Chairperson, Minister of Basic Education, Minister of Higher Education and Training, Deputy Minister of Basic Education, ladies and gentlemen, today we are assembled here gracefully on the occasion of the Budget Vote debate for both basic and higher education and training.
Today marks a fundamental departure from the past in the history of education in this country. The point we are making today is that we are passing the Education budget, for the first time made up of two related, but separate departments. Our pursuit of good quality rural education cannot be treated as business as usual. We have deliberately separated them so that each can make a meaningful contribution to the development of our country's human capital.
Our history has been a bitter one, dominated by colonialism, racism, apartheid, sexism and repressive labour policies. The result is that poverty and degradation exist side by side with a modern, developed economy. Our income distribution is racially distorted and ranks as one of the most unequal in the world. Women are still subject to innumerable forms of discrimination and bias and rural people are marginalised. Throughout, a combination of lavish wealth and abject poverty characterises our society. The economy was built on a systematically enforced racial division in every sphere of our society. Rural areas were divided into undeveloped Bantustans.
In this regard, my committee in the Tswaing/Ratlou area, my constituency in the North West province, had said that the challenges the area is faced with are as follows: learner transport needs to be improved, particularly across Duikerbos, Morgenster, Baily and Borneo, to name a few schools; access to schools on private land is difficult, if not impossible; massive infrastructure renovation is needed on the buildings inherited from the Bantustan era; we need a massive infrastructure of school sport facilities; retraining of educators is also urgent to respond to skills gaps in science and technology; reopening of teacher colleges and in-service training centres are also urgent; libraries, laboratories and information technology centres are scarce; cultural stereotypes, particularly in former model C schools, are also impediments to realising equal education in the rural schools and elsewhere; and greed and corruption in the school feeding system are rife.
Where is this rural education directorate that was meant to facilitate the development of an integrated, multifaceted plan of action for improving the quality of schooling in rural areas? Minister, to be honest, we have compromised, if not sold out our children in farm schools who are still exploited as if under apartheid.
Cheap labour policies and employment segregation concentrated skills in white hands. Our workers are poorly equipped for the rapid changes taking place in the world economy. The 2009 ANC Election Manifesto identified education as a priority. It further identified rural development as key to our development priorities. It is on this basis that we want to consider seriously issues of rural education as a central pillar in our struggle against unemployment, poverty and inequality. The expansion of rural education and investment in infrastructure should begin to reach even areas of the country that have been most adversely affected.
The 2009 manifesto committed itself to an ambitious rural transformation initiative unprecedented in the recent history of this country. Our President, Jacob Zuma, in his state of the nation address, identified the greater Giyani local municipality in Limpopo as the first pilot project for this campaign. This is the area of social transformation that contributes most directly to the living standards of especially the rural poor. Access to higher education and training must also speak to people in the rural areas. The department needs to do more to ensure that youth in rural areas also benefit from social and economic development in the country.
The department's vision is the creation of a world-class education system. But what do we mean by a world-class education system and what is its relationship to the current social and economic demands on South Africa? Can we claim to have a world-class education system whilst surrounded by growing youth unemployment, growing inequalities and neglect of our rural people? What informs this so-called 21st century education system and what are the building blocks?
What emerges clearly is that education would be critical in our effort to rid the country of poverty and unemployment. It would be vital for government to know and understand the policy intentions of our resolution on education to ensure that government does not get sidetracked. The ongoing debate about what we want to do and where we want to see our education system going is necessary. There is also an urgent need to improve the management of education-related programmes at the provincial level. Resource allocation is important in this regard.
Our spending on education remains our single biggest investment; however, while education enjoys a significant share of the total budget allocation, we are nonetheless concerned about schools in rural and impoverished areas lacking infrastructure and the capacity to break the cycle of poverty. [Time expired.] The ANC supports this budget. [Applause.]