JUDGE SLAMS AFRIFORUM
Lobby group brings same urgent application to high court twice
A JUDGE has slammed Afrikaans lobby group AfriForum for bringing to court the same urgent application it lost two months ago.
Late in July, Judge Nomsa Khumalo, in North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, threw out the application to stop Unisa from ditching Afrikaans as a medium of instruction next year.
Khumalo ruled that AfriForum had failed to make a case that the matter should be heard urgently.
The group got Judge Roland Sutherland, in the same high court, to hear the matter again last week Friday on an urgent basis.
Sutherland delivered his judgment yesterday. He ruled against AfriForum and ordered the organisation pay all costs.
Sutherland also had some stinging words for AfriForum: “In my view it was seriously wrong to have enrolled the matter again in the urgent court,” he said.
“Although there are grounds to suppose that AfriForum may have been hard done by on the first occasion when a finding of selfcreated urgency was found, that disappointment, and an understandable anxiety cannot justify an abuse of the process to overcome the perceived slow pace of response.”
Sutherland said Unisa “is correctly aggrieved” by being hauled to court for the second time.
“AfriForum must undoubtedly bear those costs.”
AfriForum wanted the court to interdict Unisa from implementing its resolution to only use English for academic purposes next year.
Currently, Afrikaans-speaking Unisa students have an option to write assignments and examinations in their home language.
Alana Bailey, deputy chief executive of AfriForum, said their main application against Unisa over its new language policy was still upcoming.
She is expecting it to be heard early next year.
“We would have liked prospective students to know that they can definitely study in Afrikaans next year at Unisa,” said Bailey.
“But this is not the main fight. Our case against the policy itself is still upcoming. We’re hopeful we’ll have a different result.”
Bailey insisted that it was important that the country’s universities using Afrikaans keep the language.
AfriForum was also embroiled in legal battle against other universities that have announced they will drop Afrikaans.
“At this stage we see that everything is becoming more English in South Africa.
“That stifles our South African languages. Slowly we’re losing the systems that go with the languages,” said Bailey.