Students have the constitutional right to be taught in Afrikaans

• Published in: Cape times (South Africa)
• Main Author: Bozzoli, Belinda
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cape Town Independent Online (South Africa) 17.11.2015
• Subjects: Jansen, Jonathan

Afrikaans is not a "white" language, but an African language, developed locally and spoken widely in South Africa, including by millions of black and coloured people. It has, in recent years, been renewed and reconceptualised by dozens of thinkers. Besides the stellar literary figures that it has produced, there are such wise educationists and students of the language as the late vice chancellor of the University of the Western Cape, Jakes Gerwel, who, as Jonathan Jansen once said "was no language sentimentalist on Afrikaans, but could both critique its ideological heritage in white hands and yet elevate its historical richness in the shaping of South African society from its first inhabitants and the slaves". Afrikaans speakers at Stellenbosch have the constitutional right to be taught in Afrikaans should they so wish, given that it is already fully capable of being used for academic purposes. The new Stellenbosch policy proposed by the vice chancellor will diminish this right by making English the main language and reducing Afrikaans to the status of an "additional language" in a university where Afrikaans is vital and living, and in a province where Afrikaans is the majority language.