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<h3 id="gmail-DailyNewsHeadline">language judgement to be appealed – AfriForum</h3>
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Alana Bailey |
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25 June 2018 <br></div><div class="gmail-article-date"><br></div>
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Alana Bailey says the rights organisation asks protection for directly affect the speakers of all official languages
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<p><b>AfriForum to appeal court judgement regarding Unisa language policy </b></p>
<p><span size="2"><i>25 June 2018</i></span></p>
<p><span size="2">Leave was granted to the civil rights organisation
AfriForum to appeal against the North Gauteng High Court’s judgement in
favour of the University of South Africa’s (Unisa’s) unilingual English
language policy. This judgement was delivered on 26 April 2018. </span></p>
<p><span size="2">According to Alana Bailey, Deputy CEO of AfriForum
responsible for language affairs, the organisation and its legal team
decided that it is essential to appeal, seeing as the protection of
language rights is essential for quality education in the country and
also because it directly affects the future stance of the economy. The
protection of the rights of Afrikaans speaking students is of extreme
importance to AfriForum and the organisation will continue to protect
and promote their access to mother tongue education using all possible
legal manners.</span></p>
<p>“<span size="2">This judgement does in our opinion and the national
and international research that we have done in the past 12 years
regarding the significance of the protection of language rights not fit
in with developments in this field,” says Bailey. “The rights which we
ask protection for directly affect the speakers of all the official
languages.” </span></p>
<p><span size="2">Shortly after leave to appeal was granted, AfriForum
received good news concerning another language case in which the civil
rights organisation is involved. AfriForum is one of the organisations
supporting the language rights activist Cerneels Lourens in a case
regarding the lack of legislation in all 11 official languages.
Currently all legislation is published in English, accompanied by a
randomly selected second language. This means that South African
legislation is not comprehensibly available in any of the ten native
official languages. Lourens and his contributors in 2017 reported the
matter at the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations (UN) after
all local legal remedies to make multilingual legislation possible were
depleted without success. This charge is now at last officially being
investigated. Lourens, AfriForum and the other participants in the
process are hoping that the UN’s investigation will also contribute to
more awareness concerning the necessity of language rights in the
country. </span></p>
<p>“<span size="2">The UN’s earnestness with this matter ought to also
show institutions such as Unisa that students cannot simply be deprived
of education in their mother tongue,” declares Bailey. AfriForum is thus
currently preparing at full steam for the appeal case against Unisa’s
unilingual language policy. </span></p>
<p><span size="2"><i>Issued by Alana Bailey, Deputy CEO, AfriForum, 25 June 2018</i></span></p>
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<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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