DA leader John Steenhuisen has urged President Cyril Ramaphosa to not go ahead with plans to sign the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Bill into law, saying doing so would violate both the letter and spirit of the government of national unity (GNU).
According to presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya, Ramaphosa will sign the bill into law during a ceremony at the Union Buildings on Friday.
This is set to be among the first tests of the GNU since its formation in July, after the watershed national election in May.
Members of the GNU have already clashed over National Health Insurance, with health minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi doubling down on the scheme in July, saying he was determined to push ahead with it despite legal challenges and opposition from political parties in the GNU.
The GNU was formed after the ANC lost its electoral majority for the first time since 1994, mustering a paltry 40% of voter share. This was largely blamed on the electorate’s voting for former president Jacob Zuma’s MK party, as voters had grown disillusioned by the ANC’s underwhelming performance in government, which has resulted in a service delivery dearth.
“During the negotiations, the DA made it clear that the Bela bill was unacceptable to us in its current form, because it has constitutional implications for the right to mother-tongue education, among other issues,” Steenhuisen said on Wednesday.
“The DA urged President Ramaphosa to send the bill back to parliament for a few simple amendments, to bring it in line with the Constitution. Despite this, and in violation of the provisions of the Statement of Intent, the president seems intent on pushing ahead unilaterally.”
Business Day reported in April that one of the bill’s most contentious aspects was a proposal to strip school governing bodies of their power to determine admission and language policies, and give provincial heads of education the final say on these emotive issues.
The bill also proposes extending compulsory schooling by a year to include grade R. The basic education department had told the National Assembly’s portfolio committee on basic education in 2023 that making grade R mandatory would require R4.77bn for extra staff and R12.43bn for additional infrastructure.
Steenhuisen said: “I have moved urgently to meet the president before Friday to re-iterate our objections in the strongest terms. I will also submit to him the simple amendments the DA requires and urge him to use his powers to send the bill back to parliament. “If the president continues to ride rough-shod over these objections, he is endangering the future of the GNU and destroying the good faith on which it was based.”
The establishment of a dispute resolution mechanism must now be the priority to ensure that all parties uphold both the letter and spirit of the Statement of Intent, and that the ANC understands that it can no longer take unilateral action on issues that affect fundamental rights.
He said the DA regarded the issue in the “most serious light, and I will convey to the president the destructive implications it holds for the future of the GNU”, which DA federal council chair Helen Zille has described as an ANC-DA coalition.
Magwenya said bill was aimed at strengthening governance in SA’s education sector. “The Bela bill amends sections of the South African Schools Act of 1996 and the Employment of Educators Act of 1998, to account for developments in the education landscape since the enactment of the original legislation.
“The amendments are a response to court judgments that protect and give effect to the Bill of Rights,” Magwenya said.
In a joint media briefing with other organisations on Wednesday, Afrikaner rights group AfriForum said it viewed the bill as an attempt at “cultural ethnic cleansing by the ANC government, as the implementation of the bill will enable the destruction of linguistic and cultural communities schools, thereby jeopardising the group’s cultural existence”.
“For this reason, AfriForum’s legal team is ready to take steps against its implementation as soon as the bill is signed by President Cyril Ramaphosa,” said head of cultural affairs Alana Bailey.
“Afrikaans schools nationwide are under pressure from provincial officials to offer English instruction. Now that provincial heads of education will have the right to take final decisions about schools’ language and admissions policies, the door is open to change single-medium Afrikaans schools to dual- or parallel-medium schools,” said Bailey.
“The inevitable end of this process will be that the schools will become single-medium English institutions."
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