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<h3 id="gmail-DailyNewsHeadline">Dark clouds over Matie centenary</h3>
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Hermann Giliomee |
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28 February 2018
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Hermann Giliomee says management has been relegating Afrikaans to a marginal position on campus
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<p><b><span>DARK CLOUDS OVER MATIE-CENTENARY</span></b></p>
<p><b><span></span></b></p>
<p><span>The University of Stellenbosch (US) is probably one of the few
universities worldwide where the management is locked in a constant
conflict with its convocation of alumni.</span></p>
<p><span>At the same time there are few universities in the world where
old-students remain so loyal to their alma mater as in the case of
US-alumni.</span></p>
<p><span>They see the US as an institution rooted in a very special
university-town with Afrikaans as medium of instruction and with
graduates who have excelled on a national and international stage.</span></p>
<p><span>As someone who studied at US and who spent roughly an equal
amount of time lecturing at US and UCT, I can testify that US is a very
special type of university with a distinct character, ethos and sense of
belonging. It is significantly different from other universities in the
old British Commonwealth. At the same time most of the English speaking
alumni that I know attach great value to their studies at Stellenbosch
in Afrikaans medium.</span></p>
<p><span>The special emotional ties with Afrikaans are strengthened
through the fact that the office of “Die Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse
Taal” (WAT), founded in 1926, is located on the campus. </span></p>
<p><span>The WAT-office contributes to awareness of the fact that
Afrikaans is, like Heinz Kloss, a German linguist stated, the only
non-European, non-Asian language in the world to achieve university
status.</span></p>
<p><span>At Stellenbosch the critical turning point arrived in the early
2000s with the appointment of a new rector. Prof. Rolf Stumpf, who
narrowly lost out on the position, and then left to become rector at the
University of Port Elizabeth, declared that the existence and
development of US were mainly determined by the Afrikaans community and
that no higher-level development could occur without the Afrikaans
community’s active co-operation. </span></p>
<p><span>Stumpf attached great value to diversity. He said: “I have
always believed that US should remain an Afrikaans university from a
national-diversity perspective – diversity clearly implies much more
than just race and gender. Language coupled with culture are also
important considerations for diversity.”</span></p>
<p><span>Instead, Dr. Chris Brink became US rector in 2002 after
declaring to council that a limited English offer could be imported, but
that his “good management” would ensure that Afrikaans remain the most
important medium of instruction. But he tried to manage the language
policy without language-proficiency conditions, rules and supervision,
which predictably led to the large-scale undermining of Afrikaans.</span></p>
<p><span>In 2006 Jean Laponce, a French-Canadian academic widely
regarded as one of the experts on the fate of minority languages, was
asked about the future of Afrikaans at US. He took one look at policy
and then predicted: “Afrikaans will survive on the US campus but only as
a decoration.” </span></p>
<p><span>Nevertheless Afrikaans speakers continued to prefer Afrikaans.
In the only opinion poll ever that the US-management requested to be
conducted by an independent body (the Lawrence Schlemmer report of
2008), more than 80% of Afrikaans speakers and approximately 40% of
English speakers indicated a preference for predominant Afrikaans medium
tuition. Instead of using the report as a basis for language policy,
management allowed the intake of English speaking students between 2008
and 2016 to double from 7000 to 14000 (nearly half of the total). The
overwhelming majority were white. Recruiters from UCT had little doubt
that the flight to Stellenbosch had much to do with fact that the
traditional English campuses were becoming increasingly black, </span></p>
<p><span>US not only took in increasing numbers of English-language
students but also dropped their demand that newly appointed lecturers
had to become proficient in Afrikaans before receiving tenure. In 2016
in the High Court in Cape Town the US admitted that over 200 lecturers
(between a quarter and a fifth of the total) were unable to provide
tuition in Afrikaans, The university authorities also admitted that the
university flouted its own language policy. </span></p>
<p><span>Under Brink and his two successors over the past 15 years an
ideology was developed whereby management took upon itself the right to
redefine the identity and place in the community of the university, and
radically change the language policy.</span></p>
<p><span>They have tried to justify this by pointing to the fact that
the university contributes nearly one-third of the budget from the
so-called third money-stream (donations, contract work etc.). This
argument is invalid. The third money-stream is only made possible
through using the infrastructure which were erected with taxpayers money
(Afrikaans speakers were until recently the language group that
contributed most to the tax revenue), and the huge donation from Jannie
Marais and several old students over the years.</span></p>
<p><span>Management also espouses the view that it does not specifically
have to address the needs of the Afrikaans speaking community, nor has
it any responsibility to ensure the transfer of the Afrikaans culture.
