Hey, basic education … visit your website with what laptops? With what data?

We know how to put together teams of experts to come up with effective plans to help us salvage the 2020 academic year. We should also put together a team of experts to manage the anxiety and frustrations of rural, township and poor learners who think they may not go to varsity or progress to the next grade next year.

As Ghana’s president, William Nana Akufo-Addo, puts it: “We know how to bring the economy back to life; what we don’t know is how to bring people back to life.”

It is the same with time. We can very well plan how we are going to effectively use the remaining months of 2020, but unfortunately we cannot turn back the hands of time.

Moreover, we all understand that the measures that were taken to lock down the country and extend the lockdown are for the best interests of humanity. The sub-headline on the front page of The Citizen on Thursday read: “Human life is more important than any individual’s human rights.”

It is reassuring to also know that the department of basic education is all hands on deck to ensure that we don’t have another “wasted year”.

“The 2020 academic year is possible and we will rescue it. We have a plan in place to rescue lost time. One of our plans might be to do away with the coming school holidays to recover lost time,” said Elijah Mhlanga, spokesperson of the department.

The many young men under our mentorship at the Young Men Movement are over being at home. In the beginning, the swift move to bringing forward the Easter school holidays excited them. It was probably due to their ignorance of the seriousness of the Covid-19 global pandemic. Today, they are anxious, they send WhatsApp messages daily and call to ask if things will ever get back to normal and if they will be able to resume their studies.

As a big brother, mentor and a patriotic citizen of the republic, the first thing that comes to mind is to send an optimistic message of hope.

However, that is not enough.

What propels anger and worry is the information that is shared on the department’s social media handles. A tweet from basic education reads: “#Covid19SA We’ve put together online resources to support learning at home during the #21dayLockdown. Visit our website, education.gov.za to access these resources, including tips on dealing with homework and extending learning at home. @ElijahMhlanga.”

Visit the website with which laptops or desktops? Using data from where?

With millions of learners in villages and townships without free Wi-fi and their families battling to put food on the table, how are they going to access this information? Clearly that message is not meant for the learners in the poor areas of our country.

When it is all over, South Africa needs to have a serious sense of urgency that will be supported by an incorruptible political will. It should fast-track 4IR projects in rural areas and townships to ensure that the next time we experience such a global disaster (I do think this is not the last), it does not destabilise basic human rights such as education the way Covid-19 is doing.

Above all, we remain prisoners of hope.

“And we dare not fail. We shall recover. We shall overcome,” said President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Let us reassure the many learners in the poorest areas in the land who have no access to the internet, who find sanity and purpose in schooling, that not all hope is lost. They should be reassured that in the fight to save human lives, their education is equally a priority. That in the end, we shall overcome.

Kabelo Chabalala is the founder and chairperson of the Young Men Movement (YMM), an organisation that focuses on the reconstruction of the socialisation of boys to create a new cohort of men. Email, kabelo03chabalala@gmail.com; Twitter, @KabeloJay; Facebook, Kabelo Chabalala

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