Without institutional autonomy and bold leadership, diversity of language in higher education in South Africa will not survive, says Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon.
Furthermore, the autonomy of universities is in itself important, he said in his weekly newsletter on the DA’s website on Friday.
Regardless of the funding tertiary institutions receive from the government, the principle of academic freedom is sacrosanct and fundamental to the creation of a democratic, open society.
Just as the English universities found the courage to resist political pressure from the previous government, so should Afrikaans universities resist the intrusions of the new one, Leon said.
”The policy of dual-medium instruction that is now being expanded at Stellenbosch, in which both English and Afrikaans are used simultaneously in the classroom, has been a failure over the past two decades.
”Lecturers cannot cope with the difficult burden of teaching two languages at once, and English eventually dominates.”
Parallel-medium instruction, in which there are separate classes in English and Afrikaans, has been more successful.
That is the route many other Afrikaans schools and universities have taken, and it is one Stellenbosch should have considered more seriously, he said.
The main objection to parallel-medium instruction at universities, aside from its cost, is that it could lead to a de facto racial segregation, with black students congregating in the English classes.
”But whatever language policy they choose, universities cannot avoid reflecting the problems of South Africa’s primary and secondary schools.”
Even at English-speaking universities, there is a tremendous concentration of black students in the social sciences, as opposed to the natural sciences — a phenomenon that President Thabo Mbeki has criticised many times.
The problems faced by the neediest students call out for urgent intervention in the neediest schools.
”But these problems are not going to be helped one bit by the demise of Stellenbosch as an Afrikaans institution,” he said.
”If Stellenbosch loses Afrikaans, the loss of language diversity in higher education will be devastating — not just to Afrikaans-speaking South Africans, not just to the majority of the residents of the Western Cape, but to the Constitution and its injunction to pursue ‘practical and positive means’ to promote all of South Africa’s official languages.”
Furthermore, the loss of Afrikaans could also mean the loss of academic excellence.
Stellenbosch and other historically Afrikaans-speaking universities have led the way in post-apartheid South Africa, both in research and teaching.
The fact that they use an indigenous language has been an asset, not a liability, in their quest for global recognition.
”Meddling in university language policy would be yet another case of the government fixing what isn’t broken.”
To be in favour of protecting Afrikaans is not to be in favour of exclusion, just as it is not ”anti-black” to be ”pro-Afrikaner”, Leon said. — Sapa