Neumann’s five-year struggle for fairness

At the beginning of the Covid pandemic in 2020, the Principal of Heathfield High School in Cape Town, Wesley Neumann, was dismissed by the Western Cape Education Department (WCED). He was dismissed for supporting and implementing an SGB sanctioned decision to keep the school closed to protect learners and teachers from Covid infection. 

The school’s decision on this safety matter drew the ire of the then MEC Debbie Schafer and HOD Brian Schreuder who had issued instructions to instead reopen the schools despite the serious risks involved.

Neumann has vigorously opposed his dismissal since then and at great cost to himself and his family. His matter has languished in legal purgatory for the past five years and will thankfully be heard next in the Labour Court beginning on September 17, 2025. This case, which will likely take about a month to produce a verdict, is not only about Neumann. It has implications for how the WCED will treat public schools, SGBs, learners, and educators in the poorer communities of the Western Cape. 

As someone who values education, I must declare that I support Neumann’s cause wholeheartedly. For me, the heavy punishment meted out to Neumann by the WCED and their intractability over the past five years are out of any reasonable proportion. The WCED has spent millions of rands of scarce public funds to defend a dismissal that in my layperson’s view is unfair and unjust – the WCED’s action is excessive, unreasonable, and was unnecessary to begin with. 

An ethical and performing Principal and SGB that act in the best interests of a school should not be treated in this way. Public schools in the Western Cape need more Principals like Neumann, not less of them.

That said, it is the Labour Court, presided over by Acting Judge Coen de Kock, that must make the legal call at this stage of the process. Will he find for Neumann or for the WCED? Will the WCED’s action be found to be administratively fair and lawful, or not?

The DA’s deep contradiction

While we await the outcome of this long-awaited trial, we should nonetheless consider what Neumann’s case means. There are many implications for the public interest that will be considered over the coming weeks. 

In this article I explore a contradiction that Neumann’s case reveals in the DA’s commitment to federalism and the serious disjuncture in its approach to the devolution of governance decisionmaking to bodies such as SGBs. 

The DA has always espoused federalism and has ostensibly pursued devolution as matters of political principle. For example, in June 2023 the DA tabled the Western Cape Powers Bill (B5-2023) in the provincial legislature. This ill-fated Bill sought to have several national government competencies devolved to the Western Cape provincial government. This attempt was ultimately defeated because it directly contradicted the S104(1) of Constitution, as was pointed out at the time by the Chief Legal Advisor in the Western Cape Legislature, and the ANC Official Opposition in the Western Cape.

Although it was unsuccessful, the Powers Bill shows that the DA will even go against the Constitution in its urge to have national powers devolved to its governance authority. 

Yet at the same time, the Neumann case demonstrates that the DA will vehemently resist even lawful devolutions of governance to local decisionmaking bodies like school SGBs. The DA wants downward devolution to the DA but not further downward away from the DA grip on power. 

That is a very telling contradiction of political principles. It is inconsistent to demand devolutions to DA-led governance but to also resist devolutions to local decisionmaking such as the Heathfield High School’s duly appointed SGB. 

The only way out of this contradiction is to admit that the DA does not hold devolution as a political principle, but merely as a means that it turns on or off in pursuit of some other end. 

But to what end?

The only reasonable answer that I can come up with is that the DA in the Western Cape seeks to concentrate governance power in its own hands and by all means. This contradicts the notion of a participatory democracy that is responsive to the needs and aspirations of the people. How this naked will to power affects the public interests of learners, parents, and educators, especially in poor communities, does not seem to feature in the enactment of the DA’s real political values and reasoning.

Neumann’s case tells us that the DA preaches the devolution of governance, but it practices the opposite in the Western Cape. 

* Dr. Seelan Naidoo is the principal associate of Public Ethos Consulting. He is a member of the Support Action Committee for education in the Western Cape.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.

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