The Higher Education Transformation Network (HETN) says civil rights organization, AfriForum, wants to co-govern higher learning institutions.
This is according to the network’s national spokesperson, Hendrick Makaneta.
His utterances follow the court judgment overturning a decision by the University of the Free State (UFS) to have English as the sole medium of instruction, last week.
The lobby group took the UFS to the Bloemfontein High Court‚ arguing that its new language policy was unconstitutional.
Makaneta emphasised that Afrikaans was only understood by the few.
“We agree that English is not also our language as such but since it’s an international language, most of our students can converse very clearly and eloquently in English, compared to Afrikaans. We are therefore saying, it’s unfortunate that AfriForum seems to want to co-govern our institutions. They want to do this by using the courts. We will be support the University of the Free State (UFS) in its appeal against the decision of the Bloemfontein High Court. The matter is now going to the Supreme Court of Appeal,” he said.
Refilwe Gaeswe/Courant News