Johannesburg - Civil Rights group AfriForum feels that English was more of an education barrier than Afrikaans.
Afriforum's Kallie Kriel said this during a debate with Gauteng MEC for Education Panyaza Lesufi on the preservation of Afrikaans in schools which was held at the Motsu Park Hall in Tembisa, Johannesburg, on Thursday.
Kriel said he was worried about the fact that Lesufi had a negative attitude towards Afrikaans and had stated his irritation about Afrikaans still being taught in schools in 2016.
“That may stop Afrikaans schools from practising,” Kriel said. “We should learn from history and not be naive.”
Kriel went on to say that education in English alone was actually to the detriment of children who were English speaking.
“It's a barrier to good education.”
Last month the Constitutional Court ruled in the favour of the Gauteng Education Department in the contested issues of school admissions regulations, and that children from outside a school's traditional catchment area could not summarily be turned away.
In celebration of the ruling Lesufi said in a Facebook comment: “We WON! Thanks ConCourt, today we finally broke the backbone of apartheid planning.”
However, Kriel said that although the majority of kids in Afrikaans schools were white, it wasn't necessarily diversity if every school was fully English and mostly black.
Afrikaans schools were portrayed as exclusively white spaces, he said.
“My children were in a school with black children and that Lesufi's child was also in an Afrikaans school which shows that it was not a white only space. Afrikaans is not only a white language.”
Kriel later said that the Afrikaans community wanted to make sure that their kids were educated in their mother tongue. “It should be extended to all children to help them excel.”
He said the Afrikaans community did not want to take over the country and government, they simply wanted their culture and language to be protected.
“The 1994 agreement has been broken and will affect all of us.”
During the debate he said that education was a serious challenge and it was good that the public was given a chance to discuss issues together.
Kriel said disagreements were caused by myths in society. “5.8% of schools in the country are Afrikaans schools. Former Model C Afrikaans school which we feel the MEC is against are only 2.5%, which is why they are not a barrier to quality education.”
He added that 80% of schools were dysfunctional and it was a figure that he got during one of national Education Minister Angie Motshekga's speeches.
African News Agency