[lg policy] South Africa: Sparks to fly when Maties brass meets

Harold Schiffman hfsclpp at gmail.com
Mon Sep 14 14:35:43 UTC 2015 

Sparks to fly when Maties brass meets
by Bekezela Phakathi
<http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/staffprofiles/2012/08/02/bekezela-phakathi-profile>,
14 September 2015, 05:54

[image: Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande. Picture:
SOWETAN]
Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande. Picture: SOWETAN
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In this article

   - *Companies and organisations: *Department of Higher Education and
   Training
   <http://www.bdlive.co.za/tags/organisations/departmentofhighereducationandtraining/>
   - *People: * Blade Nzimande
   <http://www.bdlive.co.za/tags/people/bladenzimande/>

THE stage is set for a heated meeting of the Stellenbosch University
council at the end of this month with signs that members are at odds with
one another on the transformation debate.

This is despite the council declaring in Parliament earlier this month that
it was united on the salience of transformation at the university.

Whatever happens, the September 28 meeting of the 30-member council is
likely to be a historic session for one of SA’s oldest universities.

Up for discussion is a progress report on the task teams that are working
on the various student groups’ language proposals and claims, says
university spokesman Martin Viljoen.

Coming after the Rhodes Must Fall campaign at the University of Cape Town,
the transformation spotlight turned to Stellenbosch University, with the
establishment of Open Stellenbosch earlier in the year.

The group, predominantly made up of students, said it wanted to tackle
"institutionalised racism" at the university by highlighting racial
exclusion and the university’s controversial language policy.

The university council has an oversight responsibility for academic and
operational issues, and institutional, admission and language policies.

Members of the council include vice-chancellor Prof Wim de Villiers,
vice-rector for social impact, transformation and personnel Prof Nico
Koopman, media tycoon Koos Bekker and Piet le Roux.

Mr le Roux caused uproar on social media after a controversial tweet last
week in which he seemed to denounce the transformation agenda.

This came just a week after the university council had told Parliament’s
portfolio committee on higher education that it was united on driving
transformation at the institution.

"Blade Nzimande en #transformanie gaan nie wen nie. Ondersteun die
Afrikaanse Alumni-vereniging. (Blade Nzimande and transformation won’t win.
Support the Afrikaanse Alumni Association)," Mr le Roux tweeted, in an
apparent response to Higher Education and Training Minister Blade
Nzimande’s calls for transformation to be "radicalised" at Stellenbosch.

Mr le Roux is the convener of the recently formed Afrikaanse
Alumni-vereniging. The group has said the "continuing attack on Afrikaans
as the language of instruction is unconstitutional under the banner of
‘transformation’."

After the controversial tweet, the hashtag #pietlerouxmustfall started
trending on Twitter and Open Stellenbosch again called for the council to
be dissolved.

The activist group — now emboldened by the Rhodes Must Fall campaign — has
long agitated for the dissolution of the university council, blaming it for
the snail’s pace of transformation at the institution.

Open Stellenbosch seized upon a video, Luister, which chronicles incidences
of racism on the campus.

The film was produced by media company Contraband Cape Town and distributed
on social media by members of Open Stellenbosch.

One university staff member agrees that the council has not done much to
support transformation. "It is predominantly made up of alumni who want to
maintain the status quo … so it will be interesting to see how the
transformation debate unfolds," says the staff member, who requested
anonymity.

Members of Open Stellenbosch are demanding that the university pays more
attention to transformation issues and that it makes all classes available
in English. They argue that the current language policy is biased towards
Afrikaans.

But the university has maintained that its language policy gives equal
status to English and Afrikaans, saying it wants to provide 75% of its
modules in both languages in the coming years. Postgraduate classes are
already in English.

The university's language policy states that "Afrikaans and English are
applied in various usage configurations".

It further says that "parallel medium teaching and real-time educational
interpretation are used as preferred options where practically feasible and
affordable".

Some black students at the institution and members of the Open Stellenbosch
group argue that this policy essentially neglects people who cannot
understand Afrikaans as the interpretation service is often of poor quality
and things are easily lost in translation.

Constitutional law expert and Stellenbosch University alumni Pierre de Vos
said in a blog last week that attempts to transform the institution — both
in terms of its demographic make-up and its culture — have been hampered by
its language policy.

"I would therefore argue that any language policy that made it more
difficult for non-Afrikaans-speaking black students to study at
Stellenbosch would be discriminatory. Such a policy would not be reasonable
and Afrikaans students would not have a right to have it maintained," Prof
de Vos said.

He also said, ultimately, the issue is about correcting the wrongs of
apartheid and creating a fairer and more equal society — "although many
defenders of the status quo will deny this".

Speaking to Business Day, Prof de Vos said: "Personally, I believe all
universities should become more serious about multilingualism, assuming
that English is, as a practical matter, the academic language, but also
trying to accommodate linguistic diversity by encouraging students and
staff to become more multilingual.

"For example, why do universities like the University of Cape Town or
Stellenbosch not give extra admission points to applicants who can speak
isiXhosa?" he asked.

Department of Higher Education spokesman Khaye Nkwanyana says Mr Nzimande
believes transformation has evolved too slowly at former white
institutions, especially at former Afrikaans entities.

"Dual-language instruction is a constitutionally guaranteed option and
buttressed by the 2002 language policy," Mr Nkwanyana says.

"But where this exists, in this context of Afrikaans and English, parity
usage of these languages must be guaranteed and be put in practice. None
must supersede the other so that nonspeakers of the former suffer prejudice
because of its prominence in teaching."

Nkwanyana argues that an institutional culture that is still conservatively
white and Afrikaans-oriented is the main reason why there is an unwelcoming
environment for black academic staff who struggle to survive in these
institutions.

Prof de Villiers has made a commitment to engage with all stakeholders on
the transformation debate, although he has decried the tactics of Open
Stellenbosch.

"They want to set the agenda for meetings and interactions with them are
not constructive … they want to engage as a collective. We are committed to
open discussion and will continue doing so," he says.

http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/education/2015/09/14/sparks-to-fly-when-maties-brass-meets


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