Basic education minister, Siviwe Gwarube. (Lefty Shivambu/Gallo)
The cabinet clearing house has come to an understanding that the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act can be implemented, in full and as is, while allaying concerns around section 4 and 5 of the legislation, sources said on Friday.
“It looks like it is possible for everybody’s concerns to be addressed substantively,” one of the parties to a crunch meeting of the clearing house on Thursday told the Mail & Guardian.
“But there are a couple of steps that have to be taken to get there.”
Satisfying all sides will now be a question of achieving broad consensus around the norms, standards and regulations that must be drafted by Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube to give effect to the law.
The clearing house discussed broad outlines laid down by the minister, which will now be considered by President Cyril Ramaphosa.
A report was forwarded to Ramaphosa on Thursday evening, his office confirmed, after the clearing house met for three hours in the afternoon.
The talks were described as robust but not as fractious as earlier meetings at resolving bitter divisions between the ANC on the one hand and the Democratic Alliance (DA) and Freedom Front Plus on the other. None of the other parties in Ramaphosa’s cabinet have opposed the Act.
Ramaphosa signed the Act into law on September 13, but suspended implementation of the two sections in question for three months for further consultation.
It is now up to the president to announce whether he is lifting the suspension of sections 4 and 5, and whether these will take effect immediately or at a later date.
“The president will be going through the report from the GNU (government of national unity) clearing house process, and thereafter, he will indicate the way forward,” his spokesman Vincent Magwenya said.
Ramaphosa is hosting German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and a swift decision should not be expected.
The DA, which demanded a rethink of the sections in question during negotiations on forming a coalition alliance with the ANC, was cautiously optimistic that the policy row could be resolved.
“The president has the proposals in front of him. We hope that he will make the right decision and look at the negotiations that took place and take to heart the information and the advice that his minister gave him,” DA spokesman Willie Aucamp said on Friday.
The DA was represented in Thursday’s meeting by Helen Zille, the party’s federal chairperson.
Other parties to the clearing house negotiations said the overall consensus was that the suspension of sections 4 and 5 must be lifted.
The long, heated debate around how and when they will be implemented has largely been an unnecessary one, one of the parties said.
It was driven and skewed by the rhetoric of the May elections.
“If you look at the legislation as it is, and the steps that would have to be taken in the ordinary course of implementing legislation anyway, it is possible to resolve all those issues within the legislation as it is,” one party to the negotiations said.
The route was through the regulations without which effect could not be given to the Act, and therefore implementation would, realistically, be about a year away in any event.
Implementation will also require prior information campaigns and sessions around the provision that criminalises failure to enrol children in Grade R, as well the conditions under which provincial authorities can intervene on language and admission policy.
The latter made for the main sticking point between the ANC and the DA.
Its criticism around the Act centred around the extent to which the authority to set language and admission policy could be taken away from governing bodies and given to provincial education politicians.
This was read by many on the other side as a regressive attempt to preserve Afrikaans as a language of instruction, among them Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi. On Thursday, he was reported as describing the decision on implementing the act as a choice “to defend our children or surrender them to those who hate us”.
Lesufi demanded that the Act be implemented in full as of Friday.
But one party to the negotiations noted that the budget appropriations for the current financial year do not accommodate the Bela Act.
“Anybody who thinks you could implement the legislation in January is misguided. There is no money for it.”
The standoff over the bill has fed into factional opposition within the ANC over its coalition arrangement with the DA and prompted calls for Ramaphosa to fire Gwarube.
The Mail & Guardian has been told emphatically that this is not on the cards.