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As Gauteng pupils prepare to return to their classrooms full-time, the Department of Health has announced plans to revive its stumbling vaccination programme
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Towards a People’s Vaccine Campaign: A call to action
15 Jan 2021
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The Covid-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc millions in South Africa and globally are being infected and dying. Vaccinating a significant part of the population is the only realistic way to defeat the pandemic. Achieving this will require international co-operation and solidarity. Unity in action across all sectors of our society is now paramount. We need vigilance and solidarity to slow the rate of infection and to unburden health facilities. The reported acquisition of 1.5 million doses of C-19 vaccines for frontline healthcare workers is welcomed, but this must be the start of urgently acquiring millions more. An estimated 40 to 80 million doses will be needed, along with a massive roll-out effort to achieve herd immunity. This cannot be done by the government alone. We, the people, especially the millions of poor and working-class people, must be central to this effort.
Much has been made in the media of the (un)fairness of rewriting matric maths and physical science paper 2, as announced by the Department of Basic Education in response to both papers being leaked. Teacher unions declared that a rewrite is unfair to pupils, citing the psychological toll in an already extremely stressful year and the small proportion of pupils who were likely to have seen the leaked papers.
The department has defended the decision, saying the integrity of the examination process must be defended “at all costs”. The issue came to a head in the North Gauteng High Court on Friday, 11 December 2020, with the judiciary siding with the unions. But what neither the defence nor the applicants mentioned in their arguments is how exam leaks were predictable in a year wracked by Covid-19, as was the double-down response from the department with a rewrite: both events point to fundamental flaws in the system.