Overvaal High School: FF Plus warned Lesufi that he was going to be unsuccessful with Constitutional Court

27 July 2018

The FF Plus welcomes the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the appeal by the Gauteng Department of Education concerning Overvaal High School and the fact that the state may not appeal this ruling.

This follows after the MEC for Education in Gauteng, Panyaza Lesufi, announced in January this year that his department was going to approach the Constitutional Court to appeal the High Court’s decision regarding Overvaal High School. At the time, Judge Bill Prinsloo ordered that the Afrikaans school did not have to admit 55 English-speaking learners seeing as the school was already filled to capacity and there are two English schools nearby that had more than enough space to accommodate the learners in question.

In January this year, the FF Plus demanded Lesufi’s head in the Gauteng Legislature after violence erupted at the school and continued for days – particularly because it had seemed as if Lesufi had orchestrated it.

The FF Plus reprimanded Lesufi for acting like a disobedient child and cautioned him that he was going to be unsuccessful if he approached the Constitutional Court with an appeal and that it would all come to nothing and be a waste of tax payers’ money, because the High Court ruling simply stated that the school did not have to admit more learners and that, in itself, is not a constitutional issue.

Lesufi does not have a foot to stand on. His interference with schools’ decision-making and his politically-motivated agenda to force Afrikaans schools to become double medium has been delivered a knockout. The FF Plus hopes that Lesufi will come to the realisation that his actions over the last four years have been nothing but a waste of time and money and that he will now start focusing on doing his job as MEC.

The violence at Overvaal High School compelled the FF Plus to lay charges at the SAPS and to ask the Gauteng Premier to dismiss Lesufi.

In the very near future, the FF Plus will also lodge complaints against Lesufi with the Gauteng Legislature’s Integrity Commissioner for Lesufi’s contempt of the Constitution in terms of Section 135 read in conjunction with Addendum 2, Section 5.

Politicians, ministers and provincial MEC’s must realise that they cannot abuse their positions to trample on schools and disregard learners’ right to mother-tongue instruction, as enshrined in Section 29 of the Constitution, and then get away with it.

The FF Plus is going to insist that Lesufi must explain in the Legislature what exactly the appeal cost tax payers seeing as the appeal was dismissed with cost. Lesufi must personally be held responsible for the costs of the appeal.

A letter in this regard will be sent to the Gauteng Premier, David Makhura, the MEC for Finance, Barbara Creecy, and the national Minister of Education, Angie Motshekga.

Issued by Philip van Staden, FF Plus MPL: Gauteng Legislature, 27 July 2018