Press release by the President of the Convocation of Stellenbosch University pursuant to resolutions taken at the Council meeting of Saturday, 20 February 2016

22 February, 2016

I have been informed by Council members representing the Convocation of Stellenbosch University that on 20 February 2016 the majority of the Council members passed a resolution that will have far-reaching consequences for the University’s language policy and plan.

The motion adopted reads as follows:

"With due recognition of the exceptional circumstances and for the interim, until council formally accepts a new language policy and plan, the language specifications of modules may be applied flexibly while adhering

a) to use of language in the classroom in such a way that no student is excluded from the lecture; and

b) to promote, encourage and ensure the use of Afrikaans in the lecture."

This resolution was preceded by the following events:

On 13 November 2015 the Rector, as head of the US management team ("Management"), announced that in future English would be the language of teaching, administration, communication and even of residence meetings.

Notwithstanding a Council resolution passed on 30 November 2015 that insisted on implementation of the university’s language policy, which broadly requires equal rights for Afrikaans and English, Management subsequently saw to it that at the start of the academic year this was in practice deviated from and that English became the preferred language of teaching.

As a result, AfriForum filed an urgent application to the court which in turn led to the University giving an undertaking, in writing, that the policy would be implemented.

All these events then occasioned the Council chairperson to call an urgent extraordinary Council meeting for 20 February 2016 at which one would have expected Management to be called to account because it had allowed, despite the Council’s resolution of 30 November 2015, a deviation from the language policy  – that is to say, in so far as they had not initiated it.

The Council started by resolving that an independent investigation be launched to determine how the deviations from the approved language specifications and language plan came about and what could be done to prevent this.

Paradoxically, it was then decided to approve, on an urgent basis as an interim arrangement, that the language policy and plan and the language specifications could be applied flexibly, but that Afrikaans still had to be promoted – the resolution I quoted above.

The purpose of this resolution is to give Management full authority to continue with English as the preferred language of teaching, as was done at the beginning of 2016, even if this is a deviation from the language policy and from a written undertaking given to AfriForum that this would be discontinued.

Apart from no apparent steps having been taken to abide by the University’s written undertaking to AfriForum, and such steps now being unlikely –

I have been advised that the Council resolution is contrary to legal advice that was available to the Council, a fact that is inconsistent with the demands of responsible corporate management, and 

The resolution actually amounts to an amendment of the language plan that does not follow the prescribed procedures and voids the University’s agreement with AfriForum.

What effectively happened is that the Council ordered an investigation of the unedifying situation in which the University finds itself as a result of the deviation from its language policy and then attempted, contrary to a binding agreement with AfriForum, to change its own language policy, from which it believed Management had deviated, so as to align it with what its Management was indulging in.

In the process, the Council to all intents and purposes abandoned its policy of multilingualism and adopted a policy of flexibility, which sounds the death knell for Afrikaans. The Council knuckled under, as Management is constantly doing.

The fact that the Council also decided to appoint a committee to advise it on language and language policy revision is scant comfort. The fact that the Rector, the Vice-Rector: Learning and Teaching and an acting Vice-Rector are all members of this committee is setting the wolf to herd the sheep.

These complications have serious implications, not only for Stellenbosch University but also for education generally, especially in the Western Cape.

I intend to conduct discussions with other role players in the near future and on an urgent basis in order to decide on a strategy to put an end to this foolishness.

In conclusion, I wish to express my appreciation to the six Council members who voted against the policy of flexibility.

Statement issued by Jan Heunis, President of the Convocation of Stellenbosch University, 22 February 2016