https://www.polity.org.za
Deepening Democracy through Access to Information
Home / Statements RSS ← Back
Housing|Power
Housing|Power
housing|power
Close

Email this article

separate emails by commas, maximum limit of 4 addresses

Sponsored by

Close

Article Enquiry

BELA Act: DA side-hustle with Solidarity and AfriForum will test GNU

Close

Embed Video

1

BELA Act: DA side-hustle with Solidarity and AfriForum will test GNU

Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube
Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube

29th November 2024

ARTICLE ENQUIRY      SAVE THIS ARTICLE      EMAIL THIS ARTICLE

Font size: -+

/ MEDIA STATEMENT / The content on this page is not written by Polity.org.za, but is supplied by third parties. This content does not constitute news reporting by Polity.org.za.

Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube’s breathless announcement of having reached agreement with the Solidarity Movement on implementing the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Act should be taken with a pinch of salt.

While Gwarube hailed her pact with Solidarity as demonstrating the power of cool heads, she appears to have overlooked the fact that it is the DA’s coalition partners in the Government of National Unity she must convince on proposed changes to the law – not Afrikaner nationalist organisations outside of government.

Advertisement

A few weeks ago, while her party agreed to a BELA negotiations process under the auspices of the multi-party GNU clearing house, the DA signaled its contempt for this process by joining a group of like-minded organisations, Solidarity, Afriforum and the Suid-Afrikaanse Onderwysunie, among others, in a protest march against the Act in Tshwane.

The contentious clauses of the BELA Act relate to the powers of School Governing Bodies to determine language policy.

Advertisement

On the one hand, there’s a strong feeling that School Governing Bodies have used language policy as a mechanism to maintain schools’ historic demographics and block transformation. On the other hand, the Afrikaans community fears that introducing second languages at their schools will emasculate their language and culture.

The key clause in Gwarube’s “breakthrough” announcement is that the interests of the community in the immediate vicinity of the public school must be taken into account.

While, on the face of it, that might appear reasonable, in fact, it is a mechanism to use the spatial injustice of the old Group Areas Act to continue to separate South Africans. It creates room for the same “not-in-my-backyard” attitude that the middle-class has used to block the development of affordable housing in areas previously reserved for white citizens.

According to Gwarube’s department, she’s taking her “breakthrough” directly to the President, avoiding the necessity for further discussions with the GNU partners.

These tactics appear deliberately designed to weaken the concept of the multi-party GNU problem-solving mechanism, the so-called clearing house under the leadership of the Deputy President.

 

Issued by Brett Herron, GOOD: Secretary-General & Member of the GNU Clearing House Mechanism

EMAIL THIS ARTICLE      SAVE THIS ARTICLE ARTICLE ENQUIRY

To subscribe email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or click here
To advertise email advertising@creamermedia.co.za or click here

Comment Guidelines

 

About

Polity.org.za is a product of Creamer Media.
www.creamermedia.co.za

Other Creamer Media Products include:
Engineering News
Mining Weekly
Research Channel Africa

Read more

Subscriptions

We offer a variety of subscriptions to our Magazine, Website, PDF Reports and our photo library.

Subscriptions are available via the Creamer Media Store.

View store

Advertise

Advertising on Polity.org.za is an effective way to build and consolidate a company's profile among clients and prospective clients. Email advertising@creamermedia.co.za

View options

Email Registration Success

Thank you, you have successfully subscribed to one or more of Creamer Media’s email newsletters. You should start receiving the email newsletters in due course.

Our email newsletters may land in your junk or spam folder. To prevent this, kindly add newsletters@creamermedia.co.za to your address book or safe sender list. If you experience any issues with the receipt of our email newsletters, please email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za