At the end of last year, the new Minister of Basic Education, Siviwe Gwarube, stated that her department would eradicate all remaining ‘identified’ pit toilets in schools across the country by 31 March 2025.
The most recent available data, dated 17 February 2025, comes from a parliamentary response listing 171 schools where work was still underway at the beginning of the year. The Department of Basic Education indicated that all work was expected to be completed by the 31 March deadline.
Of these 171 schools, five are in Limpopo, 56 in KwaZulu-Natal, and 110 in the Eastern Cape.
However, these 171 schools are likely not the only ones in the country still reliant on basic pit toilets. They are the ones identified under the Sanitation Appropriate for Education (SAFE) Initiative, which was launched in 2018 to accelerate the delivery of proper sanitation to schools dependent on basic pit toilets.
Get the data used in this chart on DataDesk