A comprehensive audit tabled in Parliament has revealed that at least 850 South African public schools still lack adequate sanitation infrastructure, with learners in hundreds of rural communities continuing to use pit latrines — including the dangerous open-pit variety linked to the tragic drowning deaths of several children over the past decade.
The audit, conducted by the Department of Basic Education in partnership with the Independent Development Trust, identified the Eastern Cape, Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal as the provinces with the highest concentration of non-compliant schools. In some of the most severely affected areas, schools that were already deemed to require urgent sanitation upgrades five years ago remain untouched due to funding shortfalls and contractor non-performance.
The Equal Education Law Centre, which has been litigating on behalf of affected learners for over a decade, welcomed the transparency of the audit findings but expressed frustration that the same schools appear year after year in official reports without the situation materially improving. Advocates have called for a dedicated infrastructure delivery unit, ring-fenced funding, and enforceable timelines with legal consequences for non-delivery.
Broader school infrastructure concerns identified in the audit include 1,200 schools that still rely on pit latrines of any kind, 430 schools with no access to piped water, and hundreds of facilities that have not received any meaningful structural maintenance in more than fifteen years. Some school buildings in flood-prone areas have been condemned by structural engineers but remain in use because no alternative facilities exist.
The Department of Basic Education has said it is committed to eliminating the infrastructure backlog and that it has entered into a new implementation protocol with the Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission to accelerate delivery and improve contractor accountability.
