Opposition parties in the province have accused the Western Cape Government of playing politics with teachers' jobs.
Nearly two weeks have passed since the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) announced its plan to cut approximately 2400 teachers from their payroll, effective January 2025.
According to the WCED, the decision came after they only received only 64% of the cost of the nationally negotiated wage agreement, leaving the province to fund the remaining 36%, resulting in a budget shortfall of R3.8 billion over the next three years.
However, ANC spokesperson on Education, Muhammad Khalid Sayed, slammed the WCED, saying that Education MEC David Maynier’s reasoning for the cuts are “patently untrue”.
“The claim that the cut is about wage agreements or negotiations is patently untrue, discussions are still under way.
“Stop playing the game of blaming the pursuit of decent wage for educators and public servants as being the cause of the cut in teaching posts,” he said.
The National Treasury also explained that wage negotiations for 2025/26 will only commence this month.
However, Maynier pointed to the wage agreement that was announced in March 2023 and covers the 2023/24 and the 2024/25 increase.
“We should have received the extra funding to pay for the increase in the national Mid Term Budget in late 2023.
“But during the MTBPS, the national government announced that it would not be paying for this agreement in full, despite the national government negotiating it with the unions,” he said.
Parties also called out Western Premier Alan Winde for a 2019 decision to take over R1 billion from the Education and Health budgets to fund the first four years of the Western Cape Safety Plan.
Good Party secretary-general, Brett Herron, explained another R700m was spent on the same programme in 2023 and 2024.
“This despite crime statistics revealing no discernible reductions in crime.
“This year, the province’s choice to allocate R21.87 billion to innovation and R5 billion to boost safety interventions over the next three years creates the ‘shortfall’ of R537m for which teachers are being asked to pay with their jobs. It is indefensible,” he said.
The parties have called on the Western Cape Government to join hands to fight the teaching cuts, adding that it’s not too late to save teaching jobs.
Winde tried to “set the record straight” by clarifying that the 2019 cut from Education and Health has nothing to do with the upcoming teaching cuts.
“While R1.1 billion was reallocated to safety five years ago, which represented just over 1% of the combined health and education budget, the real issue is the lack of sufficient funding from the national government.”