Uphill struggle for impoverished ECD centres in rural areas

Makeshift pit latrines, lack of running water, no play areas and an old, worn-out classrooms for teaching and learning.

These are conditions under which preschool children at Progress Day Care in Tshiombo, Limpopo, learn.  

Teachers have to carry water in buckets from a nearby fountain to clean, cook and to ensure the children have water to drink, and to wash their hands after using the pit latrines.

The early childhood development (ECD) centre is one of many in the province that operate in poor rural areas and whose owners say they could use more funds.

Pensioner Eve Mandiwana, 75, says she started the Progress Day Care centre in 2005 at an old building of a local church. She had nothing but a determination to help the children of the marginalised in the rural community north of Thohoyandou. 

“I started with six kids. I was determined to continue despite hardships. The demand grew, and within a few months, more kids came,” said Mandiwana.

I started with six kids. I was determined to continue despite hardships. The demand grew, and within a few months, more kids came,

—  Eve Mandiwana,

She now has 80 children, aged between one and four, under her care. She charges R140 per child per month, but some of the parents are too poor to pay.

The provincial education department gives the centre R44,000 every three months to pay salaries for three teachers, one cook, a caregiver, and to buy food and learning materials.

While grateful for the subsidy, Mandiwana said it was barely enough to cover their needs, as the department only subsidises 40 children.

“It doesn’t even cover the nutritional needs of the children properly,” she said.

With the help of Action-Aid in 2014, she managed to build a two-room structure that’s used for classrooms.

In 2022, she registered the creche as a nonprofit organisation, but since then several attempts to get funding to improve the centre have proved fruitless.

Khuthadzo Thidziambi, one of the teachers at Progress Day Care, said she gets a stipend of R3,200 every three months, which "is too little”.

“I can only buy food to survive and cannot do anything else,” Thidziambi said.

“I also have to save money for transport from the little stipend we get. By the time we receive another payment, things are already bad at home.”

Equal Education Law Centre researcher Daniel Peter Al-Naddaf said the government is not doing enough to support the ECD sector.

“The level of funding required by ECD sector is far more than the funding being made available by the government. It’s even much worse in rural areas, because these centres rely on the very little subsidy from the government and parents who can afford to pay the monthly fees.”

He said another problem affecting the ECD sector was the “extremely complicated” regulatory framework, which affects the ability of the centres to register and be compliant.

“Centres in rural areas have a hard time with this because the process is difficult and expensive,” he said. “The funding models need to be pro-poor and have a rural component.

“The regulations should also be checked. The needs of these ECD centres are not one-size-fits-all. The vast majority of ECD practitioners in the country are black women. If the sector is well-resourced, it means these women can receive better salaries.”

Mike Maringa, spokesperson for the Limpopo education department, said the department has a three-year funding cycle. In some instances, he said, the subsidy is not enough, which meant the ECD centres needed to look at finding other sources of funding to supplement what the department gives them.

“It is important to note that ECD centres are private entities,” he said.

“As such, the department only provides funding through its conditional and equitable share funding. However, ECD centres are at liberty to seek funding from institutions such as the lottery, IDC [Industrial Development Corporation] and the private sector.

“ECD centres are expected to have a sustainable plan to supplement government funding.”

A few kilometres away from Mandiwana’s ECD centre, at Mianzwi Preschool, Tshisamphiri Mudalahothe, echoed the struggle of other rural ECD practitioners.

Mudalahothe started her creche in 2008 through a stokvel that she joined with other ECD practitioners.

In 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, she got enough money to build a four-room structure for the creche. Only two rooms have been completed so far.

“I pay the practitioners, R1,200 [a month], sometimes it’s R1,500,” she said. “We are struggling so much, but we love what we are doing. We don’t have water here, so we use wheelbarrows to collect water from a nearby school. Sometimes we get water from a well up the mountain.”

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