DA to form united front against BELA Bill in biggest ever court challenge against ANC school capture

26 October 2023

Today, the Democratic Alliance (DA) led a picket against the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill in front of the gates of Parliament. This picket, which was addressed by a range of civil society leaders as well as other political parties, symbolises our commitment to leading a whole-of-society approach to defeat the BELA Bill. This Bill will empower the ANC to capture, corrupt and collapse our schools – just as it has done in other sectors of society.

In keeping with our commitment to leading a whole-of-society approach, the DA can today announce that we are not only preparing our own legal challenge to the BELA Bill, which we will fight all the way to the Constitutional Court.

We can also announce that we are reaching out to all of the organisations that have indicated that they too will go to court to prevent school capture. Our aim is to coordinate and unite all of these various legal challenges into the biggest education court case South Africa has ever seen. We will shortly send formal letters to all organisations that intend to challenge the BELA Bill in court, inviting them to pool resources and work together to mount the strongest possible court challenge.

In this way, by uniting the voices of school governing bodies, civil society and opposition parties into one consolidated court attack against ANC school capture, we will defeat the BELA Bill.

Forming a united front against the ANC’s plans to capture and collapse our schools has never been more urgent.

There are currently a number of problems with the BELA Bill which include:

Language policies - The DA opposes disempowering SGBs from determining schools’ language policies. We worry that this clause could be exploited to target single language and mother tongue education schools to change their language policies. It is also highly impractical for the HOD to approve the language policies of all the schools in the province within the required timeframe;

Admission policies - The BELA Bill seeks to disempower school governing bodies (SGBs) from determining their schools’ admission policies and centralise this competency to the Head of a Provincial Department (HOD). The administrative burden on the HOD to approve every admission policy in the province would be immense and impractical and can lead to abuse of power;

Centralisation of power - SGBs at public schools and schools for learners with special needs (LSEN) should be free to determine how their members are elected without the Minister’s intrusion on the provinces. A 14-day deadline is unreasonably short to appeal the dissolving of SGBs by the HODs;

Regulation of the homeschooling sector - The Department has failed to meaningfully engage with the homeschooling sector regarding the most reasonable and appropriate ways to assess learners, nor has the Department satisfactorily addressed parents’ concerns regarding registration of learners and inspection of premises. BELA Bill not only contains exploitative clauses, it also fails to address blended and online learning, despite the Covid-pandemic showing the importance of these forms of education. Furthermore, the Bill does not provide enough protection for victims of sexual assault who have to attend disciplinary hearings, which could lead to further traumatisation; and

Mandatory Grade R – There has not been any feasibility study on where these additional funds will come from. The Department of Basic Education (DBE) does not have the R12 billion needed to implement this for all learners. Additionally, those parents who are financially unable to send their children to school due to lack of funds which may result in criminal records for parents.

While we support educational reform, we will not support a Bill that disempowers schools, parents, and communities and fails to address a single one of the systemic challenges that impede quality education, like overcrowding, poor literacy and numeracy, dropouts, terrible school infrastructure, poor quality teaching, and lack of resources.

As the DA demonstrated outside Parliament today, we are committed to forming a united front against the ANC. Politically, we are already doing so alongside our partners in the Multi-Party Charter for South Africa.

Now, we are inviting school governing bodies, civil society and political parties to similarly join hands with us against ANC school capture.

Together, we can mount the mother of all court challenges against the ANC’s plans to destroy our children’s futures. Together, we can and must defeat the BELA Bill.

Issued by Baxolile Nodada, DA Shadow Minister of Basic Education, 26 October 2023