Minister of Higher Education is targeting Afrikaans under the guise of transformation
The word transformation in higher education actually means that there is no place for Afrikaans in the country’s universities, Dr. Pieter Groenewald, the FF Plus’ parliamentary spokesperson on higher education says.
Speaking in parliament during the budget debate of the department of Higher Education and Training, Dr. Groenewald referred to the Northwest University’s PU campus and said the minister of higher education, Dr. Blade Nzimande, has two sets of rules for Afrikaans and English. He abuses this to target Afrikaans where it is predominantly being used as medium of instruction.
He said that of the 38 university campuses in South Africa, there are only two which are predominantly Afrikaans, i.e. the PU campus and the University of Stellenbosch, although the Constitution of South Africa (in Section 6 and 29(2)) stipulates that every person has the right to be instructed in his/her mother tongue and that there may be single medium universities to give affect to this right.
“In his attack on Afrikaans the minister says that language should not be an obstacle to anybody. At the university of Cape Town, a competency test in English is however a pre-requisite for admission. If you do not pass it, one cannot study there. This is double standards and in addition in a province where 60% of people speak Afrikaans.
“The minister can also take note that the majority of people who speak Afrikaans are not white, but brown. He is misleading himself therefore to think that if one speaks Afrikaans, one has to be white. The minister is clearly under-estimating people’s intelligence when he says that he has nothing against Afrikaans,” Dr. Groenewald said.