Afrikaans remains in jeopardy in schools despite Bela amendments  

25 April 2024

An Afrikaans school can still, at the blink of an eye, be declared a multilingual school by a provincial head of education if the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill (BELA) takes form in its current format as recommended by the National Council of Provinces.

For this reason, Solidarity remains strongly opposed to the amendment of sections 5 and 6 in the BELA Amendment Bill dealing with schools’ language and admissions policies.

According to Johnell Prinsloo, education researcher at the Solidarity Research Institute, the latest amendments certainly do not bring relief, and ultimately still come down to the same evil.

“Even if the latest amendments state that governing bodies may draft the school’s language and admission policies themselves, another provision draws a line through  it. 

“The government creates the impression that governing bodies will be able to exercise these powers themselves, but strips it from value by granting a head of an education department (HED) and the Education MEC the powers to make unilateral and enforceable decisions about these policies,” Prinsloo said.

In terms of Bela, a head of department can order a public school to accept more than one language of instruction, should he or she consider it practical and feasible.

Prinsloo asks whether it could really be claimed that a governing body is determining its own language policy if this policy can simply be changed afterwards by a head of the department. 

“What does the independent drafting of a policy mean at all if a government official can change or shred  it as he or she deems fit ? Should the school appeal against the change all the MEC needs to do is to simply inform the school of his or her decision in this regard,” Prinsloo said.

Solidarity says that although the NRP’s select committee has now finally processed the Amendment Bill and the NRP will soon vote on it, the fight against BELA has only just begun.

“We see right through these amendments as their consequences remain exactly the same. In terms of the Amendment Bill the government has the final say on language and admission at schools and this can easily be used as an ideological weapon against Afrikaans education,” Prinsloo said.

Issued by Johan Botha, Head: Solidarity Teachers’ Network, 25 April 2024