ARTICLE: THE FUTURE OF AFRIKAANS AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL
2016-03-23
Vladimir Lenin said that “when the time comes for us to hang the capitalists they will compete with one another to sell us the rope”. In the same manner, Afrikaners are playing a leading role in assisting the ANC to eclipse Afrikaans as a language of tuition at university level.
Most of those involved are decent and honourable people. Many of them profess a love for Afrikaans and are determined to continue to use it in their private lives.
South Africans are shocked by scenes playing out of late, particularly on historically Afrikaans campuses. These incidents are part of a process that began at the end of 2015 with #Rhodesmustfall. Shortly afterwards it was #Feesmustfall, with similar origins. Then Open Stellenbosch followed, where racial and anti-Afrikaans sentiments were more visible, and then ReformPuk. At the start of 2016, all of this deteriorated into undisguised racism and xenophobia, with slogans of “F … whites” and even “Kill all the whites” appearing on walls and T-shirts. When art was burned at UCT, students shouted: “It is whiteness burning!”. And last week it culminated at UP with #Afrikaansmustfall and violence and physical attacks and counter-attacks.
On the eve of the 22nd Reconciliation Day after the founding of a democratic South Africa, the question must be raised: What happened to the reconciling rainbow nation of Mandela, De Klerk and Tutu? Because it is, sadly, very clear that reconciliation and tolerance are in short supply in South Africa today.
In his address on 15 October 2015 to the Higher Education Transformation Summit in Durban, Deputy President Ramaphosa made the following statement:
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.
The FW de Klerk Foundation shares the concerns of participants in a recent private round-table discussion – mentioned in Business Day – on the functioning of Parliament, which was hosted by the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution (CASAC).
In an article in Tuesday’s Media24 publications Max du Preez states that Dylann Roof, accused of killing nine black worshippers in Charleston, S. Carolina, “shares apartheid’s ideology.” Du Preez goes on to say that Barend Strydom’s random killing of seven black South Africans in 1989 made him think “that his (Roof’s) identification with apartheid wasn’t so inappropriate after all.”
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.