AfriForum ready to petition President after National Assembly approves BELA
The National Assembly’s (NA) approval of the controversial Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill (also known as the BELA Bill) today was just another step in the ANC’s relentless drive to pass the Bill before the election. AfriForum and various other organisations have foreseen this course of affairs. The next step is that the Bill will be presented to the President for his approval and signature. AfriForum’s legal team is ready to request the President not to sign it in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, but to refer it back to the NA.
Alana Bailey, AfriForum’s Head of Cultural Affairs, emphasises that AfriForum remains committed to its intention to oppose the BELA Bill nationally and, if necessary, also internationally with legal action as long as it poses a threat to the continued existence of Afrikaans schools and quality education.
“AfriForum views the Bill as a calculated attack on single-medium Afrikaans schools in particular and therefore as an attempt to commit cultural ethnic cleansing. The Afrikaans community’s cultural identity will be under threat as a result of the systematic exclusion of their language from public schools, as has already happened with public universities,” she says.
“Education in general will suffer, with the government having the final say on admissions, instead of democratically elected governing bodies. The Department of Basic Education already shows in the majority of schools in the country that overcrowded classes and a lack of mother-language education are of little concern to them. Programmes that promise the expansion of the mother-language offer and infrastructure are often announced with great fanfare, but the Department either lacks the will or the ability to carry them out significantly. The solution is that dysfunctional schools must be turned around and budgets must be spent properly, and not to target the schools that are still functional despite the Department’s interference.”
“The country’s children deserve better than what the Department of Basic Education is currently dishing out to them and certainly better than the threat that BELA poses to them. AfriForum’s preparations for legal action therefore continue,” concludes Bailey.
The public can give their mandate for AfriForum’s legal actions at www.stopbela.co.za.
(Photo source: GovernmentZA, flickr)
