The Cape Winelands District Municipality held an Early Childhood Development (ECD) Summit in Worcester on Tuesday 18 April.
The reason stems from ongoing difficulties and problems ECD Centres face.
“Not long ago ECDs fell under the department of social development, but were moved to the department of basic education and are not a function of the municipalities,” explained Cape Winelands District Municipality executive mayor, Helena von Schlicht.
“But because of the dire position ECDs currently find themselves in we try and assist them. The district municipality does not receive any funding for this either, but because all people have a constitutional right to a dignified, quality life, we involve ourselves.”
She added that even though they don’t receive funding they have always budgeted for certain projects within the sphere of ECD’s.
“We see this as one of the goals within our rural development sector. What is a concern is that the Cape Winelands as a district has the most unregistered ECD centres in the country.
“When it was still part of the function of Social Development, we had numerous discussions years ago, discussions with specialists on social development platforms and since then things have not really changed.
“No legislation was signed off, there was money in budgets, but it was removed again because it wasn’t spent. Billions were made available, but the money was given back to national treasury because nothing was done with it. We all anticipated the new policies and guidelines but it has not arrived yet.”
As it stands, national currently subsidises only R17 per child per day for 264 days of the year, whereas as prisoners are subsidised R38 per day for the entire year.
“My view is if we do not change this we are developing prisons full of people because we are really lacking in support for our young children. Another challenge is infrastructure. ECD centres and their principals and governing bodies can’t afford what is needed. For instance, an ECD needs to have six parking bays available, and we all know in the rural communities there’s barely space to walk sometimes.
“So they cannot register if they do not comply, and therefore they are missing out on receiving the subsidy. Nutrition is another challenge, some of these little ones go to school to get a meal, among the other things. ECD teacher development is another problem. There isn’t sufficient development and training of teachers, which is directly influenced by the lack of funding.”
Therefore, the Mayor holds that ECD centres should be a key focus of national policy and provision by the country as a matter of course.
“Our country must be forced, or we must work towards a position where we can see the value of our early childhood development,” she said. “The development of a child starts long before its birth. What we see in the Cape Winelands area as well as globally, especially in the poorer areas, is the stunting of the overall development of children, and that is a challenge, a blockage.”
ECD centres have also made their concerns known at IDP meetings, mainly asking for funding, land or zoning.
“You see the zoning, the local municipalities are responsible for the zoning in their areas,” Von Schlicht said, “and the different municipalities have different zoning criteria so it’s confusing, so the owners are confused as well. That boils down to red tape; withholding the opportunities from our children.”
She hopes the summit will be a catalyst for much needed changes in favour of Early Childhood Development Centres in the Cape Winelands District.
“So what led to this day is the fact that through our IDP meetings we got these questions and we cannot really assist these people because we do not have land and we are not involved with the zoning. We try to give funds and materials and tangible things where possible but as I said we don’t receive a grant, as a municipality we do it through our own funding.
“So then towards the end of last year I had a high-level delegation who came to me from this area who said please can you assist us so that we can unpack and try to escalate this. So today is a platform for all the stakeholders to unpack all these challenges. It was done already so many times in previous years and I was warned by some of the stakeholders to not let this only be a talk show so I trust my officials that it will not only be a talk show. This is a ticking time bomb.”
Currently there are 749 ECDs in the Cape Winelands district, which includes the Stellenbosch, Drakenstein, Breede Valley, Witzenberg and Langeberg municipal areas. Of the 749, 241 were not registered, 49 ECDs’ registration had lapsed, 176s’ were in progress, 245 fully registered and therefore qualified for subsidies, while 22 were conditionally registered and there were seven ECDs with their status defined as unknown.
“The total 749 is what we know of,” said Von Schlicht, “but, you know, there are many ladies, especially in our informal settlements, who take it upon themselves to look after kids without any assistance, the ones we don’t know about.”
She added ultimately the President of our country will have to give attention to this growing problem.
“The stakeholders in the hall will decide what we will do next. I hope we will be able to compile a very thorough and in-depth report. And we will try to take this report further – to basic education, then to the province and then to national. Because we will have to wait for national to bring the changes, so in layman’s terms we need the President of the country to come out for ECD centres and children, because they shout and nobody hears.
“We also have these discussions with municipalities and politically, and everyone buys in but somewhere the information gets stuck and it doesn’t go to national government.
“As it was said at the summit it’s a lack of political will. We don’t know why because there were billions made available but not spent. They were given back to Treasury due to lack of policy. This is the conundrum that nobody can understand. Why is it that we leave our small children behind, because they won’t stay that way.
“The Cape Winelands is committed, under very challenging circumstances, to assist our ECD centres in the area, to value our little ones because we really understand the challenges they face. We will carry on with this work, trying to make a difference.”
Former cricketer Vernon Philander also attended the summit. His agency, the Vernon Philander Foundation wants to assist the district municipality in providing cereal for the children.
“We developed a cereal that contains all the nutrition a child of that age needs,” he said. “When the foundation got involved in handing out food hampers during the pandemic we noticed how many small children were malnourished and this why we want to get involved in this was.”
