President Cyril Ramaphosa launched the Safe Schools Initiative at the Sheraton Hotel in Pretoria on Tuesday morning amid a protest outside.

The president told the dignitaries, among them Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi, basic education minister Angie Motshekga and business people, that the initiative sought to give children what most had taken for granted.

"We are here to ask you to be part of a bold social initiative to ensure that every school in the country has safe and appropriate sanitation facilities," said Ramaphosa.

"This is an initiative that will save lives and restore the dignity of tens of thousands of our nation's children as our constitution demands."

Ramaphosa said schools should be used to build communities and to strengthen partnerships between the government and the people. The president also directed Motshekga to conduct an audit of learning facilities with unsafe structures and ablution facilities.

The launch comea five months after the death of five-year-old Lumka Mkhethwa who fell in a pit toilet at her school in Bizana, Eastern Cape.