As the school year begins in earnest, the long-standing secretary general of the South African Democratic Teachers' Union (Sadtu), Thulasizwe Nxesi, admits that the education system is in crisis.
Yet he refuses to accept that teachers are partly responsible for failing the country's pupils on a daily basis.
Nxesi says it is all too easy to point the finger of blame at the country's 390 000-strong teacher population, arguing instead that theirs is a sorry lot in this day and age.
With a low starting salary of about R120 000, with benefits included, teachers cannot be expected to perform like other professionals if their work is not rewarded and recognised like that of their peers, the 49-year-old unionist argues.
"It's a joke," he says. "We've been living in a denialist country."
Consequently, there's been an exodus of young teachers to the private sector, "where they can earn two or three times as much", leaving behind an ageing teaching population "of people who are looking after their pensions".
The teaching population should be somewhere in the region of 420 000 today to cover the needs of South Africa's 27 000 schools, but instead it's steadily declining and is not helped by the steady crawl of HIV/Aids into classrooms.
"And when someone leaves or dies, you can expect to wait six months or a year to get a replacement teacher in some places," Nxesi claims.
Those who stay behind are left to grapple with a crumbling infrastructure. Many of the country's schools are not up to standard.
Just how many, the union chief does not know.
"But many, many schools are not in good shape."
It's a problem that's exacerbated by overcrowding. Although the average student-to-teacher ratio is 32:1 in government-funded schools, and 17.5:1 in private schools, Nxesi says it is not uncommon for classrooms to swell to "40, 50, even 70 in some cases".
They are statistics that feed into a staggering 50 percent drop-out rate.
"If one accepts estimates that every year 1.1 million children start Grade 1, then why did we have only 589 912 pupils writing matric in 2008?" former academic and activist Mamphela Ramphele recently asked.
"But teachers are not to blame," Nxesi insists.
"The problem is government," he argues. But not only are they not listening, "we don't think they are taking education very seriously".
Year-on-year government has repeatedly allocated the greatest chunk of the budget to education. However under Naledi Pandor's watch, Nxesi says he has watched the Department of Education take on a more liberal line which he fears is the death knell for free education.
"And the problem with that is that it will be the survival of the fittest" which will drag the poor black classes back to the dark days of apartheid, in education terms.
Although Nxesi talks up a good line, he would do well to look over his shoulder once in a while at the ranks he represents, if improvement of the system is what's really driving his agenda.
Today, Sadtu membership stands at 240 000, the largest union of educators in this country.
Yet the union has still to do a basic audit of its members to see who actually holds the appropriate qualifications to teach.
"The debate of the qualification is a difficult one," Nxesi argues, but offers an estimate of about 30 000 people who are not qualified to stand in front of classes, a grim statistic for the one in 12 classrooms subjected to sub-standard teaching.
Yet it is Sadtu which is lobbying for government at the same time to equip each teacher with a laptop to keep abreast of the new Outcomes Based Education system.
"You can't expect us to teach in the dark ages," he says, seemingly unaware of the contradiction he throws up.
With so many unqualified teachers, Sadtu is unable to impart basic education without conflating the problem with technology.
The union has been equally lax about getting tough with teachers who repeatedly bring the profession into disrepute.
Last year 18 teachers were struck off the national roll for sexual harassment, of a total of 30 or so cases that were brought before the South African Council for Educators, according to chief executive Raj Brijraj.
It has to be asked how many rapes and sordid incidents of sexual misbehaviour will have to be committed before Sadtu will begin to act.
The glaring contradiction, however, is that Sadtu is shameless in its support for the ANC, yet it is an ANC government which, in Nxesi's words, "has failed the children of South Africa when it comes to education".
"Government is not the ANC," he insists.
"Most of the policies that were implemented in the past few years were not ANC policies," he argues, jumping on the bandwagon that has become the ANC get-out-clause in the wake of Thabo Mbeki's recall from office.
"(The Mbeki administration) came up with their own thing. Gear was never an ANC policy, but they implemented it anyway."
In the run-up to the general election, the union has begun to campaign hard for the ruling party.
"Sadtu is not going to be apologetic that we are organising for the African National Congress," Nxesi says.
Yet it begs the question why the likes of Sadtu does not leave politics to the politicians and focus instead on education, which Nxesi himself admits is in crisis.
The better the performance of teachers and the greater return they provide for tax payers' money spent on education, the stronger they would stand in the eyes of the government. Which, in turn, would lead to greater bargaining power.
Surely it's in Sadtu's interests to raise the bar for its membership and improve on its basic bread and butter issues.
"Never," is the answer. "We cannot abandon (politics) to someone else. We refuse to be confined to the shop floor. We feel that we have not liberated South Africa fully and we will continue to struggle in politics."
Nxesi has been with the union since it was formed in 1990 and has served as its secretary general since 1994.
He will step down when his fourth term ends next year and suggests that he will follow in the footsteps of his predecessors and join the ranks of parliament when it does.
"There are many people who argue that I was at the start of the struggle for education and that there is a need to push me into parliament to take it forward."
Not a bad reward for someone who has yet to deliver on his part of the struggle.
See also Wasting precious Western education on primitive savages
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