Unemployed teachers plead for jobs at KZN Premier's office
Updated Aug. 13, 2026, 11:07 a.m. | By Tsakane Mhlongo The educators say repeated marches and memorandums submitted to the provincial Education Department…
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Updated Aug. 13, 2026, 11:07 a.m. | By Tsakane Mhlongo
The educators say repeated marches and memorandums submitted to the provincial Education Department have gone nowhere.
More than 200 unemployed teachers are taking their fight for jobs to KZN Premier Thami Ntuli's office in Pietermaritzburg.
They say their pleas to the KZN Education Department have fallen on deaf ears.
'Certificates collecting dust'
"On the day of graduation, you get the joy to say, ‘Okay, now I'm going to work, and I won't have to suffer,'" says qualified teacher Khona Mtolo.
"But then you don't realise that it's going to become more worse, seeing your certificates at home collecting dust.”
Mtolo says they have marched to the provincial department several times and submitted memorandums but have received no feedback.
Mtolo says being out of work is taking a toll - not just on their finances, but on their mental health too.
"I am on medication for depression as we speak. And you know, we're coming from different backgrounds. We don't have anything to take, like to say, ‘Okay, by the end of the month, this cent will come from here.’ We’ve got no hope.
"We've been sitting at home. For me, it's [been] five years, but others who are saying that it's been 10 years since they graduated, not even a single SGB post or a substitute, nothing.
"That's why we just said let's just shift from Department of Education to the Premier's office so that the Premier will maybe tell us what the cause of this is."
Mtolo says the march by around 200 unemployed teachers on Thursday is only the tip of the iceberg.
"It's just a snippet of them. It's not even a close number of them. We've got thousands and thousands of teachers who are sitting at home. Other teachers didn't get the message earlier because we're getting people coming in our group to say that they only heard it late and the weather is bad and they're staying very far, the cars are not moving, all of those problems."
SADTU calls for more permanent teaching posts in KZN
Meanwhile the South African Democratic Teachers Union says some teachers have been waiting more than eight years for permanent jobs.
Nearly 100 qualified educators camped outside the KZN Education Department’s head office in Pietermaritzburg earlier this year.
The sit-in is understood to have been a continuation of protests that began in January.
SADTU provincial secretary Nomarashiya Caluza says schools continue to face vacancy challenges that need to be addressed.
"The teachers that we have are currently overworked, but unfortunately, because of the austerity measures, the department will always say they do not have money to make new appointments. That is the situation," says Caluza.
Caluza is calling for urgent funding to ensure more permanent teaching posts are available, warning that short-term contracts fail to provide job security.
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