The movements say in a statement it’s a huge blow to South African language rights that their case against the university has been rejected. AfriForum, AfriForum Youth and Solidarity’s legal team will study the judgment in detail to decide whether or not to appeal. They remain convinced that the University’s new language policy amounts to a gross violation of the constitutionally-recognised language rights of Afrikaans students.
The three organisations say they will take any possible steps to protect and preserve the rights of Afrikaans students to study in their mother tongue. They have already won a similar case against the management of the University of the Free State this year.
In a joint statement they say “the case not only applies to the continuation of the rights of Afrikaans students, but to the protection and promotion of the principles of mother-tongue education and multilingualism versus monolingual English education, which is increasingly being adopted and enforced by institutions. This at the cost of approximately 90% of South Africans whose mother tongue is not English”.
