There have been widespread protests since the Western Cape government announced that 2,407 teaching posts will not be renewed in 2025. Thousands of teachers will lose their jobs, and individual schools may lose up to 10 teachers each, especially at lower-income schools, without the funding to absorb these posts. 

The root cause of these cuts is the national government’s austerity programme that has worsened since 2020. This is aimed at curbing state spending—particularly on the wage bill—with the ultimate goal of reducing public debt. However, the province has been accused of passing the buck and failing to protect teachers from the impact of these cuts. And the province has in turn blamed public sector unions for forcing the National Treasury’s hand. 

Here, we disentangle this crisis and the narratives surrounding it while looking towards alternatives.

Why do these cuts matter?

The announcement of the Western Cape Education Department (WCED) takes place in the context of a public sector that is buckling across the country. It is weighed down by the socio-economic crisis which has placed greater demands on it, and weakened by years of systematic budget cuts and underfunding. The crisis in the health sector is well known (see Amandla! 88), but education is facing similar challenges. 

A 2023 Equal Education study of public schools found that all the schools surveyed had some level of overcrowding in at least some classes. 74% of the 751 classes inspected had over 40 learners, and 82% of classrooms had too few chairs and desks. 65% of teachers were found to be overworked—unsurprising given that the national average learner-to-educator ratio has increased from 27 in 2012 to 32 in 2023. School feeding schemes are grossly insufficient, with some Eastern Cape schools reporting that they received even less than the meagre allocation of R3.05 per meal per learner in 2023. In the Western Cape, thousands of learners were reportedly still unplaced by the end of January.

In education, as in healthcare, the crisis is, therefore, complex. It is not just a problem of insufficient teachers, or insufficient schools, or insufficient goods and services for those schools. It is all of them combined. The results of this have been catastrophic, with up to 81% of Grade 4 learners unable to read for meaning in any language. 

Austerity is also a feminist issue. When cuts to the budget are made in areas where women are predominantly employed, austerity results in a deepening of the feminisation of unemployment. And the 2,407 teachers will be forced to join the 8.2 million people in the unemployment queue. 

The reaction by teachers, students and activists to the WCED announcement has to be understood in this context.

Why is it happening?

National Treasury has been chasing a ‘primary budget surplus’ to stabilise the rising levels of public debt. That means that, excluding debt and interest payments, the government’s income should be more than its expenditure. In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, then-finance minister Tito Mboweni outlined years of public budget cuts in order to “close the mouth of the hippopotamus”. The mouth was the shortfall between what the government spends and what it earns in revenue. 

Austerity has been squeezing state and public resources, but there has ultimately been a failure to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio (the amount of debt compared to the economy’s total production). Instead, austerity has undermined economic growth, which in turn reduces tax revenue. As revenue collection falls, government implements more budget cuts across all key sectors. The underlying issue is that South Africa has a stagnating economy, and this is only made worse by austerity measures. So, austerity is self-defeating. But the Treasury continues to pursue it. Between 2023 and 2024, non-interest spending has shrunk by R21 billion in real terms. 

For basic education particularly, there has been a R3.9 billion real cut in the budget over the last year. Equal Education has reported that spending per learner has been decreasing in real terms since 2018. Even National Treasury themselves admitted in the Budget Review that provincial departments are going to be constrained in hiring additional teachers. This will result in larger class sizes and higher teacher-learner ratios. 

The public sector wage bill 

Nationally, the public sector wage bill has been a key point of contestation in the budget process. National Treasury made a conscious decision not to budget for public sector wage increases last year despite the looming agreement. This decision was roundly criticised as being irresponsible and potentially politically motivated. Some accused the Treasury of manufacturing a crisis to influence future wage negotiations.

The WCED is now blaming their shortfall of R3.5bn on this “underfunded” public sector wage agreement. To a large extent, the province is correct in blaming the Treasury. We at AIDC have made countless interventions criticising the austerity budgets of the past years. However, it also seems that the Western Cape would like to remove the question of their own accountability from the negotiating table. They want to pin it all on the decisions of their GNU partners. 

The problem is that spending allocations amongst provincial departments are a provincial decision – the National Treasury does not directly fund provincial education departments. Instead, the National Treasury provides funding to each province through the Provincial Equitable Share, and the provinces themselves decide on the appropriate allocation. Each province, therefore, has the ability to decide how it will respond to financial pressures. The Western Cape can choose to reallocate money to protect teaching posts in low and middle-income areas. Instead, they choose to divert funding to infrastructure and ineffective safety programmes. 

How have other provinces responded?

Of course, the Western Cape is not the only province facing austerity. KwaZulu-Natal is in serious financial trouble and is yet to decide how to respond. Eastern Cape has indicated that it will cut its budget on goods and services. Similarly, Gauteng has stated that it will be slashing funding for scholar transport and free school meals (the National School Nutrition Programme), to protect teacher jobs. 

While these provinces have not put teaching jobs on the chopping block, the approach of Gauteng and the Eastern Cape does not safeguard schooling either. Food and transport to get to school are as important as the teaching itself. 

So what can the Western Cape do better? 

A 2023 Equal Education study of public schools found that all the schools surveyed had some level of overcrowding in at least some classes. 74% of the 751 classes inspected had over 40 learners, and 82% of classrooms had too few chairs and desks.

There are many ways in which the Provincial Treasury can reprioritise spending to secure teaching jobs. Opposition and union leaders have argued that the Western Cape has been spending unnecessarily on the Law Enforcement Advancement Plan (LEAP), systemic tests and the #BackonTrack programme, which have supposedly been shown to be ineffective. While there are ways to internally reallocate funding, fighting over how the pie is divided instead of how big the pie is pits departments and needs against one another. 

There are also questions around the degree to which the wage agreement was truly underfunded by the National Treasury and the degree to which its underfunding was a decision by the province. MEC for Education, David Maynier misleadingly refers to the November 2023 Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) to show that their crisis is a result of the underfunded wage agreement. However, in the February 2024 Budget Review, substantial allocations were provided to each province by the National Treasury for the Public Sector Wage Agreement by using the Gold and Foreign Exchange Contingency Reserve Account (GFECRA). These allocations were intended specifically for the costs of the wage agreement and to protect frontline workers in health and education.

Compared to all other provinces, the Western Cape is equal last for spending on education, together with the Northern Cape. If the province were to increase education expenditure from 37% to the national average of 41%, there would be more than enough funding to protect teaching posts. It is, therefore, not acceptable for the Western Cape government to act in a condescending manner to its critics—as it did in the parliamentary special debate on 12 September—and fail to address these crucial questions of prioritisation. 

There are alternatives

Beyond the province, the national government must recognise that, while South Africa has considerable debt costs, blanket budget cuts aimed at the public service are not the answer. Alternatives include cuts aimed instead at the high salary levels of senior managers and department or commission leadership. They could use the tax system to tax the wealthy more, introduce a wealth tax, and prevent corporations from avoiding tax with illicit financial flows. They hesitate to tax or target the lifestyles of elites, but they don’t hesitate when it comes to imposing austerity measures that cut public services to the poor and the unemployed. 

Austerity is ultimately a political choice. It is one we must reject.

Aliya Chikte and Jaco Oelofsen are researchers at the Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC).