Education activists and schools take Department of Basic Education (DBE) and provincial education departments to court

Equal Education (together with the School Governing Bodies of two schools in Limpopo) has taken the national and provincial ministers of education to court, requiring them to provide a daily meal for all learners who qualify for this under the National School Nutrition Programme. Under the lockdown, the national school feeding programme was suspended – depriving close to 10 million children of their daily meals. Now that schools are slowly reopening, the national Department of Basic Education is delaying reopening the school feeding programme. Only in the Western Cape has the provincial education department committed itself to reopen school feeding, and even here there may be problems of access. Equal Education argues that depriving children of their school meals is a violation of children’s constitutional rights. A report by Jeremy Seekings forms part of Equal Education’s application. Equal Education’s application includes a long series of harrowing accounts of the difficulties of feeding children, especially in rural areas, under the lockdown. For further information, see here.