This article was published in The Times on Oct 27, 2009. To read the original article click here.

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"There seems to be some kind of blind spot among educationists and policy makers when it comes to school libraries," said Genevieve Hart, an associate professor and head of department at the University of Western Cape.

She was invited to take part in a 6km march by thousands of children from schools around Cape Town to campaign for school libraries.

The campaign was planned by Equal Education, a non-government organisation that advocates quality and equality in education.

EE's belief is that education in South African schools remains unequal, 15 years after the end of apartheid.

According to the NGO's research, most pupils in township schools don't have access to a library.

The few libraries available are understaffed and many don't have qualified librarians

The march set off from Salt River High School last month and ended at the City Hall.

It was dominated by children from Khayelitsha, a working-class community in Cape Town with 54 schools but fewer than five libraries. The children were accompanied by EE organisers, parents and well-known local authors.

One of the authors, Sindiwe Magona, was driven to participate, and to speak after the march, by the plight of the pupils.

"This is a national shame that you should be demanding libraries while it has to be automatic. Every school deserves a library.

"You are marching because you cannot afford to have a school without a library. Education is your basic right; reading is not only the key to your future, it is the key to your life," she said

Hart was invited to the march because of her extensive work on school libraries for the library transformation charter - a project of the National Council of Library and Information Services.

The charter recommends that school libraries should be prioritised if we are serious about improving schooling and producing school leavers ready to take their place in the modern world's information-based economy.

Hart said: "I have great respect for Equal Education because they have done their homework - reading up on the issues, running workshops for learners, consulting widely.

"The resource-thirsty curriculum, the general lack of access to books, computers and information in learners' homes, our shockingly low reading skills - all point to the need for school libraries.

"Only a tiny minority of schools has a library, which is almost always funded from governing-body fees.

"In most South African schools. the so-called library is a depressing storeroom of textbooks and outdated books, which is, in any case, locked up for much of the day as there is no staff member to manage it."

Nokubonga Ralayo, a Grade 11 pupil at Chris Hani School, in Khayelitsha, added: "EE has taught me the value of standing up for my rights and for what I believe in.

"I have learned that I have to have knowledge of what I need and of how to use non-violence in achieving my goals.

"I feel that we can bring positive change in education through such campaigns.

"I can stand up anywhere and talk about what we need as pupils, and take responsibility for our education and be responsible citizens.

"I fully support the demands that Equal Education is making.

"Building libraries will be building the foundation of quality education.

"The only way of achieving equal education is through reading to access information.

"So, I had to stand up - we can't wait for change, we can only stand up for our rights."
 

SUE BLAINE - Published in the Weekender in Edition 17/10/09

SCHOOL libraries are something veteran campaigner Zachie  Achmat  “feels passionate about”.

That should send chills up the spines of anyone who thinks that the South African government should not provide SA’s approximately 26700 public schools with a well-stocked library and a dedicated librarian.

Equal Education, a lobby group with  Achmat  on its board, is working towards this goal.

 Achmat  is well known for his sterling work in the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) to ensure all HIV-positive South Africans have the access to care that the constitution promises them.

While  Achmat  says he is “just” on Equal Education’s board, and “doing petition collection and Facebook stuff”, the fact that his considerable campaign experience is freely available to the group is a boon.

“Equal Education is about the dignity of every child. You need to read properly to have proper access to knowledge.This is an opportunity to develop children’s talents equally by providing libraries to all public schools,”  Achmat  says.

The Department of Basic Education’s research shows only 7% of SA’s public schools have functional libraries, says Equal Education co-ordinator Doron Isaacs.

It’s early days — the library campaign launched in August — but Equal Education, which was formed last year, has successfully campaigned in another area: reducing the numbers of children coming late to school in its home base of Khayelitsha, on the Cape Flats. “Our members, school pupils themselves, stood outside school and handed out fliers,” says Doron Isaacs, Equal Education’s co-ordinator.

“There was a huge drop in late-coming. At Esangweni High School, on the first day of the campaign, 120 kids who were late were locked out. By the end of the two-and-a-half months of the campaign, none were late.

