Some ten years ago, the Makhado Municipality offered a serviced stand and a considerable amount of money to assist the Department of Education in erecting an urgently needed secondary school facility in the fast-growing Tshikota Township outside Louis Trichardt.

Desperate residents are now planting maize on the vacant school stand, strategically situated at the entrance to the township, and right next to the Vivo Road.

After well on ten years, the residents of Tshikota are still deprived of an educational facility which was already prioritised as “extremely urgent” ten years ago. (The residents in the township are some eight kilometres removed from the closest government high school. Even if space were available, most of them could simply not afford the transport and other costs involved in getting their children into schools in town.)

During a lost decade, the community and yet another generation of deprived learners had to make do with a “combined school.” This meant that the already overpopulated classrooms, diminutive, undeveloped school grounds and limited toilet facilities had to be shared, somehow, between the primary school learners and the rapidly increasing number of learners in the secondary phase. The school already has well on 1 000 learners.

Some “mobile” classrooms were allocated to temporarily assist in the crisis. These were not, however, sufficient to provide in the growing demand and more of these temporary classrooms are already urgently needed.

The limited toilet facilities, which must be shared by toddlers and late teens in the combined school, are yet another growing source of concern to teachers and parents in the community.

To add to the space problem, there is as yet no constructed access road to the main entrance of the school stand. A major part of a nearby tarred road in the neglected township has already deteriorated into a corrugated mud road. The school gate is reached by pedestrians and vehicles turning into an uncurbed and undefined, dirt alley - right opposite a beer hall.

Masedi’s staff and learners, however, dramatically demonstrated their commitment to a sound education by attaining an 82.6% pass rate in last year’s Grade 12 examinations – well above the provincial and national average. PHOTO: UNDERTREE 9X4

This class in progress under a tree is not at some forgotten little school in the “deep rural areas”. The photo was taken this week in a major town along the N1 in Limpopo. It is at the Masedi combined school in Louis Trichardt’s Tshikota township. Notice the permanent black board against the outside wall of a building which was declared as unfit for human occupation ten years ago. In spite of official neglect, Masedi’s Grade 12 class of 2009, however, attained an 82.6% pass rate.