Note to Editors: Please find attached an English soundbite by DA MPL Michael Waters here.
Premier Panyaza Lesufi’s call for AI-driven classrooms is unrealistic given that only around 13% of public schools in Gauteng are connected to the internet. This means that an overwhelming majority of classrooms simply cannot support digital learning.
Lesufi claims that chalkboards belong in museums and schools should rather be using new forms of technology to teach. At the current pace of rollout, full connectivity will only be achieved decades from now — long after today’s learners have left the system entirely.
This failure does not happen in isolation. The very department tasked with delivering school connectivity, the Department of e-Government, is grossly under-resourced, mismanaged, and diverted from its core mandate.
Instead of focusing on broadband rollout and classroom connectivity, over R170 million has been siphoned into non-core “vanity projects” such as e-panic buttons, CCTV cameras, and drones for Community Safety, crippling its ability to do the job it was created to do.
To compound matters, e-Government is drowning in administrative dysfunction. The department has bloated staffing structures, widespread work-from-home arrangements with little to no productivity monitoring, and mounting unpaid debts to critical technology providers, including hundreds of millions owed to Microsoft while simultaneously signing new billion-rand contracts.
A department in this state cannot realistically deliver something as complex as province-wide digital education infrastructure.
Talking about AI classrooms when 87% of classrooms are offline is not visionary it is disconnected from reality. Before chalkboards are sent to museums, government must first deliver:
• Universal classroom internet connectivity
• Stable electricity and basic infrastructure
• Functional, accountable digital governance
• Practical solutions over ideological posturing
The Democratic Alliance (DA) will pose questions to Premier Lesufi in the Gauteng Provincial Legislature (GPL) to determine how he intends to have all classrooms equipped and connected to the internet, given the slow pace of delivery.
A DA Gauteng-led provincial government would ensure that all schools are connected to the internet. We will also relook the current e-Government department’s staff structure to determine what is causing the slow rollout of internet to all schools.
AI can and should be part of South Africa’s education future. But without connectivity, competence, and common sense, it remains nothing more than a soundbite and Gauteng’s learners deserve far better than that.