DA 2, ANC 0: Like Blade Nzimande, DA defeats Nathi Mthethwa’s attack on Afrikaans
15 June 2022
Note to Editors: Please find attached English and Afrikaans soundbites by Dr Leon Schreiber MP.
For the second time in one month, sustained DA pressure has defeated an attempt by the ANC national government to undermine the linguistic and cultural rights contained in section 30 of our Constitution. Following weeks of intense resistance by the DA and civil society, including our petition that garnered 10 000 signatures, mass protests and a historic protest concert presented in conjunction with leading Afrikaans musicians, Minister of Arts and Culture, Nathi Mthethwa, has today officially confirmed that “there will be no name change on the Afrikaanse Taalmonument [sic]” located in Paarl, Western Cape.
This latest victory in the DA’s ongoing work to protect South Africa’s rich cultural and linguistic diversity from the ANC follows hot on the heels of our successful campaign to force Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande to acknowledge Afrikaans as a fully-fledged indigenous African language.
The ANC’s latest concession of defeat to the DA came in the response to a written parliamentary question released earlier today. In the DA’s parliamentary question to Minister Mthethwa, dated 27 May, we had asked him whether his plan to remove Afrikaans from the name of a monument designed specifically to celebrate the diverse roots of this indigenous language indicated that his department had banned the existence of all monuments celebrating the indigenous languages of South Africa, or whether he was exclusively targeting Afrikaans for removal from our heritage landscape.