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Communities encouraged to raise BELA-concerns at public hearings

Dear Editor

The first round of public hearings regarding the draconian Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill will commence this weekend in Limpopo (please see schedule below), and the DA encourages communities to seize the opportunity to voice their oppositions and concerns.

The DA has used all platforms available to raise our various concerns, and will continue in our efforts to protect communities rights to decide what’s best for their children.

High among our concerns are the fact that the BELA Bill will disempower school governing bodies (SGBs) from determining the admission and language policies of their schools. Decisions regarding language of learning and whether a school will teach learners in their mother tongue will be placed in the hands of the provincial heads of the Department of Basic Education.

To add insult to injury, SGBs would be forced to appeal unfair or damaging policies to the same heads of department that imposed these policies in the first place.

While the DA supports compulsory grade R, the Department simply does not have the necessary resources to enforce this.

The Department has also failed to conduct extensive consultations with the home schooling sector before drafting regulations that does not take the unique challenges of the sector into account.

This while failing to address blended and online learning at all, despite the enormous impact these forms of teaching had during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The DA has the best interest of communities at heart and believes that the BELA Bill in its current form will undermine fundamental rights regarding the education of our children. We urge parents, teachers, and community leaders to attend the public hearings en masse and raise their concerns.

 

Limpopo

 

Date Area Local municipality Education District Venue Time
Friday, 24 February Thohoyandou Thulamela Local Municipality Vhembe Education District Makwarela Hall 14:30 – 18:30
Saturday, 25 February Giyani/Tzaneen Greater Tzaneen Local Municipality Mopani Education District Lenyenye Hall 14:30 – 18:30
Sunday, 26 February Polokwane Polokwane Local Municipality Capricorn Education District Jack Botes Hall 12:00 – 16:00

 

Regards

Baxolile ‘Bax’ Nodada MP
DA Shadow Minister of Basic Education

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From Sophiatown to Triomf

By 1963, Sophiatown had been physically razed to the ground. In a final act of psychological warfare, the government built a white working-class suburb over the rubble and named it Triumph (Triomf). They wanted to erase the very memory of Sophiatown from the landscape. For decades, the name Sophiatown disappeared from maps, replaced by the neat, sterile streets of the victors.

The “resurrection” of Sophiatown began officially in 2006, when the City of Johannesburg formally restored the original name to the suburb. Today, the neighborhood is a quiet, leafy residential area, but the ghosts of the “Paris of the Transvaal” are everywhere. The Sophiatown Heritage Centre, housed in the former home of Dr. A.B. Xuma (a former ANC president), is one of the few original buildings that escaped the bulldozers. Walking through the streets today, you can still find small markers of the past: a lone Victorian pillar, a specific tree mentioned in a poem, or the rebuilt St. Joseph’s Church.

The legacy of Sophiatown is not just one of tragedy, but of an indestructible cultural spirit. The music, the slang (Tsotsitaal), and the “Drum” era aesthetic continue to influence South African fashion and film today. It serves as a reminder that while you can bulldoze a house and rename a street, you cannot kill the soul of a place that once danced to the sound of a thousand saxophones.