ARTICLE: BACK TO SCHOOL, MR DEPUTY-PRESIDENT?
2015-10-19
In his address on 15 October 2015 to the Higher Education Transformation Summit in Durban, Deputy President Ramaphosa made the following statement:
“Though we have made a decisive shift from the fragmented, inefficient and inequitable higher education system of the apartheid era, we still feel its effects. Had the apartheid rulers not been so thorough, so methodical, so malevolent in the denial of education to the black majority, then South Africa would today be on a completely different developmental trajectory. We would be a more equitable nation, a more prosperous nation. We would have an advanced, diversified, more inclusive economy.”
Almost all South Africans agree that our country is in a crisis. Most government departments are paralysed by incompetence, corruption and a culture of entitlement.
Luister, the video that was recently produced by the Open Stellenbosch (OS) movement, should be viewed by everyone who is interested in the future of our universities and the future of South Africa as a multicultural society. It presents 32 interviews – primarily with black students – regarding their sense of racial exclusion at Stellenbosch University. They complain of subtle – and not so subtle – racism in their interactions with white Afrikaans-speaking students – including accusations of out-and-out racial abuse in student bars and on the internet.
In 2002 the United Nations declared 21 May World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development.
Language of instruction is a key issue at the heart of debate in most multilingual countries.
Race relations in South Africa are more fractious now than they have been at any time since 1994.
Current developments on the campuses of NWU, Stellenbosch and UCT are raising core questions, not only about the future of our universities, but also about the nature of our multicultural society.
International Mother Language Day, proclaimed in 1999 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), is the occasion to celebrate linguistic diversity.
At the ANC’s glittering Gala Dinner in Cape Town last Friday President Zuma said that Jan van Riebeeck’s arrival in the Cape was the beginning of all South Africa’s problems.