South Africa's schools sanitation crisis, which comes with an estimated R10-billion price tag to eradicate pit latrines, has prompted a call to action to corporates, non-government organisations and ordinary citizens to help restore the dignity of the country's most disadvantaged learners.  

Issuing the challenge on World Toilet Day on Thursday, 19 November, Unilever and its brand Domestos turned the spotlight on the country's issue that tens of thousands of learners, at close to 4 000 state schools, are still being deprived of their fundamental human right to water and sanitation.  

"If there is any hope of realising the government's target of eliminating pit latrines at the country's schools by March 2022 — only about 16 months from now — we are all going to have to step up our efforts," says Henry Muchauraya, marketing director at Home and Hygiene at Unilever.

The brand highlights that, in August 2018, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the Sanitation Appropriate for Education plans to eradicate these pit latrines across all schools in the following two years. During the State of the Nation Address in 2019, he reaffirmed the commitment but increased the implementation period by a further year. 

The South African Human Rights Commission commented that the responsibility for raising the requisite R10-billion for the rollout, which the government said it hoped to raise with the assistance of the private sector, might rightly lie with business.

While the Commission was adamant that an unequivocal commitment from the government was needed, it suggested that recourse to the private sector may be justified, "given the role business must play in positively impacting society".

Domestos says that it is committed to the cause; it is not only partnering with the Department of Basic Education to deliver hygiene education to millions of primary school learners (via the National Schools Hygiene and Sanitation Programme), but it is also raising R500 000 through sales on World Toilet Day 2019 to build new toilet facilities in a school.

In 2020, Domestos has already funded new toilet facilities at five Eastern Cape schools, with toilets at two KwaZulu-Natal schools set for completion by the end of next month.

According to Domestos, sanitation is critical to children from both an educational and health perspective, which is why the eradication of pit latrines must remain a top priority for everyone in South Africa.

Out of almost 25 000 schools nationwide, the almost 4 000 schools with pit latrines are primarily in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo. A total of 61 schools in the Eastern Cape have no toilets at all and 1 585 have pit latrines, while 1 379 pit latrines remain in use at KwaZulu-Natal schools.

The range of impact on learning, according to the Water Research Commission's 2017 School Sanitation Management Handbook, is that learners are missing classes while waiting for toilets or leaving school to relieve themselves. Girls are staying home during their menstrual cycles and the threatening or humiliating experiences in the pit toilets are compromising children's ability to thrive at school. 

"Working in collaboration to find workable solutions for school sanitation in the country is critical and cannot be done in isolation. Working together with DBE and other corporate partners including Norcros, Designdex, Italtile, Plumblink and Envirosan have enabled the impact we have been able to make so far," says Muchauraya. 

"PPC and Spar have come on board to assist in building more toilets in the new year," concludes Muchauraya.

Muchauraya has appealed to companies to join forces to drive the realisation of universal access to safe sanitation and clean drinking water.

For more information, visit www.unilever.co.za. You can also follow Domestos on Facebook or on Twitter.