The Minister of Basic Education, Siviwe Gwarube, has announced that the Department of Basic Education has reached 100% completion of all pit toilet eradication projects identified through the 2018 Sanitation Appropriate for Education (SAFE) Initiative audit.

Speaking during a school sanitation visit at Dimbaza Primary School in the Eastern Cape on Monday, 6 July, the Minister confirmed that all 3 372 schools identified in the 2018 audit have now been provided with safe and appropriate sanitation facilities.

Gwarube says the achievement marks the completion of one of democratic South Africa’s most consequential school infrastructure programmes and honours the memory of children such as Michael Komape, Lumka Mkhethwa and Langalam Viki, whose deaths changed the national conversation on school sanitation forever.

In 2019, a court ordered the government to pay R1.4 million in damages to the family of Michael Komape, the five-year-old who drowned in a pit toilet at his school in the rural Chebeng Village, in Limpopo, in 2014.

In 2018, 5-year-old Lumka Mkhethwa drowned after slipping into a pit latrine at Luna Primary School in the Eastern Cape.

In 2023, 4-year-old Langalam Viki’s body was discovered in a school pit toilet in the Eastern Cape.

“The completion of the SAFE Initiative has changed the daily reality of millions of learners and thousands of teachers. More than 3 million learners have benefited from safer sanitation facilities, while more than 48,000 teachers now work in healthier and more dignified environments.”

Gwarube stressed that the successful completion of the backlog identified through the 2018 SAFE Initiative audit does not suggest that every pit toilet in the country has disappeared.

She noted that some schools may have developed sanitation challenges after the original 2018 audit, others may have been unintentionally omitted, while some communities have retained old pit toilet structures despite receiving new facilities.

The Minister says provincial education departments must now identify and address any remaining sanitation challenges with urgency.

“Today we celebrate a remarkable national achievement of eradicating 100% of the pit toilets identified in the SAFE Initiative Backlog. Tomorrow we continue building, maintaining and modernising our schools until every learner, in every province, learns in an environment that reflects the value we place on their future.”

In response, Amnesty International South Africa says while it welcomes this important milestone, more needs to be done to eradicate pit toilets in all schools and ECD centres.

“The complete eradication of pit toilets in schools, which were part of the SAFE initiative, is an important step towards the fulfilment and protection of learners’ rights and safety. While we welcome this long overdue development, there are many schools still using pit toilets, which have not been accounted for.”

The organisation says the Department must provide an updated audit of all schools still using pit toilets, which includes those that were not part of the SAFE initiative, and include Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres.