South Africa's teachers are angry with Education Minister Kader Asmal and his department for importing Cuban teachers without consulting them.
Hassen Lorgat, spokesperson for the South African Democratic Teachers Union (Sadtu), said: "We are very unhappy with the way Asmal has handled the issue. We don't know any details."
He added, however, that South Africa had a lot to learn from Cuba.
"Cuba values its teachers as professionals, not people to be retrenched, dumped, or have their holidays taken away. But if the teachers are here to take our jobs, there will be a big problem."
Sadtu planned to hold an urgent meeting with Asmal and Cuba's ambassador to South Africa to discuss the issue, he said.
Asmal's spokesperson, Molatwane Likhethe, dismissed the teachers' fears. "There have been concerns, particularly about language, but one of the conditions is that the teachers will speak English. These people will come to train our teachers, they won't take jobs away."
Meanwhile, it has also emerged that the minister plans to dissolve school governing bodies that are no longer functioning.
The proposal to allow the dissolution of governing bodies that are unable to perform their duties and replace them with curators is mooted in an amendment to the South African Schools Act in the latest Government Gazette.
When a school is under such curatorship, the superintendent-general is expected to ensure the election of a new governing body within a year.
So far the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) has appointed curators to replace principals at schools where there has been a managerial collapse.
Lebelo Maloka, a GDE spokesperson, said no governing body had been dissolved by the provincial department so far.
Schools and interested parties have until May 7 to comment to the minister.
(February 7, 2001) --Chávez's school plans ignite furor in Venezuela--Parents and teachers' unions complain that Chávez is not merely fixing problems, but rather trying to establish a Cuba-like system of political indoctrination for young minds. Among the controversial actions: A new constitution written by Chávez supporters requires all schools to teach ``Bolivarian principles'' ---- a code phrase for Chávez's brand of leftist populism ---- and the pro-Chávez majority in the legislative National Assembly is preparing a bill laying out the exact curriculum.
(November 8, 2001) -HUGO CHAVEZ SUPPORTERS ATTACK PARENTS (protesting education takeover) A supporter of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez holds a brick and threatens the parents and teachers who marched against the government's proposed education reforms in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, Nov. 8. 2001. The demonstration ended in violence when the protesters were met by hundreds of Chavez supporters when they reached Congress.
U.S. schools regularily take students on junkets to bask in the wonders of Castro's peaceful paradise.
American Socialists and the Allure of Castro
Jay Nordlinger: Who Cares About Cuba?-- And what he did he want from Americans, I asked, beyond specific help for his son? "I would like them to remember their principles: their sense of unity, justice, and liberty, maintained over so many years." Last, he wished to say, "Human rights cannot exist without God."
WHY THE DOUBLE STANDARD FOR CASTRO?--Psychologists may be better able than political scientists to explain why many American liberals idealize foreign dictatorships with institutions or values that they find horrifying in milder forms in the United States. For some reason, many American leftists who loathe the military are not troubled by the fact that Castro appears in public only in a military uniform. American liberals somehow manage to support gay rights in the United States while ignoring Castro's vicious campaigns against homosexuality, which he has defined as a "bourgeois perversion" American liberals fret about the FBI and Internet censorship, while calling for the United States to befriend a regime where culture and religion are rigidly controlled by the secret police.
Delighting in the Dictator--- In the late 1970s the American writer Sally Quinn returned from Cuba having found it an Isle of Eros. Said she of the country that then housed thousands of political prisoners in dirty cells and torture chambers, "an attitude of sexuality is as pervasive in Cuba as the presence of Fidel Castro. You can feel sex in the atmosphere." Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern bounced around the Cuban countryside with Fidel in a jeep and survived to tell of it. Said he of a man who even then was sending arms and soldiers around the world to support Communist terror and oppose American policy, Fidel is "soft-spoken, shy, sensitive, sometimes witty….I frankly, liked him." And Senator Lowell Weicker, the Republican ever on the prowl for a presidential nomination, launched this line certain to illuminate his presidential qualifications. "Castro's been known to snow people but he didn't snow me," Weicker asseverated. He spoke of Fidel's "enormous intellect and idealism" -- yes, idealism! He questioned why the United States did not take Fidel's side, the side of progress.