ABSTRACT
In a call to action in education, the minister, Professor K. Asmal, refers to rampant inequality in South Africa:
Firstly, there is rampant inequality of access to educational opportunities of a satisfactory standard. In particular, poor people in all communities, of whom the over-whelming majority are rural Africans, continue to attend decrepit schools, too often without water or sanitation, electricity or telephone, library, workshop or laboratory. Their teachers may never see their supervisors from one year to the next. Their parents remain illiterate, poor and powerless. They are unable to give practical and intellectual support to the educational aspirations of their children. For such children of a democratic South Africa, the promise of the Bill of Rights remains a distant dream. Without a solid foundation of learning, their chances of education and economic success in later years are dim, so poverty reproduces itself. 1
