Groups outraged at ruling on Afrikaans

A BLOW to South African language rights‚ is how AfriForum‚ AfriForum Youth and Solidarity described the North Gauteng High Court’s ruling in their language case against the University of Pretoria (UP).

The university will phase Afrikaans out as medium of tuition next year.

The case was heard on December 1 and the court announced yesterday that it rejected the application with costs.

“The case not only applies to the rights of Afrikaans students‚ but to the protection of the principles of mothertongue education and multilingualism versus monolingual English education,” the three groups said.

This, they said, was increasingly being adopted and enforced by institutions.

“This is at the cost of about 90% of South Africans whose mother tongue is not English.”

The university management said it welcomed the high court’s decision to uphold the resolution by the UP Council earlier this year to implement a new language policy.

“We will continue to work with all stakeholders to ensure that the new language policy is implemented with the least possible disruption and in the interest of all students,” it said.

The lobby groups said their legal team would study the judgment in detail to decide whether to appeal.

They remained convinced that the university’s new language policy amounted to a gross violation of the constitutionally recognised language rights of Afrikaans students.

The three organisations said they would take any possible steps to protect and preserve the rights of Afrikaans students to study in their mother tongue.

Afrikaans was the only language of instruction at Tukkies from 1932 until 1993, when English was introduced.

During the court hearing‚ lawyers for the university argued that AfriForum sought to ignore linkage between race and language in the context of the country’s history.

The court also heard that only 18% of the university’s students were Afrikaans-speaking. – TMG Digital