Pretoria - The gloves are off against public schools in Pretoria east that still use Afrikaans on all their written materials, thereby excluding those who did not speak the language from getting quality education closer to their homes.
The ANC Youth League in the region said it would demand meetings with school governing bodies and make it clear that the time for the transformation of institutions had arrived.
Leader of the youth league in the area, Tshepo Masanabo, said all the materials, including admission forms and websites, of those schools were in Afrikaans, and this would no longer be tolerated.
Masanabo said they would embark on a campaign to secure an equitable dispensation with regards to language policy at public schools.
He said the decision followed several incidents of language discrimination at schools in the east.
“Our view is that the use of language policy as an exclusionary measure disadvantages other learners and undermines the values and mandate of public education.
“In our context, we take this view specifically where Afrikaans medium schools are concerned.
“It is wholly impractical for public schools to be providing single-medium Afrikaans education within the rapidly transforming urban settings,” Masanabo said.
He said the result of the single-medium approach was a situation where many non-Afrikaans speaking pupils, particularly blacks, Indian and English-speaking white pupils, couldn’t find spaces in local schools. Masanabo said the youth league would be agitating for a rapid change in language policy at schools in the region.
“Our aim is to see the inclusion of the currently excluded non-Afrikaans speaking learners as soon as reasonably possible.
“We will campaign relentlessly and militantly in the pursuit of our goal. We do not dispute that Afrikaans is an official language, nor do we dispute that the Afrikaans language should be taught in schools for its preservation.
“However, we echo the sentiments of the youth of 1976, who had opposed the imposition of a certain language as a medium of learning and teaching, to the exclusion of alternatives, in schools in close proximity to their homes wherein the demographics of the communities dictated otherwise,” he said.
“Likewise, today’s young people cannot be excluded from quality basic education in close proximity to their homes because they do not comply with an outdated language policy…”
The league was calling on parents, teachers and pupils from across the city to join its campaign.
Pretoria News