[lg policy] YouthDay: Afrikaans schools rule, 42 years after Soweto riots

Fri Jun 15 19:57:24 UTC 2018

 YouthDay: Afrikaans schools rule, 42 years after Soweto riots

News <https://www.iol.co.za/the-star/news> / 15 June 2018, 09:07am / *BONGANI
NKOSI*

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Picture: Jonisayi Maromo/ANA
Imagine yourself as a black learner and living in a world where language is
used as a tool to exclude you from accessing quality education.

A world where Afrikaans is a medium of instruction in schools. A world
where all schools have to teach half of their subjects in Afrikaans despite
the fact that black teachers aren't fluent in it. A world where, as a black
pupil, Afrikaans is your third or fourth language.

While this happened in 1976 and led to a march that later turned violent,
not much has changed 42 years later when it comes to Afrikaans.

The language is still a tool used to exclude some black learners from
accessing education in areas which they live, forcing them to look outside
their neighbourhoods for school.

In January, Hoërskool Overvaal in Vereeniging declined to enrol 55 Grade 8
learners because they would have to be taught in English and not Afrikaans.
The school, which is an Afrikaans-medium school, stood its ground against
accepting the pupils, some of whom stayed less than a kilometre from the
school.

The 55 had been placed at the school by the Gauteng Education Department,
but the Overvaal school governing body (SGB) dragged the department to the
North Gauteng High Court and won.

With 100% of its teachers being Afrikaans-speaking whites, the SGB argued
the school had no capacity to admit learners requiring to be taught in
English.

Ruling in the SGB's favour, Judge Bill Prinsloo said: “I find that, on the
probabilities, the school has no capacity to receive the 55 English
learners, let alone to do so on such short notice and to convert to a
double-medium school.”

There were numerous protests at the schools, which the EFF also joined, but
when the dust settled, nothing had been achieved and the black pupils had
no choice but to go to schools some 16km away from their homes.

Of Overvaal’s 662 pupils, only 16 are black African and seven are coloured.
A whopping 639 (96%) are white.

Tlhoriso Mofokeng, one of the parents fighting for admission of black
learners at Overvaal, said the 55 pupils - aged 14 and 15 - had been forced
to travel to schools several kilometres away from home.

“They are scattered,” said Mofokeng. “Some are in General Smuts High
School, some 12km away from their homes.

"On a basis that Smuts was full, we were forced to take others to Three
Rivers - which is about 16km to 20km from their homes," he said.

“There are those staying less than a kilometre from the Overvaal school.
They could just walk to it, but now they have to travel,” Mofokeng said.

He said the exclusion of non Afrikaans-speaking pupils at Overvaal had
similarities to the apartheid government's education policies that
eventually drove Soweto learners to protests in 1976.

“The difference might be that in 1976 this thing was happening in all
schools. Today we're talking about only one school that is not accessible.
For you to access that school, you're subjected and forced to study in
Afrikaans - irrespective of your race.”

The community surrounding Overvaal has become multiracial and not just
exclusively Afrikaans over the years. Black parents felt the school's
language policy needed to reflect this.

“It's better for a school to be multilingual so that it is accessible to
all cultures,” Mofokeng said. "Our argument to Overvaal was very clear: we
don't want you to do away with Afrikaans, because it's your mother tongue,
but can you accommodate our children who are studying in English?

“This is the only request we made. Nothing more, nothing less,” Mofokeng
said.

“The community itself is multiracial, and it would not be correct to have
one race dominating.

“But on top of that, when we took over in 1994, we said we want to build a
multiracial society. That should say that whatever I do, I should do it in
a way that accommodates my neighbour. I think that's what as a country
we're trying to achieve.”

The Overvaal matter is now headed for the Constitutional Court. The
department has petitioned the highest court in the land to set aside the
high court ruling that favoured the school's SGB.

Overvaal is not the first Afrikaans-medium school to see protestation and
court battles over its language policy.

Black learners were finally placed at Hoërskool Montana and Hoërskool
Overkruin in Pretoria in January 2017 following protests and legal
wrangles. A court ruled against the schools' attempts to exclude pupils who
were not Afrikaans speaking.

Data from the Basic Education Department shows that single Afrikaans-medium
schools are declining.

During a parliamentary reply to questions about this issue, Minister of
Basic Education Angie Motshekga said the changing racial dynamics in
communities was the reason behind the decline of Afrikaans-medium schools

In papers filed at the Constitutional Court, the head of the Gauteng
Department of Education, Edward Mosuwe, demands that Overvaal accept
non-Afrikaans-speaking pupils.

“The area is now dominated by non-Afrikaans-speaking people. For several
years there has been a demand from the community that the school open up to
English learners and adopt a parallel medium of instruction.

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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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