Cape Town - The University of Pretoria and other academic institutions came under fire on Twitter for allegedly conducting their lectures in Afrikaans in a bid to exclude non-Afrikaans speakers.
It started when Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni tweeted "I publicly, and in my personal capacity, DISAGREE, with the phasing out of Afrikaans as one of the mediums of teaching at the University of Pretoria. As a country, you are shooting yourselves down. You will regret it in 30 years’ time."
Twitter user @sindivanzyl then called on "every single Black student from the University of Pretoria to share their experiences regarding Afrikaans lectures."
This was followed by many students revealing their experiences.
Luckily, I studied in English there BUT man, I had the most wicked Afrikaans speaking lecturers. They deliberatley used to fail Black students and then take pleasure in watching them beg for 2 marks to pass. 😔
— Michelle (@Michelle_Igwe) January 25, 2019
They would start having Q&A sessions in Afrikaans and the rest of us would be left out. So in protest we started playing cards(casino) and when the lecture asks, we say, we are not part of the conversation that means class is on recess so we taking a break. Boerkaans must fall
— Willy Wonka (@takie_marley) January 25, 2019
All languages need to be protected. Maybe phasing out Afrikaans completely was the more politically acceptable solution in the short term . The braver choice would have been for UP to adopt indigenous languages to add to Afrikaans.I fear 4 the future of all African languages.
— Edson Charikinya (@Charikinya) January 25, 2019
Interesting that your experience from 1996 is exactly the experience I had in 2008 🙃🙃🙃
— #iam1in3 (@ladykmalotle) January 25, 2019
[2013] We were approaching exam season so I went to an Afrikaans class because juicy scope. The lecture asked me to leave and I told him that I'm registered for the module. He insisted that I didn't belong in that class & went silent until I stood up & left.
— Mpumi (@Mpumi_Dee_) January 25, 2019
Lecturers would walk in an English lecture room and tell us "My English is bad, so I'll mostly revert to Afrikaans and if you don't understand that's not my problem," that was in 2010. Had a tough time having to understand a lot of things, had never done Afrikaans in my life
— Ero-Sennin (@Its_Neo_) January 25, 2019