Johannesburg - Gauteng Education MEC Panyaza Lesufi has accused AfriForum and Solidarity of trying to start a new “swart gevaar” (black danger), saying they were scaring parents and telling them to take their children out of public schools.
This follows the Constitutional Court judgment last week that ruled in favour of the department in an admission policy dispute.
The Federation of Governing Bodies of South African Schools (Fedsas) took the department to court, challenging the validity of amendments made to regulations around pupil admissions.
The court found the regulations were rational, reasonable and justifiable and not in conflict with national legislation.
The court directed Lesufi to set feeder zones for the province within 12 months. The court also found that policies set by school governing bodies (SGB), such as language, may constitute discrimination based on race.
Speaking before tabling his medium-term expenditure framework budget speech in the legislature on Thursday, Lesufi accused Afriforum and Solidarity of having divisive tendencies.
“There are organisations that are going around scaring parents and telling them to take their children out of schools because of the new policies.
“They are starting a new swart gevaar and we cannot accept that. I don’t take AfriForum and Solidarity seriously. Our aim is to promote non-racialism in schools.”
A fired-up Lesufi continued: “We are allowing our children to learn together, to play together, to sing together. What's wrong with 6-year-olds playing and singing together?”
AfriForum’s education project co-ordinator Carien Bloem laughed off the swart gevaar reference. “There are a lot of misconceptions around AfriForum and Solidarity, but we are organisations that want to promote Afrikaans. We also want the promotion of other languages as well.
“We want mother tongue education because we believe the moment you have dual-language teaching, the quality decreases.
“We don’t have a problem with black children from townships coming to our schools. We just want them to also be taught in their home languages.”
She said AfriForum was getting local and international advice regarding the court decision.
Lesufi said there were no Afrikaans schools in the province but only public schools that should aim to accommodate pupils regardless of their race or language.
He said that although he didn't take AfriForum and Solidarity seriously, he supported the Afrikaans community and wanted to assure them the department was not unfairly targeting their language.
“We will explain to Afrikaners that your schools are not under threat. Your language is not under threat. We are calling for a non-racial education system across the board,” Lesufi said.
He said because the admission process had started, feeder zone boundaries would be implemented only next year.
“This judgment came at the tail end of the admission processes. Our admission closes on June 1 and we don't want to disrupt that process.
“We will be in a position to introduce the new boundaries only towards the end of this year and from next year boundaries will change.”
Lesufi said all pupils would have to learn at least one African language from next year.
The MEC also reminded parents that if they did not use the online registration system to apply for admission before next month, there would not be any provision for late registration at the beginning of the 2017 academic year.
In his budget speech, Lesufi said the department had allocated R13 million for the 2016/17 financial year for school exemptions. A total of 1 360 no-fee schools would benefit from that.
The paperless classroom project would continue to be a priority with the programme being expanded to Grade 11 classes in 2016/17.
“From July 2016, the department intends to accelerate delivery by promoting and supporting self-initiated ICT programmes to encourage learners from quantile 4 and 5 schools where parents can afford to support learners to bring their own devices to schools,” he said.
The Star