Chronic underfunding threatens KZN education: ANC's urgent call for action
The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal has warned that chronic underfunding and sustained austerity measures are threatening the operational stability of the provincial Department of Education, placing key learner support programmes at risk despite years of improved performance and expanded access.
Speaking at a media briefing on Thursday, as schools reopened for the 2026 academic year, ANC KZN Education, Health and Science Sub-Committee chairperson Dr Siboniso Dhlomo said the department was grappling with what he described as a systemic financial crisis.
“These successes are now overshadowed by a systemic financial crisis that is placing the entire operational capacity of the Department at risk,” Dhlomo said.
He said the department had absorbed R26 billion in budget cuts over the last Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, while also carrying the cost of unfunded wage agreements.
”This financial reality, combined with the insufficient funding for mandated wage agreements, has distorted the budget to the point of unsustainability.”
As a result, almost the entire equitable share budget was being consumed by salaries.
“Currently, 89.8% of the Department’s Equitable Share budget is consumed by the Compensation of Employees,” Dhlomo said.
He added that this left “a negligible balance for core non-personnel expenditure”.
According to Dhlomo, the funding imbalance had already affected the department’s ability to fill posts, pay municipalities for basic services and transfer norms and standards allocations to schools on time. He warned that the situation had created serious governance risks.
“This is actively creating a risk of adverse audit outcomes,” he said, noting that “all posts in the Internal Control Directorate are vacant except for one Deputy Director”.
Dhlomo said the financial pressure was now threatening two critical programmes: the National School Nutrition Programme and the procurement of learning and teaching support materials for the 2026 school year.
Describing the nutrition programme as essential, he said it fed more than 2.4 million learners daily and employed nearly 15 000 food handlers.
“This programme is a major success,” he said. “It is a direct poverty alleviation and social stability tool.”
However, he warned that delays in paying norms and standards to schools were “jeopardising the consistent supply of meals to our most vulnerable children”.
On learning materials, Dhlomo said the department had been forced to procure stationery through a delayed payment agreement worth R496 million.
“This desperate measure created a high risk of non-delivery or late delivery of essential textbooks and stationery on the first day of the school year, which would result in chaos and directly undermine our progress in educational quality,” he said.
He also raised concern that norms and standards allocations to schools in KwaZulu-Natal were almost half the national benchmark, a situation he attributed to budget cuts, austerity measures, and the high number of no-fee schools.
“This misallocation has far-reaching consequences that require urgent interventions that consider provincial dynamics,” Dhlomo said.
Dhlomo also highlighted challenges within the scholar transport programme, describing it as a lifeline for learners from poor households but one that remained severely under-resourced.
“There is an urgent need to accommodate the 157 000 learners currently on the waiting list, which requires an estimated R1.6 billion,” he said.
Despite the challenges, Dhlomo defended the ANC’s record in transforming education in the province, saying critics often ignored the apartheid-era legacy of racial fragmentation and inequality.
“The story of education in KwaZulu-Natal is one of deliberate and transformative action,” he said.
He said learner outcomes demonstrated steady progress, with the provincial matric pass rate rising from 57.8% in 2008 to 90.6% in 2025.
“The 90.6% matric pass rate achieved by the Class of 2025 is a victory of the ANC and the working class,” Dhlomo said.
He added that the ANC had instructed Education MEC Sipho Hlomuka to urgently develop a strategy to address systemic inefficiencies and budget leakages.
“The ANC has instructed its Cde Hlomuka to, within the ambit of obtaining administrative prescripts, urgently craft and implement a strategy to address issues of systemic challenges, which manifest themselves, amongst others, in inefficiencies and leaks in the deployment of the budget,” he said.
He added that the party was engaging its government partners on implementing zero-based budgeting to ensure tighter financial discipline.
”The ANC is engaging its GPU partners to implement a zero-based budgeting approach to the Department going forward. As we are all aware, zero-based budgeting is a financial strategy where every expense must be justified from scratch for each new period, effectively starting the budget from a “zero base” rather than using the previous year’s spending as a baseline.”
Dhlomo called on communities to protect school infrastructure and rejected any move towards privatisation or austerity-driven rollbacks.
“Quality education must never be a luxury for the few; it is a public good and a fundamental right for the many,” he said.
hope.ntanzi@iol.co.za
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