Equal Education hosted its 5th National Congress from 7 to 10 July 2025. This vibrant and decisive space saw 280 participants gather to tackle crises impacting education, including school infrastructure, school services, literacy and education funding, while also strategising how to strengthen youth leadership and deepen grassroots power. Equalisers, along with parents, post-school youth, organisers, and staff, focused on the practical work of building the movement and plotting the way forward towards achieving our strategic focus areas. These include leading a national reading revolution, promoting effective and efficient budgeting and spending, better school environments, and building a strong and vibrant youth movement.
EE’s four-day Congress was attended by 280 participants, including 200 democratically elected delegates from EE’s five organising provinces: Eastern Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and the Western Cape. Elected delegates represented EE’s Equaliser, post-school youth and parent sectors and staff. We were supported by over ten partner organisations from the sector, including teachers’ unions, EE partners from Brazil, UneAfro and Peregum, and our full staff body. EE’s 5th National Congress was the culmination of a rigorous ten-month process of what we call “The Road to Congress”. This journey started with school meetings and Provincial Conferences, where hundreds of EE members gathered to engage on proposed amendments to EE’s Constitution, draft resolutions arising from in-school meetings’ discussions, and elected delegates to represent them at Congress.
At the Pre-Congress Seminars, held in each of organising province, delegates came together to engage in content focused on the structure of EE’s governance and democracy, the role of the National Council and its members, discussion documents produced by Commissions, and debated and refined proposed Constitutional amendments and resolutions emerging from branch meetings and provincial conferences.
EE’s 5th National Congress opened with revolutionary anthems from the youth jazz band iPhupho L’ka Biko, whose infectious performance inspired us to deepen our engagement with art as a form of resistance. In the spirit of an equal and quality education, Congress delegates adopted 38 governance and operational resolutions across seven key commissions determined during our road to Congress. These included: access to quality education and school services; advancing EE’s reading revolution; building a youth movement with a soul; interrogating the politics shaping experiences in our schools; the intersecting challenges in the waithood of youth; budget justice and accountability; and finally, building local and international solidarity.
Under the theme of building solidarity and resisting neo-colonialism, we invited comrades from UneAfro in Brazil to participate as observers. UneAfro works in defence of indigenous black and marginalised youth in Brazil, who are resisting an education system that continues to exclude them. In keeping with the theme, EE recognised the need to build solidarity with like-minded organisations around the world in the fight towards social justice in the education space. Education and schooling, globally, are under attack, and we have to ensure that movements like UneAfro and EE come together and remind comrades globally that we are not alone in the struggle and the fight towards making sure that all people have access to education in order to thrive. UneAfro comrade, Levi Castro, says, “We fight for a quality education, an education that frees all, an education that transforms. Aluta Continua”.
On the final night of Congress, delegates elected members to represent them on our movement’s National Council (EE’s equivalent of a board). Former Deputy General Secretary, Itumeleng Mothlabane, was elected to lead as the organisation’s General Secretary, and former Head of EE Western Cape, Nontsikelelo Dlulani, was elected as Deputy General Secretary. Itumeleng brings over a decade of experience in civil society, specialising in education justice, youth leadership, rural development, and movement building. Nontsikelelo brings more than 14 years of experience in leadership in strategic campaign-building, community organising, mass mobilisation efforts, and strategic litigation with EE members and the Equal Education Law Centre. We are immensely proud that EE remains an inclusive and intersectional youth and women-led movement.
Our Chairperson is Mbekezeli Benjamin, a human rights lawyer, researcher and activist who served on EE’s 4th National Council. The new Equaliser Deputy Chairperson is Nomhlekhabo Masondo from Gauteng, and the new Deputy Chairperson for Post-School Youth is Masechaba Ntsane, a current EE Organiser and Master’s candidate in Social Development at the University of the Witwatersrand. Our National Council now sits with 5 members returning for a second term, 3 experienced EE staff members, and 7 members who have over 4 years of experience organising with EE, building our structures, respectively.
The outgoing General Secretary, Noncedo Madubedube, reflected: “We have built a strong movement with the love and support from at least 3 generations of EE’s leadership. We have deep gratitude for these comrades and this movement, which remains a political home for all of us. As we hand over the baton, let us be reminded that this movement belongs not just to the 6 000 members in our movement now, but to the thousands that have come before us, grown up in this movement and learnt the values of democracy, integrity and endless skills of social mobilisation for progressive action and reform. We will continue to work and struggle alongside EE, ide ifike le nkululeko”. Outgoing Chairperson Sindisa Monkali reminded members that change is inevitable and that the organisation will remain strong because of their deep commitment to its mission of advancing quality and equal education in South Africa. He added that EE’s intentional practice of a politics of love and care will sustain and guide us as we move forward.
This National Congress was important to prepare ourselves for the next three years of our seventeen-year-old movement. While obscene inequality continues to prey on socioeconomic rights at home, and attacks on democratic institutions grow across the globe, the importance of our generational mission cannot be ignored. Our six thousand members will continue to make our voices heard so long as there is injustice in education. We will always be a movement that advocates for the rights of children to access an Equal Education, and until the job is done, we will continue to do the work to make that dream a reality. Our work continues. “Qina mfundi qina!”
For more information, contact Equal Education’s Communications Manager
Ayanda Sishi-Wigzell
0768793017