It took seven-and-a-half years, but the job is (mostly) done. In July, Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube announced that all 3,372 schools on the 2018 SAFE Initiative list (SAFE stands for Sanitation Appropriate for Education) had been given proper toilets. That’s an average of 450 schools a year.

But the SAFE list was probably never a complete record of schools with pit toilets. The minister has said so herself, repeatedly, in answers to parliamentary questions.

In January she said 448 public schools still had pit latrines as of the end of July 2025, none of them covered by SAFE. When we checked the list, one school appeared twice, so the real number is 447. And, strangely, 17 of those schools also appear on the SAFE list.

The definitions are blurry too. Some of the 447 may already have proper toilets, with the old pits simply not yet demolished.

What’s clear is that the work continues.