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AfriForum loses Unisa ‘taal’ battle </h1>
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Ilse de Lange </div>
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<img src="https://citizen.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2018/01/Unisa2_03410-716x537.jpg" alt="The University of South Africa (Unisa)." class="gmail-img-responsive">
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The University of South Africa (Unisa). </p>
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An application by the rights group to set aside Unisa’s revised language
policy, with English as the sole language of tuition, was dismissed
this week. </h2>
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<p><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">A high court judge in
Pretoria has hammered the final nail in the coffin of Afrikaans as a
language of tuition at the University of South Africa. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Judge Raylene Keightley
this week dismissed an application by rights group AfriForum to set
aside Unisa’s revised language policy, with English as the sole language
of tuition from the start of last year. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">AfriForum had asked the
court to set aside Unisa’s 2016 decision, arguing that the policy was
unfair as there had been no public consultation, and that it violated
the constitutional guarantee of a qualified right to choose a language
of tuition at a public education institution. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Unisa stated that there
was a declining demand for Afrikaans and that they couldn’t tailor
their resource distribution to meet the demands of only 5.1% of its
Afrikaans students when weighed up against the demand of hundreds of
thousand of students for English tuition. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">Keightley referred at
length to judgments by the Supreme Court of Appeal and the
Constitutional Court, which both dismissed AfriForum’s attempt to have
the University of the Free State’s English-only policy set aside. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">The judge said it was
clear that the right to be taught in a language of choice depended not
only on the question of if existing resources made it technically
practicable or possible, and that the right could be curtailed by the
broader societal and constitutional considerations of equity and the
need to redress past discrimination. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">She said: “Universities
play an important role as thought-leaders in society. Therefore, in my
view it is acceptable and proper … for a university to consider how its
policies reflect its role in the broader SA [and international]
society.” </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">She said Afrikaans
enjoyed a privileged status at Unisa in circumstances where a relatively
small number of students were demanding tuition in Afrikaans, and a
growing call for resources to develop the academic status of other
African languages. </span></p>
<p>“<span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif">It seems the removal
of Afrikaans was justified on the basis of considerations of equality,
practicability and the need to redress past racially discriminatory
laws.” </span></p>
<p>– <span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif"><i><a href="mailto:news@citizen.co.za">news@citizen.co.za</a></i></span> <i> </i></p>
<p><strong>Also read: </strong><a href="https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/1776830/school-language-battle-in-court-over-afrikaans-only-high-school/"><strong><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span style="font-family:Georgia,"Times New Roman",Times,Georgia,serif"><span style="font-size:medium"><b>School language battle in court over Afrikaans-only high school</b></span></span></span></strong></a></p></div></div>
<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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