from time to time. In January 2000, he vowed to improve the matricula-
tion pass rate by 5 percent a year, and in February he promised to break
the back of illiteracy within five years. 107 In fact, however, the crisis deep-
ened. The education department continued to make changes in the school
curricula, there was still a desperate shortage of qualified teachers, espe-
cially in mathematics and the sciences, and conditions in many schools re-
mained chaotic. The leaders of the Congress of South African Students
(caSAS) refused to relinquish the powers they had exercised in the
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