Pretoria - Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi was “a dictator who was silently trying to attack Afrikaans”.
This was one of the accusations levelled against him during a public meeting he convened to inform parents of draft amendments to the admission of pupils to public schools.
After the amendments were tabled during a meeting at Sutherland High School in Centurion on Tuesday night, parents became emotional.
They accused Lesufi of attacking Afrikaans through the changes he intended to make to the regulations.
Kallie Kriel accused Lesufi of only applying those parts of the Constitution that he wanted. He said the discriminatory nature was why the MEC had never persecuted English-medium schools.
Another parent shared similar sentiments that the proposed changes felt as if they were a “racial attack”.
“By trying to accommodate other pupils, you then deny my children a right to access education in their preferred school. You already have a huge backlog in the department.”
The department and Lesufi were also accused of using these changes in order to bypass the school governing bodies.
“We also want to build quality in our schools. We are not the enemy here and we are not trying to attack the department, but this is like a centralised power rather than looking to work with us,” said Constance van der Walt, a governing body member at Afrikaans Hoër Meisieskool.
Lesufi tried to allay parents’ fears that he did not want to attack any particular language, but simply to remove the human element to ensure shared responsibility.
He repeatedly said all he wanted was to ensure everyone had access to education.
He implored those sending him hate mail and insults to leave his children out of the mess as they had nothing to do with these issues.
“I have absolutely no intention of closing down any Afrikaans schools. And let’s understand that the department has built more schools than ever before, and beautiful ones at that. Africans are still obsessed with who is black and who is white.”
He begged parents to work with him on achieving a stable educational environment in order to attract the best educators instead.
Lesufi said he would be doing all he could to ensure all were catered for and have credible principles in place for better schools.
“We championed the creation of governing bodies for parents to be involved. I’m proud to say 87% of the day-to-day decisions are made by the parents because I don’t want power; I want results.”