South African President buys time with three-month consultation period, but opposition leader vows to challenge reforms in court.
Sibusiso Ndlovu
(The Post News)- In a bid to placate his fractious coalition partners, President Cyril Ramaphosa has announced a three-month consultation period on the contentious Basic Education Laws Amendment (Bela) law. The move aims to ease tensions within the 10-party government, cobbled together after the African National Congress (ANC) lost its parliamentary majority in May’s election.
The Bela law, passed by the previous ANC-dominated parliament, has sparked fierce debate over its provisions, particularly regarding language policy and the regulation of school admissions. The Democratic Alliance (DA), the coalition’s second-largest party, has vehemently opposed the reforms, threatening to challenge them in court.
DA leader John Steenhuisen welcomed the consultation period but reiterated his party’s commitment to protecting the constitutional right to mother-tongue education. “We cannot compromise on this fundamental issue,” he emphasized.
President Ramaphosa, seeking to broker a compromise, urged coalition partners to find ways to accommodate differing views. The ANC has defended the Bela law as necessary to transform the education system and address lingering inequalities.
Experts concur that South Africa’s education system requires drastic improvement. The country ranked last in the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, which assessed the reading abilities of 400,000 students worldwide.
As the consultation period begins, the coalition government’s stability hangs in the balance. The ANC and DA, once bitter rivals, must navigate their differences to find common ground. The outcome will have far-reaching implications for South Africa’s education system and the future of the coalition government.
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