Ask anyone living in South Africa what the biggest issues facing this country are, and if they have two brain cells still knocking together the word “education” will definitely be mentioned. Which is why reading a headline such as this should have you deeply worried.

Education is the foundation on which the majority of problems facing the country is based – I hate to over-simplify, but better education leads to smarter citizens, leads to more opportunities and business, and ultimately, to a more successful and thriving country. South Africa is currently ranked 133 in the world when it comes to education, according to the world competitiveness index. Why is this not ringing any alarm bells?

These drastic losses are predicted for the Eastern Cape, whose provincial education department released its “post provisioning” figures last week, showing a cut of 3 932 teachers from its payroll. This amounts to a total allocation of almost R18 billion for 2013, funding 60 000 teachers on the department’s payroll.

Eastern Cape Education MEC Mandla Makupula has immediately blamed the budget cuts on the loss of jobs predicted, stating that around R800 million has been removed from his budget.

The provincial treasury has elected a penalty of R1,6 billion which was supposed to be imposed for the costing of excess teachers. That penalty was not imposed. At the moment we are paying almost 90 per cent of the equitable share of the budget of compensation of educators.

Given the absolute dire state of education in this country, and the vast amounts of taxpayer money being thrown about by high-level politicians, this should have us all a little concerned.

But I suppose there is an advantage to keeping an uneducated electorate.

[Source: EWN]