Recently elected Gauteng ANC chairperson and provincial education MEC Panyaza Lesufi believes the DA marched to his office on Tuesday in an effort to taint his name, as the opposition party is threatened by his new ANC position.
Lesufi said he believed the DA has done research which probably showed the ANC could hold on to power in the province in the 2024 elections with him as the face of its campaign.
The opposition party launched a protest outside his offices in the Johannesburg CBD on Tuesday to fight a bill it said the ANC wants to use to “capture schools”.
According to the DA, the Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) Bill, which is out for public comment, is an attempt by the ANC to take over schools and school language policy.
The bill seeks to amend the SA Schools Act to, among others, do away with schools that have a single language as a medium of instruction and heed calls for them to add other languages.
It also gives MECs and heads of department power over school governing bodies (SGBs) on admission matters.
“Under the discriminatory Bela Bill, the head of provincial education departments and MECs like Lesufi will ultimately decide what language is taught in your child’s school and who is admitted,” the DA said.
“This means parents and SGBs will lose these powers. Lesufi is the proud sponsor of this discriminatory move, and the ANC is attacking mother tongue education, especially Afrikaans, and will destroy our schools. The DA will not stand for this.”
They wanted to demonstrate because they are losing in terms of the Afrikaner community.
— Panyaza Lesufi, Gauteng education MEC and provincial ANC chairperson
Lesufi told TimesLIVE he was “perplexed” by the DA’s decision to target him among nine provincial MECs across the country who assented to the bill.
He said the DA was using this as a ploy to launch a political attack on him to appeal to the middle class electorate.
“For them to come to my office, it can only be related to three critical things. One, I think they do lots and lots of research and I think they’ve assessed that my election as ANC chairperson may harm the middle class they were targeting or the votes they were targeting,” Lesufi said.
“Secondly, they wanted to demonstrate — because they are losing votes in terms of the Afrikaner community — they can represent that community and the best target is Panyaza, who is known to be ‘anti-Afrikaner’, so get there and take advantage of that.
“The last part, which surprised me, is to bring [DA federal chair] Helen Zille here. It means that it is an indirect launch of their campaign to protect voting. Those can only be the reasons why they came here.”
Lesufi said this was the only explanation, as the Bela Bill was promulgated by the national minister of basic education, and if the DA was serious about challenging it they would have launched their protest at the national offices.
He said the DA’s protest against the bill was aimed at preserving Afrikaans as the only medium of instruction at some schools to exclude pupils of other races who cannot speak or understand the language.
The DA’s Khume Ramulifho said their call was for other indigenous languages to be added as a medium of instruction.
“We are saying we need to focus and invest in all these other indigenous languages so that instead of throwing a wedge against Afrikaans and pushing everyone to do English, we need to develop and promote all the other languages,” he said.
TimesLIVE
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