Cape Town - The proposal by the Department of Basic Education that encourages schools to install unisex toilets fails to recognise that the priority for the majority of impoverished schools is to eliminate pit toilets.
In an attempt to be more inclusive and move away from gender norms in order to accommodate transgender and non-binary children, the Education Department has made a controversial proposal that calls, among other things, for the building of “genderless or unisex toilets and change rooms”.
The guidelines are not restricted to unisex toilets as they also seek to encourage teachers to avoid gender segregating, by splitting classes, lines, or groups into “boys and girls”.
The department has also called for the provision of gender-neutral uniforms for all pupils who require them.
There is no doubt that the proposals have good intentions as they seek to deconstruct outdated stereotypes that have been used by society as social constructs.
However, when it comes to the proposal to provide unisex toilets, we believe that the department is jumping the gun.
According to Amnesty International SA, there are more than 5 000 schools that are still reliant on pit latrines as school toilets in this country.
Surely, the focus of the department should be on making sure that schools have dignified toilets that don’t expose learners to health risks and dangerous conditions?
Rather than being preoccupied with unisex toilets, the department should be working hard to put an end to the unnecessary deaths of children who fall into pit latrines in some of the country’s rural schools.
Lumka Mketwa, 5, was the victim of the government’s inability to build proper ablution facilities in poor schools. In 2018 Lumka fell into a pit latrine at her school, Luna Primary School in Bizana, in the Eastern Cape, and drowned.
Five-year-old Michael Komape, a GradeR pupil, suffered a gruesome death when a toilet collapsed and he fell in, on January 20, 2014.
A debate about unisex toilets is premature and meaningless if young people continue to risk their lives every day when they have to relieve themselves.
Perhaps for former model C schools and affluent private schools, a discussion on unisex toilets is relevant, but for millions of poor pupils this is not the discussion the country should be having at this time.
Cape Times