DA’s plea for end to pit toilets
VISIT: President Cyril Ramaphosa visited De Aar.
While President Cyril Ramaphosa used the opening of his Human Rights Day speech in De Aar, Northern Cape to take a swipe at the EFF shutdown, the DA launched a two-point plan to eradicate pit toilets in schools.
Following the death of four-year-old Langalam Viki, who drowned in a pit toilet in Mngcqangele village earlier this month, DA leader John Steenhuisen paid a visit to her family on Tuesday to sympathise.
The child’s body was found inside a pit toilet after her mother raised the alarm when she failed to return home from school.
“We cannot commemorate Human Rights Day until every child has access to safe and dignified sanitation in schools.
“As South Africans today commemorate our hard-won human rights, we must never lose sight of the basic rights of which millions are still deprived,” Steenhuisen said.
The DA said it would start litigation proceedings to find the quickest and most effective means to instruct government to install proper toilets for all pupils, while also engaging with organisations working in the education sphere to put together a strong case.
The DA’s spokesperson on Basic Education, Baxolile Nodada, is also to launch a country-wide campaign to eradicate pit toilets.
Steenhuisen said it was “clear that the ANC national government has cut education budgets to bail out ailing state-owned entities”.
Meanwhile, Ramaphosa told the crowd in De Aar that South Africans must be proud of their progress as a democratic nation.
“Even though others would want to diminish this democracy, even though others would want to abuse the rights of others, intimidate them, compel them to participate in a protest, compel them to participate in days when they should not go to work.
“I am happy that the majority of South Africans did not heed the call, but they exercised their rights as South Africans,” said Ramaphosa, to applause in reference to the EFF’s national protest on Monday.