SU and lobby groups in court over Afrikaans

AFRIKAANS has to fall as a dominant language at Stellenbosch University (SU) because it denies black students access, the institution says in papers filed at the Constitutional Court.

The court was poised to be the final arbiter in the battle by Afrikaans lobby groups to have the language reinstated as a parallel medium of instruction at a number of universities. Stellenbosch will square off with Gelyke Kanse, one of the lobby groups.

Gelyke Kanse brought an application aiming to set aside a High Court ruling that favoured the university’s 2016 decision to adopt English as its single medium of instruction.

In heads of argument filed at the court, the group’s counsels Jan Heunis and Karrisha Pillay argued the university’s new policy was inconsistent with the constitution.

The constitution granted everyone a right to be educated in an official language of their choice provided this was practical, they said.

“We submit that the ongoing annihilation of Afrikaans as a language of instruction does not accord with the positive obligation imposed on national government by section 6(4) of the constitution.”

They accused the university of not dropping Afrikaans for transformation purposes, but as a reaction to the growing number of white English-speaking students and lecturers.

“That the anglicisation of the SU had little to do with transformation is evident, for example, by the fact that 85% of the English-speaking students who entered the SU between 1995 and 2015 were white. Accordingly, we submit, the new language policy is aimed at addressing the needs of English-speaking white students as opposed to students of colour.

“… This does not meet the objectives of racial equity or integration.”

The university rejected this claim, saying the majority of its new students were black. “It is difficult to understand why this is relevant,” said SU’s counsels, Jeremy Muller and Nick de Jager, in their responding heads of argument.

They said 63% of the institution’s first-year students in 2015 were blacks who did not write Afrikaans in matric.

“The majority of black African students could not learn in Afrikaans.”

The policy SU adopted in 2014, which used English and Afrikaans as parallel languages of instruction, was not favourable to black students.

“Whatever the reason for the increasing use of English at SU over earlier decades, the reality in 2016 was that the 2014 policy disproportionately denied black African students access to education,” they said.

AfriForum has waged – and lost – similar legal battles against Unisa, the University of Pretoria and Free State University. North-West was the only university still using Afrikaans and English.

SU said Gelyke Kanse was barking up the wrong tree over phasing out Afrikaans at the country’s universities.

Concourt registrar Kgwadi Makgakga said the matter will be heard on September 13.