The ANC’s Bela Act risks unnecessary changes to education. With pressing issues like literacy, should courts step in to ensure sensible reform?
If the expression “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” carried any weight in the ANC, the party wouldn’t have drafted the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Act.
There is nothing wrong with the current system, which allows school governing bodies a say in the running of schools.
Parents – and, sometimes, concerned outsiders – help schools raise money to improve facilities and pay extra teachers, thereby improving the whole educational offering.
And what is really wrong with allowing Afrikaans-speakers – who are not only white, by the way – to preserve their language as a medium of instruction?
Those two issues pale into insignificance when put alongside the reality that our school pupils at Grade 4 level have some of the worst literacy and numeracy levels in the world.
ALSO READ: AfriForum, Solidarity give Gwarube and Ramaphosa 10 days to resolve Bela Act dispute
Those are things which are broken and need fixing.
Yet, the ANC’s firebrands are still fighting the antiapartheid struggle and want to put one over on the people who oppressed them.
That’s why we don’t think it is a bad thing that civic organisations AfriForum and Solidarity have given President Cyril Ramaphosa an ultimatum to take a stand on contentious issues of the law.
Perhaps this should go to the courts, so we get an answer, finish and klaar…
