2009-10-05

A deadly war of languages

Hermann Giliomee, Mail & Guardian 2009-10-02 writes:
For the past 10 years a vital battle for the future of Afrikaans as a university language future has been waged. One of the participants has been the government, which demands access through the medium of English for blacks at all universities. In order to meet this demand but also to keep its Afrikaans clients, the University of Stellenbosch has responded by introducing ever more courses taught in dual medium in place of Afrikaans single medium. In dual medium, Afrikaans and English are used intermittently in the same lecture as the media of instruction, on the understanding that Afrikaans is used at least 50% of the time. In the case of parallel medium, separate streams of Afrikaans and English lectures are offered on the same topic.Despite this, Blade Nzimande, Minister of Higher Education and Training, has recently railed against “covert forms of racism”, citing as a “distinct example” people “using constitutional rights for the continuation of single-medium [read: Afrikaans] schools and Afrikaans-only universities”.
Read the full article here.

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