Gauteng Health MEC Panyaza Lesufi has hit out at critics of the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill and called on the public to endorse it as a possible solution to the racial divide in schools due to language policies, as well the discipline and rehabilitation of pupils with behavioural problems.
Lesufi, who said that he expected pushback against the draft bill, has called on Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga to stand firm and ensure that the bill was passed through Parliament.
The MEC was speaking at the social and governance cluster post-budget vote briefing in Johannesburg on Monday.
“We are asking South Africans to defeat this notion that children who speak one language can only be in one school. Some of us believe what is happening in the University of Stellenbosch where somebody is urinating on the property of other people is because when they grew up, they have never been a school with other people. It was them alone,” Lesufi said.
He labelled resistance to the Bela Bill as anti-transformation and said that government would push ahead to have a minimum of three languages per school, adding that non-racialisation had to start in the classroom.
Lesufi, who has had to attend to incidents of ill-discipline at several schools in the province, including murders perpetrated by pupils on their schoolmates, said that the bill would help strengthen discipline.
“A learner misbehaves in one school because you can’t expel them, they must go to another school to continue to misbehave. We really believe there must be strong rehabilitation programmes,” the MEC said.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has previously raised concerns around the bill, saying it gives the Education Department unprecedented powers to determine language admission policies in schools while preventing school governing bodies and school communities from opposing the changes.
-EWN
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