“At Harry Gwala School, on the first day of the campaign 600 kids were late and locked out, by the end (of the campaign) the consistent late-coming figure was less than 10.”

While Isaacs says it would not be accurate to portray Equal Education as “made up of former TAC members — some of us were in TAC, but not centrally involved”, the group has learned good strategy lessons from the organisation. These include organising “on the ground” in poor and working-class communities, which are the primary source of the group’s membership and leadership, but not ignoring middle-class communities.

The group will also learn from the TAC about framing “struggles” as being about the realisation of legal entitlements that already exist in the constitution.

Equal Education would like to take its school library campaign national, but it is well aware that to do so requires a well-oiled organisation and sufficient funding. “SA is a young democratic country. We looked at the TAC and how they used the constitution as a basis for their arguments, and how to give information to ordinary people,” says Isaacs.

"We saw that when you give information to ordinary people about the facts and their rights, it is tremendously motivating. It galvanises action.”

Equal Education used public meetings, workshops and seminars to build up support and devise a campaign strategy.

The organisation is spreading news of its campaign through the media, a petition signed by more than 20000 people, letters to Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga and Western Cape Education MEC Donald Grant, and marches.

It’s working. People are beginning to take notice of their simple but powerful message.

The argument for functional school libraries is well worn, says Prof Genevieve Hart, a senior lecturer in the University of the Western Cape’s department of library and information science.

“People like me, groups like Liasa (the Library and Information Association of SA), that claim to represent school libraries have failed,” she says.

“There is research that shows that if you spend money on a school library, it can iron out social disadvantage. We’ve been bleating about it for years. Perhaps what Equal Education is showing is the way to go about doing this.”

Equal Education wants the government to draw the final line on a National School Libraries Policy — there have been five drafts of this drawn up since 1994, but none of them has been finalised or implemented.

The Schools Act, which governs education in SA, makes no mention of libraries. Under apartheid, most schools serving white communities had functional libraries, but very few schools in other communities had them.

Since 1994, many of the schools in former nonwhite areas which had libraries have lost them because of a lack of funding.

The South African school library survey conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council in 1999 found 32% of schools nationwide had an “onsite library”, but most were shut because full-time teachers were expected to be librarians too.

The high point of the campaign so far has been Equal Education’s march in Cape Town last month to highlight its school library campaign. The march followed the same route taken by Cape school pupils in September 1976 in solidarity with their Soweto peers who had begun a protest against the forceful introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction, says Isaacs.

“We did it to revive history. At the City Hall we screened a movie that we’d prepared on September 1976,” he says.

“The symbolism is: young people, this time from different backgrounds — from the Cape Flats and from Rondebosch — saying it’s unfair that some have a 60-strong class, no library, a teacher who doesn’t know the work and doesn’t turn up on time, and others don’t have these problems.

“Now is the time for everyone to have a quality and an equal education. The demand is the same as in ’76.”

Hart says Equal Education’s campaign reminds her of the protests of the 1980s.

“There’s a fervour there, and in the ’80s the protest organisers were also read up and informed … They are quite strategic. They have really done their homework.

“One school, one library, one librarian, is not just a slogan.”

"What Do Students Demonstrate For?" This is the question posed by an online article in Botswana. The article looks at Equal Education and compares it to student efforts in Botswana. Read the full article by clicking here.

Report on Equal Education's work in the New York Times, by Celia W Dugger. Click here to read.

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CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Thousands of children marched to City Hall this week in sensible black shoes, a stream of boys and girls from township schools across this seaside city that extended for blocks, passing in a blur of pleated skirts, blazers and rep ties. Their polite demand: Give us libraries and librarians.

“We want more information and knowledge,” said a ninth grader, Abongile Ndesi.

In the 15 years since white supremacist rule ended in South Africa, the governing party, the African National Congress, has put in place numerous policies to transform schools into engines of opportunity. But many of its leaders, including President Jacob Zuma, now acknowledge that those efforts have too often failed.

The new protest movement, with its practical goals, youthful organizers and idealistic moniker, Equal Education, is a quintessentially South African answer to a failing education system, one that self-consciously acknowledged its debt to the past in the march to City Hall.

To read the full article, click here.