In reaction to this John Coetzee, Nobel-laureate, wrote to me: “I fully
support you. Management’s policy does not even mention the word
culture.”</span></p>
<p><span>In 2016 when the university revised its language policy, Fedsas
the governing body with whom most Afrikaans school boards are
affiliated, declared in a memorandum to US that its members in the
Western Cape were unanimously in support of Afrikaans remaining a
fully-fledged medium of instruction at US. Management ignored them.</span></p>
<p><span>Despite turning the US increasingly into an English medium
institution management over the past fifteen years have continued to
issue the assurance “Afrikaans is safe at US”. Some utterances boil down
to openly misleading the public. The current rector, Wim de Villiers,
talks one year of the precious position of Afrikaans on the campus, and
the next year during the official welcoming ceremony of first year
students he does not utter a single word in Afrikaans. </span></p>
<p><span>As a result management has zero credibility with regard to Afrikaans.</span></p>
<p><span>On 26 August, 2017 Beeld newspaper made the justifiable
observation that the process on the US-campus reminds one of how the
late Harvard political scientist, Samuel Huntington, described certain
processes of reform. He used the words “duplicity, deceit, faulty
assumptions and purposeful blindness”. This can be applied to the US of
today.</span></p>
<p><span>Since 2002 the US Convocation of Alumni has been the only
statutory body at US that has demanded a solid, sustainable full status
for Afrikaans. This does not mean the exclusion of English, but rather
that the medium of English should not undermine and ultimately destroy
that of Afrikaans.</span></p>
<p><span>The demand is motivated by the following considerations:</span></p>
<p><span>*Afrikaans is indisputably the most effective medium of instruction for those with Afrikaans as mother-tongue.</span></p>
<p><span>*The large amount of Afrikaans schools in the province are
dependent upon teachers who have studied for their degree and teachers
diploma in Afrikaans.</span></p>
<p><span>*US has a special task of empowering brown Afrikaans speakers,
who are disadvantaged in tertiary education participation. They have the
lowest attendance rates of all communities and the regression started
in 1990 when the UWC flipped from Afrikaans- to English medium.</span></p>
<p>In September 2017 Mahmood Mamdani, a highly regarded Ugandan academic
who recently emigrated to the USA delivered the T.B Davie Academic
Freedom Lecture at UCT. He told the startled audience that the
universities on the African continent have failed to develop a specific
academic tradition. The exception was the Afrikaans-medium universities.
In the course of the previous century it was transformed from a
language with a status little higher than that of the other African
languages on the continent to one that became the bearer of a specific
intellectual tradition. He expressed his dismay that the ANC government
did nothing to enable other African languages in the country to attain
this status. Sonja Loots, an Afrikaans columnist who attended the
meeting wrote: Mamdani caused consternation when he looked his audience
in their face and stated unambiguously: “Afrikaans is the most
successful instrument of decolonisation on the African continent.”</p>
<p><span>It is a great irony that 56 kilometers away the University of
Stellenbosch was busily engaged in the task of relegating Afrikaans to a
marginal position on the campus as a medium of instruction and
communication. The year 2018 is supposed to be the year in which the
university celebrates its centenary. Instead it looks to become one of
the darkest years in the university’s history.</span></p>
<p><span>The movement <i>Gelyke Kanse</i> was created after the
US-council approved a new language policy on 22 June 2016, which was
seen as a policy that would quickly lead to the demise of Afrikaans as
medium of instruction. The management of the convocation and Gelyke
Kanse believe that US has a unique opportunity to establish a
comprehensive bilingual university such as the one in Ottawa, Canada and
the one in Freiburg/Fribourg, Switzerland. We live in a country with
more than 7million Afrikaans home-language speakers, and in the Western
Cape half of its population and two-thirds of the brown population have
Afrikaans as a home-language. And where, furthermore, there are no less
than three English speaking universities within a stone’s throw from US.</span></p>
<p><i><span>Hermann Giliomee is a previous member of the US-council and a member of the movement Gelyke Kanse.</span></i></p>
<p><i><span>A version of this article first appeared in Beeld newspaper. </span></i></p>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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