No Afrikaans, no cake

Times Live 13 February 2016

If you don't speak Afrikaans, you can't buy cake at any of the campus booths being set up nationwide by civil rights group AfriForum Youth. The ‘ban’ is part of the group's #RedAfrikaans (Save Afrikaans) campaign, intended to highlight the need for the retention of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction at universities, writes Sipho Masombuka for Times Live.

"We will launch events such as the affirmative action cake-sale to illustrate the unfairness of the [universities’] language policy," said AfriForum Youth spokesperson Ian Cameron. "Cake will be sold only to Afrikaans-speakers."

The debate about the use of Afrikaans as a language of instruction at some universities gained momentum in November when the University of Stellenbosch announced the language would be dropped as a primary language of instruction. Critics of the use of Afrikaans claim it racially excludes students, whereas its defenders argue that the constitution guarantees everyone mother-tongue education.
Full report on the Times Live site

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