GOOD Statement by Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General & Member of the Western Cape Parliament:
In 1953, Minister of Native Affairs HF Verwoerd introduced the Bantu Education Act that established a separate and inferior education system for Black children. “What is the point of teaching the Bantu child Mathematics,” he asked, when “there is no place for the Bantu… above the level of certain forms of labour”.
Seventy-two years later, the 2025 Western Cape Matric results reveal that the practice of disempowering the poorest citizens through the provision of inferior education remains in ruddy good health in a province that proclaims itself exceptionally well-run.
South Africa introduced a so-called No-Fee School policy in 2007, targeting the poorest 40% of schools in the country, which were identified based on community wealth. It was a policy that aimed to redress historic injustices and exclusions, aiming to remove financial barriers for the most disadvantaged learners.
Tracking the successes and failures of these schools is a useful measure to track education’s recovery from Verwoerd’s racist depredations.
Overall, Western Cape No-Fee Schools recorded an 84.2% pass rate. That’s 2.3% below the national average, in eighth position among the nine provinces. The percentage of Bachelor passes at these schools (38.7%) was 6.9% below the national average – again coming eight out of nine.
Delving deeper into the numbers, the Western Cape comes stone last in the category of Progressed Learners. These learners were advanced from one grade to the next, despite not meeting all the criteria, with a view to providing additional support and preventing them from dropping out of the system.
Progressed learners at No-Fee Schools in the Western Cape received an overall 38.3% Matric pass mark. That’s a whopping 16% below the national average, placing the province at the bottom of the pile. Just 2.4% of Progressed Learners at No-Fee Schools in the Western Cape achieved Bachelor passes. That’s 3.9% below the national average, once again placing the province in ninth position out of nine.
The Western Cape is the only DA-led province in the country. It has invested heavily in the idea that it is the best run. But these types of numbers don’t lie. The fact is that the Western Cape consistently keeps its poorest and most marginalised learners in a state of academic destitution.
Verwoerd would undoubtedly applaud.
GOOD Manifesto on Land Reform: Supporting fair land reform that respects property rights.
Queen Bee
Denmark: You have two cows. They have more rights than you.
low menace
So I\’m real good friends with this guy named Juan Ted. Now, Juan is a pretty unbelievable guy. He can steal ANYTHING he wants to. Literally anything. It could be the shirt off your back, the wallet in your pocket, or I\’m even sure he\’d find a way to steal your house (And your spouse too). So anyway, one day Juan and I are sitting around watching TV, and they announced that the hope diamond will not be on display anymore and is now getting moved to an undisclosed location. So as we hear this, Juan says \”I\’m gonna steal it\”. Now I know how good Juan is at this kind of stuff, so I just tell him good luck and he goes on his way. Eventually he narrows his search down to a small cave in South Africa. When Juan gets there, he doesn\’t see any guards or anything outside the cave, so he just walks in assuming he was wrong about where the diamond was. He wanders around for a while until he sees a long lit hallway with the hope diamond at the end of it. Confident in his abilities, he strolls over to the diamond and picks it up before realizing its a trap! Suddenly, red lights flashed, armed men came running out, sirens went off. You could hear one of the men say under his breath \”We finally caught Juan Ted.\” But Juan, being the best thief in the world, said \”Not quite. On the count of three, I will disappear.\” As the men looked around confused, Juan began to count. \”Uno. Dos.\” And he disappeared without a tres.