Hi, scholar in education policy here. Let's talk about your erroneous framing of the problem. 1/ https://twitter.com/Our_DA/status/1384437090948112384

Instruction in a language is not 'banned' just because it has been identified as competing with the equal concerns of equity, efficiency and cost-effectiveness. If your policy team actually read policy they would know this. 2/

The SU VC has asked the DA not to misrepresent SU's language policy which the DA continues to do in order to engage in this facile, racist battle. Afrikaans has not been banned as a language of education, but positioned accordingly in rel to equity and transformation 3/

But since we're here let's talk exclusion. The language in education policy for basic edu provides for schools to educate learners in their mother tongues. Many schools - especially Afrikaans schools - have leaned heavily on this provision in order to exclude black learners. 4/

language is one of the main 'soft zoning' tools that racist school governing bodies use to maintain a particular demographic profile. If you cared about impoverished young people, you'd advocate for more progressive interpretation of zoning, enrolment and fee policies 5/

while i'm here, maybe you should send your organisation on a comprehension course because you confuse 'rights' with 'entitlements', which is unsurprising given your target constituency. 6/

A right to learn in your mother tongue is contingent on a host of interacting dimensions in accessing education, but what you've done is assume that by virtue of SU being a historically Afrikaans uni, it should continue to be so, regardless of its changing demographic and 7/

academic profile. the problem is NOT that languages are being 'banned', or rights infringed on, but that the DA is using language as a proxy for race in order to resist transformation efforts, and is being dishonest both in its framing and choice of discussants. 8/

if your issue is about the privileging of English as a teaching language, maybe advocate for a stronger additive multilingualism programme in all SA schools, including in African languages, including in standardising STEM subjects in African languages. 9/

except you won't because your whole schtick is that decolonisation is stupid and African languages have no intellectual value. so please don't use impoverished children as shields for your defense of unearned, undeserved, and frankly pathological privilege. 10/