AfriForum has been attending the seventeenth session of the United Nations (UN) Forum on Minority Issues in Geneva, Switzerland, since yesterday to rally support against the destructive consequences of legislation that enables overcrowding in schools and promotes anglicisation, such as the now adjusted admissions and language policy provisions of the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act 32 of 2024 (the Bela Act) would have done. This step is part of the organisation’s international campaign to promote mother-language education.

According to Alana Bailey, who is attending the UN meeting in her capacity as AfriForum’s Head of Cultural Affairs, she also represented AfriForum at both this Forum’s African regional and international sessions in 2019, where the theme was “Education, language and the human rights of minorities”. In the report on these meetings that the Special Rapporteur submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in 2020, it was emphasised, among other things, that:

• states should protect the right of all communities to receive education in and of their respective languages;
• states should raise awareness about the importance of mother-language education as part of the protection and development of communities’ own unique identities and cultures;
• states should ensure that language education takes place without stigmatising learners, or subjecting them to hate speech or discrimination;
• restrictions on mother-language education should be avoided at all levels;
• states should refrain from forced assimilation of minorities, inter alia, through the prohibition of education in, or the teaching of, the mother language of minorities;
• dwindling numbers may not be used as an excuse for the erosion of mother-language education – proactive work should rather be undertaken to promote all languages in order ​​to increase supply and demand;
• funding for the education of and in minority languages ​​must be provided – including at private and independent institutions;
• learners’ access to their minority mother languages must be ensured, including by providing transport in rural areas, recruiting sufficient teachers and examining the learners in their own languages; and
• the teaching of and in minority mother languages should also incorporate the use of the latest teaching methods and technology.

At yesterday’s session, Bailey emphasised that the South African authorities lack the political will to sustainably promote mother-language education.

“The negative impact of legislation such as Bela can be devastating for Afrikaans communities, but in the long term will have equally detrimental consequences for all language communities and the socio-economic growth of southern Africa as a whole. It is therefore essential to bring the risk it poses to the attention of the international community, in order that they may also apply pressure on the South African government to go about mother-language education in earnest,” she says. Several language rights activists from elsewhere in Africa approached Bailey and expressed their need for cooperation. “We look forward to creating a wider network of institutions that advocate quality mother-language education,” she adds.

Meanwhile, the South African government representative at the Forum yesterday denied that South African schools are overcrowded, dysfunctional and conceal the lack of mother-language education, but since many international education experts are attending the session, they were not fooled by this diplomatic reply.