteng, particularly Ekurhuleni, where learners are expected to return to schools without electricity. We call on EMPD and all responsible authorities to immediately restore electricity to public schools. No learner should be forced into a school that cannot even keep the lights on.

The crisis is worsened by deep systemic challenges: poor infrastructure planning, neglected township and rural schools, chronic underinvestment in classrooms, and an admissions system that consistently fails working-class families.

We state without hesitation that the ANC–DA governance arrangement has directly contributed to this crisis. While they posture as partners of stability, their combined governance has produced policy paralysis, administrative confusion, and a lack of accountability. Children are paying the price for political convenience and elite consensus.

We condemn this situation in the strongest possible terms. We reject the normalisation of failure, the recycling of excuses, and the continued punishment of poor and working-class children for government incompetence. This is a violation of rights and a betrayal of the future.

President – AFRIKA Mayibuye Youth Movement Keamogetswe Masike

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