Three numbers, three different questions

Official school-sanitation updates contain several backlog figures. They are not interchangeable. The SAFE initiative began with 3,898 schools identified for attention in 2018. Later assessment, closures and school rationalisation reduced the programme list. A parliamentary presentation in August 2024 recorded 3,375 projects, with 3,107 completed and 268 scheduled for 2024-25.

In April 2025, the Department of Basic Education said 141 of the identified toilets remained and expected 90 of those to be completed between April and June. A later departmental announcement in 2026 said 99.9% of identified pit toilets had been eradicated.

Each statement refers to the identified SAFE backlog at a point in time. It does not mean that every toilet at every public school is functional, that no unsafe structure exists outside the list or that maintenance problems cannot create new risk.

What counts as completion

The SAFE programme’s stated objective is to replace basic pit toilets with appropriate sanitation that complies with school-infrastructure norms. The scope includes age-appropriate facilities in primary schools and facilities for people with disabilities.

Construction completion is therefore only the first test. A safe facility also needs reliable water where the design depends on it, functioning doors and locks, cleaning, waste management, accessible paths, suitable ratios for enrolment and the demolition or secure closure of old unsafe structures.

The official history itself illustrates the danger of leaving old facilities accessible. Parliamentary material refers to the death of Lumka Mkhetha at Luna Primary School and records that new infrastructure was present while the old toilets had not been demolished. The lesson is about commissioning and site closure: a new block does not remove a hazard unless the old one is made permanently inaccessible.

The national figures hide local variation

The Department of Basic Education’s 2022 School Monitoring Survey policy brief reported national improvement in access to adequate toilets, from 73.7% in 2011 to 86.8% in 2022. Provincial results varied. The measure also differs from the SAFE project register: one is a survey indicator across schools, while the other tracks an identified programme backlog.

This distinction helps explain why a programme can report very high completion while school-level monitoring still finds inadequate facilities. The denominators, definitions and dates are different.

For parents and governing bodies, the relevant unit is the school. National progress does not answer whether a particular facility has enough working seats today.

Maintenance becomes the next backlog

In 2025, the department said provincial education departments should ring-fence maintenance spending in line with the sector’s 80/20 budgeting principle and placed responsibility on districts, principals and school governing bodies to keep sanitation functional.

That handover creates a new accountability chain. Implementing agents build and certify the work. Provincial departments accept assets. Districts and schools must report defects, procure repairs and keep facilities clean. If responsibilities, warranties and maintenance budgets are unclear, completed infrastructure can deteriorate before the programme’s public claims are matched by durable service.

The introduction of the Safe Schools app is an attempt to close the information gap by allowing unsafe toilets to be reported, including those not identified in the original programme. Its value will depend on verification, response times and whether the resulting data is published in a form that communities can track.

What should be published school by school

A completion register should list the school, project scope, implementing agent, contractor, practical-completion date, handover date, demolition status of unsafe structures, defects-liability period and current functionality. It should record whether water is reliable and when the facility was last inspected.

The public also needs clarity when a school is removed from the backlog because it closed, merged or was reassessed as adequate. Administrative removal and construction completion are different outcomes and should appear separately.

The unanswered question

The central question has moved from how many identified projects remain to whether every learner has continuous access to safe, dignified sanitation. Answering it requires repeat inspection after handover, a reporting route that produces action and consistent definitions across the programme register and the wider school estate.

How we reported this investigation

We compared Department of Basic Education programme pages, parliamentary presentations and the department’s school-monitoring policy brief. Dates and denominators are stated because the backlog changed through assessment, closures, rationalisation and completed construction. We do not treat a national completion percentage as proof of conditions at an individual school.

What we will track next

The next useful update should connect physical progress to service performance. For School sanitation after the backlog count: why completion needs a maintenance test, that means identifying which assets are commissioned, who operates them, whether water-quality or effluent tests are current and how reliability is measured after handover. Published percentages are easier to assess when the reporting date, design capacity, actual flow and outstanding work appear together.

Readers should also look for power resilience, maintenance funding, trained operators and a defects process. Pipes, pumps, reservoirs and treatment units form one chain; completion of one component does not prove that the full service is working.

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