Long walk to school: 30 years into freedom, many kids in South Africa still walk miles to class

BY MOGOMOTSI MAGOME

DUNDEE, South Africa (AP) — On weekdays, 14-year-old Luyanda Hlali gets up before dawn to fetch firewood and cow dung to start a fire and boil some water before her four siblings and parents wake up.

The mornings are a hive of activity in the Nhlangothi home, in the tiny village of Stratford in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province. Once her chores are done, Luyanda embarks on a 10-kilometer (6-mile) walk to her school.

There are no school buses. There is only the long, dusty road where thieves and bad men can accost her.

Luyanda is one of tens of thousands of children in South Africa’s poorest and most remote rural communities who still face long walks to the nearest public school, nearly 30 years after the nation ushered in democratic change.

The hardships underscore the children’s unequal access to education; the lack of government-funded school transportation has