SACP urges the Gauteng education department to appeal the North Gauteng High Court judgment on Hoërskool Overvaal

16 January 2018

The South African Communist Party denounces all forms of racial discrimination, including those hidden under school language and admission policies or practices. The exclusion of 55 learners who cannot learn in Afrikaans at Hoërskool Overvaal is a continuation of the apartheid practice of using Afrikaans as a means of racial exclusion and discrimination. This is completely unacceptable.

This issue cannot be left to the Gauteng education department or MEC Paynaza Lesufi alone. Neither must those conserving apartheid order practices be left unchallenged. The language issue in Gauteng schools is a very serious national issue. It requires the attention of all democratic South Africans committed to the national imperative of a non-racial nation building where all South Africans receive equal treatment regardless of their language.

By the way Judge Bill Prinsloo appears to have erred when he asserted "that the school has no capacity to receive the 55 English learners, let alone of such short notice and convert to a dual medium school". It is incorrect to refer to Africans as English, regardless of whether as learners in schools they are taught in English as a medium of instruction. Neither is it fair to legitimise discrimination against English or African learners in any of our schools using Afrikaans as a means of exclusion. Further, the SACP does not accept that the school was given a short notice since South Africa is now 23 years into its democracy.

ISSUED BY THE SOUTH AFRICAN COMMUNIST PARTY | SACP
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