AfriForum has won its language case against University of Free State

The High Court in Bloemfontein on Thursday ruled in favour of AfriForum to stop a proposed change to the University of Free State’s current language policy, News24 reported

AfriForum told judges at the high court last yea that removing Afrikaans as a medium of instruction at the University of the Free States a “violation of the Constitution”.

The University had reached a unanimous decision to make English the primary medium of instruction from 2017 earlier this year.

News24 explains:

The council also said that multilingualism would be supported by an expanded tutorial system especially designed for first-year students.

The council said that in professional programmes – such as teacher education and the training of theology students who wished to enter the ministry in traditional Afrikaans-speaking churches, where there was a clear market need – the parallel-medium teaching in English-Afrikaans and Sesotho and isiZulu would continue.

It also added that the primary formal language of the university administration would be English, but with sufficient flexibility of multilingualism across the university.

Soon after the decision was taken, AfriForum approached the high court for an interdict against the university.

“We should consider law students who might want to offer their services in Afrikaans … and most of the students studying theology preferred Afrikaans.

“They [university] wish to shackle Afrikaans in its historical notion of oppression,” Advocate Greta Engelbrecht, representing AfriForum, argued.

The counter argument was that the language had become a surrogate for supporting segregation at the university.