Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi has challenged parents to be creative in how they spend time with their children during this lockdown period.
He was responding to parents who had said they were feeling overwhelmed by the lockdown.
Lesufi says parents can even teach their little ones about the coronavirus. He emphasises that education is not only about a teacher in class.
“There’s nothing wrong in teaching the children the names of our former presidents. It is not something that needs the teacher, the parents were there. So you can teach them because that’s part of our curriculum.”
“You can teach them your home language because the majority of our children are just in school being taught in English, they don’t know dumela, sawubona. This is an opportunity just to teach them. Some of them don’t even know the meaning of their name, he’s just called Keamogetsoe, but doesn’t know what’s keamogetsoe,” the MEC says.
Meanwhile, Lesufi has lambasted some school governing bodies (SGBs) for refusing to open schools to accommodate the homeless amid the coronavirus lockdown.
This after Lesufi visited a site, west of Pretoria, where about 400 homeless people have been moved – to help slow the spread of Covid-19 infections.
He later took to Twitter to express dismay about SBG’s refusing to open public assets, such as boarding schools, to help the needy.
It’s a shame that we’ve to place fellow South Africans in tents while public assets like boarding schools are standing empty because self centred SGBs are refusing to open up schools to accommodate our people. Is it because homeless people are half human beings?#ShamelessSGBs pic.twitter.com/z5VOaoIohs
— Panyaza Lesufi (@Lesufi) April 1, 2020
They are advising their members to resist accommodating the homeless in a state property. pic.twitter.com/4w9owB1sZS
— Panyaza Lesufi (@Lesufi) April 1, 2020
Today we received additional stock to support all homeless people around Gauteng so that we can restore their dignity #GrowingGautengTogether @gpgSocDev @Abramjee pic.twitter.com/geWm8fIgIW
— Panyaza Lesufi (@Lesufi) March 31, 2020
