STATEMENT: STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY COUNCIL MEETING OF 30 NOVEMBER 2015
2 December 2015
Open Stellenbosch strongly reiterates its call for the dissolution of Council. It has become increasingly apparent that the Council is against transformation and multilingualism is merely used as a front for maintaining the privileged status of ‘Standaard Afrikaans’. The commitment Council has made to maintain the language policy adopted on 22 November 2014 indicates a failure to acknowledge that the conception and implementation of this policy is flawed.
The alternative language policy proposed by Open Stellenbosch has not been taken into consideration by Council despite the fact that, presently, it is the only proposal that prioritises access and promotes an enabling environment for true multilingualism, while taking cognisance of the intersectionality of language, class, gender, race and disability as experienced in academic, employment and social environments.
Management, however, has been left with the task of creatively interpreting the current language policy in terms of their statement released on 12 November 2015, which declared that English would be used as the primary medium of instruction and internal communication in 2016. Management received overwhelming support from staff, deans, Senate and student representative bodies to proceed in accordance with its statement of 12 November.
Open Stellenbosch, too, is in agreement with the principles of that statement. In general the statement was met with a positive response from those in favour of substantive transformation. Council’s decision to overrule management’s statement of 12 November points to their anti-transformation agenda.