The University of Free State (UFS)\u00a0planned to\u00a0lodge an appeal with the Supreme Court, spokesperson Lacea Loader\u00a0said on July 22. This follows the Free State High Court’s verdict on the language policy on July 21. The court ruled in favor of AfriForum and has stopped UFS\u00a0from implementing their planned\u00a0language policy for 2017.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
UFS\u2019 language policy entailed English being the primary medium of instruction at undergraduate and postgraduate level. English would also become the primary formal language of university administration. The policy also supported multilingualism through the\u00a0growing of the tutorial system.<\/p>\n
AfriForum\u2019s advocate Greta Engelbrecht argued that the university\u2019s proposed 2017 language policy was unconstitutional because it hindered students from offering their vocational services in Afrikaans once they had obtained their degrees. She went on to say that \u201cthey [university] wish to shackle Afrikaans in its historical notion of oppression.\u201d<\/p>\n
The chasm that the language policy created between\u00a0students\u00a0last year\u00a0seems to have deepened with the High Court\u2019s latest verdict. Student opinion on the court\u2019s decision varies. Some are in support of AfriForum and the court\u2019s decision while others disagree with it or are apathetic towards the issue.<\/p>\n
First year Law student Delicia Williams agrees with the court\u2019s decision. Williams said the decision to drop Afrikaans\u00a0was “unconstitutional because it goes against my rights as an Afrikaans speaking person. I have been taught in this language my whole life and to suddenly be taught in another language definitely goes against my rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another student, who wished to remain anonymous, disagreed with advocate Engelbrecht\u2019s argument. They said that \u201cThere are 11 languages in our constitution; what\u2019s unconstitutional is not having an inclusive space for all of them. This argument is ridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then there are some students who feel that the Language Policy issue is distracting the institution from other more pressing issues. Lindi Nhlapo, a third-year BCom student, feels this way and explained that \u201cThis isn\u2019t something I want to devote my energy into anymore because it really feels like a losing battle. We have bigger issues to focus on like the hype of unemployment in our society.\u201d<\/p>\n
Written by: Tammy-Jane Fray<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The University of Free State (UFS)\u00a0planned to\u00a0lodge an appeal with the Supreme Court, spokesperson Lacea Loader\u00a0said on July 22. This follows the Free State High Court’s verdict on the language policy on July 21. The court ruled in favor of AfriForum and has stopped UFS\u00a0from implementing their planned\u00a0language policy for 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,26],"tags":[85,86,87,88,28,68,89],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentnews.africa\/sng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}