Trade union Solidarity has taken the department of basic education to court over a bursary for teachers, saying the criteria used to select students discriminate against white students. The case was heard last month in the high court in Pretoria and judgment was reserved.
The Funza Lushaka bursary programme was established in 2007 to promote teaching as a profession and to increase the number of teachers.
In court papers Solidarity argues that the selection criteria exclude white students from receiving a bursary.
The union based its argument on section 29 of the Constitution, which says the state must take reasonable measures to realise the right of further education for everyone, and that everyone has a right not to be unfairly discriminated against on the grounds of race.
The selection criteria Solidarity has challenged is one stating that students from rural areas and those who wish to teach in rural areas will be favoured.
The other is that preference will be given to those who can teach the foundation phase (grades R to 3) in an indigenous African language. (The other priority areas are grades 4 to 9 and grades 10 to 12. Bursaries for these will only be given if two of the priority subjects are included as a specialisation in the qualification.)
Solidarity argued that, of the white population, 60% speak Afrikaans and 40% speak English. “There is no portion of the white population that speaks any of the indigenous languages. The indigenous languages are spoken exclusively by the African part of the population. That the bursary is aimed at attracting students from poor, rural-speaking, indigenous African languages means … that it is aimed exclusively at black students.”
Solidarity also claimed that the department couldn’t prove that bursary students did go back to teach in rural areas.
It said the bursary criteria were “irrational and unreasonable” because not many single-medium schools taught in indigenous African languages.
The union used a 2013 survey, which found that between 2008 and 2012 most single-medium schools by language were English-speaking (81.4%), followed by Afrikaans at 13.9%.
Solidarity said the survey showed that school governing bodies had “overwhelmingly chosen Afrikaans and English as the language of learning and teaching … and have rejected indigenous African languages as the medium of instruction in public schools”.
To grant a student a bursary “simply because she comes from a rural area and speaks an indigenous African language” would therefore be “absurd”, said Solidarity.
In its heads of argument, the department said it was clear that Solidarity wanted to “wish away” the consequences of apartheid, adding that the department had “gone to great lengths by way of giving actual statistics to show that the communities in rural areas who speak indigenous African languages have been disadvantaged and unfairly discriminated against in the past”.
The selection criteria were meant to redress past injustices, it said.
The department detailed how the apartheid system favoured the education of white people above that of black people. As a result, in 1994 there were only 54% suitably qualified African teachers, compared with the 99% of white teachers, 93% of Indians and 71% of coloureds.
“In 1994 the democratic government inherited an unequal education and training system in terms of access, infrastructure, internal efficiency, input and output,” it said.
Redressing past injustice was provided for under section 9 of the Constitution and such measures would not amount to unfair discrimination. It said the bursary scheme did not exclude any South African citizen willing to teach in a rural area.