Education Minister Naledi Pandor has said she strongly supports the use of Afrikaans and other indigenous languages as the medium of instruction in schools.
She was reacting to a DA media release in which she was accused of leading ‘an ideological crusade against Afrikaans” and a Freedom Front media release, which claimed it was ‘now quite clear that the government wants to take control of every single school in South Africa”.
A full bench of the Pretoria High Court ordered the admission of 113 grade eight learners, who want to be taught in English, to Ermelo High School, turning a formerly Afrikaans-medium school into a parallel-medium one. In late January the Mpumalanga education department relieved the school governing body at Ermelo High School of its power to determine its language policy and appointed a committee to exercise this function. The committee decided the school had to admit English-speaking learners and to educate them in their language of choice.
On February 2 the school was granted an interim interdict that suspended the new language policy, pending an application to review the Mpumalanga department’s decision to relieve the school governing body of its power to determine language policy.
On February 12 Pandor launched an urgent application not only to rescind the interim interdict, but also to be joined as a party in the review application. She argued that a provincial education department has the right to withdraw the functions of a school’s governing body if that school unreasonably refused to admit pupils requesting instruction in the language of their choice.
In response to the Freedom Front, Pandor said: ‘The FF+ clearly does not care for all children; they want 113 children to be denied access to school. The government has an obligation to provide school places for learners. Ermelo High is half full. Language cannot be used to deny children access to education.”
She said there has been a ‘trend over the past five years for more and more Afrikaners to choose to educate their children in English.”
In response to the DA, Pandor said: ‘If it is ideological to provide access to schools for schoolchildren, then I am happy to be called an ideologue. I have always supported the use of mother-tongue education in our schools, especially in the foundation phase. I have always supported the promotion of indigenous languages in our schools.”
She said the issue is not one of language, but ‘an issue of access to education … If there is a crusade that I have mounted in our schools, it is a crusade for inclusion rather than exclusion.”