The African National Congress and the Presidency are singling out Afrikaans single-medium schools for interference, harassment and demonisation, says Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon.
In his weekly newsletter, published on the DA’s SA Today website on Friday, he condemned Western Cape education minister Cameron Dugmore for ”aggressive, bullying tactics” used in trying to compel an Afrikaans-medium primary school to create a special English-medium class.
Earlier this month, the Cape High Court upheld the right of the governing body of the Mikro Primary School, in Kuils River near Cape Town, to retain its Afrikaans-only status.
The court also rapped Dugmore and officials over the knuckles for ”unlawful interference” in the management of the school.
Leon said the ANC’s ongoing campaign against Afrikaans-medium schools has reached new depths.
”Mr Dugmore and the ANC-led provincial government put tremendous pressure on the school to accept their unconstitutional dictates.
”In a particularly cynical gesture, they even threatened to send 21 English-speaking children to a school for mentally handicapped learners if Mikro refused to accommodate them.
”The Cape High Court correctly chastised Mr Dugmore for his aggressive, bullying tactics, through which he showed himself fully prepared to sacrifice the welfare of children for the sake of a narrow ideological and political agenda.
”What is also alarming is the way in which Mr Dugmore’s conduct — encouraged and sanctioned at the highest levels of government — represents an abandonment of the commitments made by the President [Thabo Mbeki] and the ANC with regard to language rights.”
Mbeki has failed to fulfil promises he made on education and language rights.
”Instead, the ANC and the presidency are today singling out Afrikaans single-medium schools like Mikro for interference, harassment and demonisation.”
Leon said it is important to realise that the fight for Afrikaans schools ”is not an attempt to hold onto the apartheid past”.
”It is a struggle for constitutional rights and tolerance, waged against an increasingly arrogant and nationalistic ruling party whose appetite for control knows no bounds,” he said. — Sapa