Pressure from the Democratic Alliance has resulted in the University of Stellenbosch agreeing to review its language policy, the party has said.
The university issued a statement on Monday saying that it would be reviewing its language policy as part of a five-yearly review. Its policy, adopted in 2016, made English the primary language of instruction, although it retained Afrikaans for those not proficient in English. Concerns have been expressed since that Afrikaans would ultimately be expunged from the institution.
Recently, there have been claims that students at the university have been prohibited from speaking Afrikaans, even to one another.
The DA protested this and indicated that it intended to lay a complaint with the SA Human Rights Commission.
Dr Leon Schreiber MP said in a statement: ‘Today’s announcement is an admission by the university that the DA is correct about the fact that the 2016 language policy is a massive failure, because it removed the right of Afrikaans students to receive education in their mother tongue.’
He added that the DA would make proposals to ensure that ‘both Afrikaans and English students are fully included’.
Language policy has been a hotly contested issue in South Africa since the 1990s. Despite a constitutional guarantee of equality among the 11 official languages, a de facto official monolingualism has emerged. This has resulted in the significant downgrading of Afrikaans.
[Image: HelenOnline, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28503306]