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The South African Communist Party (SACP) in the Western Cape congratulates the matric class of 2023. We salute the gallant fight of our learners as they worked hard in order to pass, and equally put our country on the world map. Equally, we express our words of gratitude to selfless educators, parents, guardians, tutors and all other stakeholders who contributed immensely to the success of the class of 2023. 

We are deeply encouraged by the performance of working-class schools in the province, including the rural parts of our province. This encouraging performance undermined the skewed resource distribution by the neo-liberal DA led provincial government, the impact of the crisis of social reproduction, crime, extortion, poverty, public transport crisis, the crisis of overcrowding, and lack of learning material. Despite all these adversaries, working-class schools were able to achieve 100 per cent, 97 per cent and lowest being in the margin being 67 per cent pass rates per individual school.

In particular, the performance of the Athlone School for the Blind with Samkelo Gumada receiving first place and Nizibone Victor Mapolisa third place on the top candidates must be commended.

However, despite the slight improvement of the matric results in the Western Cape from 81.4 per cent in 2022 to a mere 81.5 per cent for the year 2023, we are concerned about what appears as a narrow concentration of top achievers from the most affluent schools and same as with qualifying bachelors. Such a trend confirms the whole notion of skewed resource distribution in the Western Cape that favours the most affluent schools. In essence, such skewed resource distribution or social disparities are rooted in class inequalities.

Essentially, given the huge class disparities, it is clear that working-class schools in the Western Cape such as no-fee schools achieved 76.71per cent on bachelors whilst the affluent schools covering paying fee 83.85 per cent and independent schools 91.49 per cent. On diplomas, working-class schools only achieved 30.9 per cent whilst independent schools achieved 59.5 per cent and fee paying schools 47.8 per cent. It is against this background that, in this Zionist DA-led Western Cape, working-class schools could only achieve a mere 1.9 per cent in distinctions. 

Further, despite the overconcentration of bachelors to affluent schools, there is still a concerning decline of bachelors from 45.3 per cent in 2021, 42.7 per cent in 2022 to 42.2 per cent in 2023, respectively, and also a decline in diploma from 23.6 per cent in 2021, 25.3 per cent in 2022 to 25.1 per cent in 2023.

Therefore, given this background and exemplary performance in provinces where the ANC headed Alliance governs and albeit the persisting legacy of Colonialism of a Special Type and apartheid in those provinces, it is evident that the ANC headed Alliance remains the best placed organisation to lead the transformation currently underway. Therefore, the majority people of our province should use the 2024 general elections as a platform to reject the Zionist neo-liberal DA at the voting polls and thus reject its poor education and ultimately poor results.

Issued by the SACP in the Western Cape