Minister of Higher Education and Training and leader of the South African Communist Party (SACP), Blade Nzimande has been challenged by AfriForum to tell the public whether he associates himself with the statements of the Young Communist League (YCL).
AfriForum said this follows a recording that was played by radio station RSG on Monday of a leader of the YCL saying: “Afrikaans must go to hell.”
“The YCL also handed a memorandum to the North West department of education on Friday, requesting, amongst other things, that Afrikaans should be abolished as medium of instruction and that English should be used exclusively as language of education.”
In the memorandum, says AfriForum, the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction is compared to a lion (“the white man”) eating an impala (“the black man”) as his “daily bread”.
Ernst Roets, national chairperson of AfriForum Youth, commented that these opinions of the YCL not only “border on hate speech”, but are also directly opposed to the basic constitutional principles of equality, multilingualism and mother-tongue education.
Roets also said: “What concerns us most, though, is the fact that the leader of the SACP also is the minister of higher education and training. Therefore it is important for the minister to make it clear to the public whether he is prepared to disassociate himself from these statements of the YCL, or not.” — I-Net Bridge