SACP calls on President Cyril Ramaphosa to sign the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill into law

On 17 May 2024, the National Assembly passed the long-awaited Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill by an overwhelming majority of 223 votes against a mere 78. This expresses the support for the BELA Bill not only in the basic education sector but, most importantly, across different sectors of our society at large. The parliamentary vote for the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill paved the way for President Cyril Ramaphosa to consider and sign it into law. Right-wing parties like the DA and its ilk, which formed part of the tiny minority of 78 votes who opposed the Bill, must not be allowed to manipulate any part of the executive authority in any way to further their anti-transformation agendas.

The Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill, as the department underlined prior to the vote in parliament, essentially seeks to strengthen governance in schools by tightening certain sections of the South African Schools Act of 1996, to address the challenges against access to and the provision, governance and administration of basic education, and to continue with the transformation of our education system to ensure social justice, social cohesion and success.

The challenges that the BELA Bill seeks to address include those that stem from and reflect the continuation of apartheid segregation or perpetuation of its legacy in basic education. Some school governing bodies exploited their role in school language policy determination. Instead of enabling and widening access, their conduct was prohibitive and discriminatory, involving racial gatekeeping, depriving learners discriminated against, who are mainly Africans, of admission, of their right to basic education. Some of the challenges were addressed in court judgments.

For example, in the case of MEC for Education in Gauteng Province and Other v Governing Body of Rivonia Primary School and Others, the court correctly concluded that:

"Section 29 of the Constitution guarantees everyone the right to a basic education. That is the promise. In reality, a radically unequal distribution of resources ‒ related to a history of systematic discrimination ‒ still makes this constitutional guarantee inaccessible for large numbers of South Africans. The impact of this painful legacy was recognised by this Court in Ermelo as follows:

"Apartheid has left us with many scars. The worst of these must be the vast discrepancy in access to public and private resources. The cardinal fault line of our past oppression ran along race, class and gender. It authorised a hierarchy of privilege and disadvantage. Unequal access to opportunity prevailed in every domain. Access to private or public education was no exception. While much remedial work has been done since the advent of constitutional democracy, sadly, deep social disparities and resultant social inequity are still with us."

To address the challenges it seeks to address and continue with the transformation of our basic education system, the BELA Bill has clauses ranging from the introduction of Grade R to learner attendance to make education compulsory, a Code of Conduct for learners, provisions for home education to move with the times, abolishment of corporal punishment and initiations, improving language policy determination to further open the doors of learning and teaching, ensuring a fair admission policy, and criminalisation of rights-violating school disruption.

In line with the purpose of the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act, the Bill proposes the intervention of the Head of Basic Education Department on the development of language and admission policy. This does not seek to take away the powers of school governing bodies to determine such policies but to ensure compliance with the country's constitution and national legislations. These two policies, language and admission, have been abused to derail access to schools for learners discriminated against based on language and race and class factors, such as inability of learners from poor families to pay fees. This abuse must STOP!