SCHOOL governing body associations want the disputed school language and admission clauses, which President Cyril Ramaphosa parked after the DA and Freedom Front Plus (FF+) rejected them, to be officially included in the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Act.
The two clauses sparked political debate that threatened unity within the Government of National Unity (GNU).
The DA and FF+ demanded that the clauses be redrawn because they believe that in their current form, they stripped parents and schools’ governing bodies of their powers to determine language and admission policies leaving those decisions in the hands of the Department of Basic Education.
However, the Governing Body Foundation (GBF) and the National Association of School Governing Bodies (NASGB) said the clauses were fine as they were.
The GBF, initially formed to represent the governing bodies of the predominantly white former Model C schools, supports the clauses, with minor conditions.
“Politicians and parties have to say what is important to retain their voting members when they say these are taking away the rights of parents and schools,” said GBF national chief executive officer Dr Anthea Cereseto without naming any political party.
When the president signed the Bela Act into law on September 13, he parked the two clauses for three months to give “the parties time to deliberate and make proposals on how the different views may be accommodated”.
Ramaphosa made it clear that “should the parties not be able to agree on an approach, then we will proceed with the implementation of these parts of the Bill”.
Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya could not clarify the precise date, saying an “announcement will be made once the engagement process has been concluded. Therefore, it will be premature to give comment now while discussions are underway,” said Magwenya.
Cereseto said the GBF understood that the clauses were meant to prevent certain schools from being anti-transformation and retaining exclusive privileges.
“That is not our stand. We believe public schools are for all pupils and who gets into the school must be determined by some policies and the policy cannot discriminate and must give regard to the constitutional principle,” said Cereseto.
However, GBF said the admission should not lead to schools being overcrowded and that pupils must be able to speak the language “that is being used for teaching and learning”.
Cereseto said GBF understood there were communities who were fighting “hard” for the right to have their schools teaching in their home language, which she said was their constitutional right, which the amendment allows.
“It is only if the school is half empty and then you say ‘we are not letting any other pupil in’, then the department comes in and says ‘Listen you need to adopt another language and have two languages at your school because we have to fill the space’. That is the kind of logic that is in the amendment.
“We cannot fight against (the amendment) where there is a half-empty school and another one down the road that is overcrowded. That would not seem right and as an organisation what we want to see is fairness for everybody,” said Cereseto.
She said the two clauses should be incorporated into the act and applied through education HODs in consultation with schools and parents, and that the process of consultation must be followed correctly and not be done with bad motives.
NASGB secretary general Matakanye Matakanya said should any party opposed to the two clauses approach the court, the NASGB would not hesitate to defend the clauses.
“We support the whole bill and we don’t want any change,” he said.
He said those who opposed the two clauses were dragging the country back to “a homeland system” where the nation was divided according to languages and certain schools were exclusively open to certain community groups.
“Public schools belong to everybody. Why do they not want the department to interfere in the language and admission?
“They want to do as they please and they want to do as they used to do in the past and were against the change,” said Matakanya.