[Lgpolicy] The controversy surrounding South Africa’s Bela Act

[Francis M. Hult via Lgpolicy]

Africa Check

The controversy surrounding South Africa’s Bela Act

The Basic Education Laws Amendment bill, or Bela bill, was published as a
draft in May 2022. By February 2023, it had attracted more than 29,000
public comments, many of which expressed concern about the proposed changes.

Nevertheless, parliament passed the bill in May 2024, and president Cyril
Ramaphosa signed it into law on 13 September...Section 5 requires SGBs to
submit their language policies for government approval to meet the
linguistic needs of the wider community. The government believes this will
help to address historical language-based exclusions. At the same time,
critics fear it could undermine certain pupils’ educational rights, like
those who rely on Afrikaans as their primary language.

Full story:
https://africacheck.org/fact-checks/blog/explainer-controversy-surrounding-south-africas-bela-act
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lgpolicy-list/attachments/20250208/8b45fbb5/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------

_______________________________________________
Lgpolicy mailing list
Lgpolicy at lists.mail.umbc.edu
https://lists.mail.umbc.edu/mailman/listinfo/lgpolicy