*YCLSA Statement on the ongoing Constitutional Court case between Education Department and the Ermelo Hoerskool*
*24 June 2009* The Young Communist League of South Africa [uFasimba] is extremely angered by the actions of the Emerlo Hoerskool authorities, a pre-dominantly Afrikaner school which is embroiled in a Constitutional Court battle with the Department of Basic Education as it relates to the language debacle. These actions seek to protect the laager mentality and rekindle the Soweto students’ uprisings that took place 33 years ago as a result of the imposition of Afrikaans to the working class and the poor African schools in our country. We are disgusted that Emerlo Hoerskool authorities are using the organs of class rule – the Courts - to undermine the political advances we are making in the transformation discourse of our education system to be consistent with the broader objectives of the Freedom Charter based society and education system. The YCLSA strongly believes that Afrikaans will not survive as a language, if its only seeks to fight for its sole exclusive survival in our public schools. We are of the view that there is a need for the promotion of all South African languages, especially the indigenous languages in our public schools. The Departments of Basic Education and Arts & Culture should embark on a progressive national project in defence of our languages – which should include Afrikaner bodies in promoting indigenous languages which were dismantled and dislodged by the ‘imperial’ English and Afrikaans dominance. We call on the ANC Alliance led government to amend the South African Schools Act [SASA] to vest more powers to the Ministry of Basic Education, than to the School Governing Bodies on school language policy, as part of accelerating education transformation agenda. Our failure to amend the Schools Act will be a betrayal to the struggle waged by the martyrs of June 16. Issued by YCLSA Head Office 1 -5 Leyds Street, COSATU Hse, Braamfontein Contact: *Castro Ngobese* *YCLSA National Spokesperson – 082 567 3557* --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
