A new education law in South Africa is dividing lawmakers and sparking angry emotions in a country with a complex racial and linguistic history.

Last Friday, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) bill into law but suspended the implementation of two hotly contested sections for at least three months for further consultations among opposing government factions.

Authorities insist that the law will make education more equitable. Stark economic inequalities in South Africa have contributed to lower literacy and post-school opportunities for the country’s Black majority. By 2022, even though 34.7 percent of Black teenagers had completed secondary school – up from 9.4 percent in 1996 – only 9.3 percent of Black people had a tertiary education. By comparison, 39.8 percent of the white population had a tertiary education.

“The law that we are signing today further opens the doors of learning. It lays a firm foundation for learning from an early age … It will ensure young children are better prepared for formal schooling,” Ramaphosa said during the signing event in Pretoria.

But critics of the law, mainly from the Afrikaans-speaking community, argue that clauses strengthening the government’s oversight over school language and admission policies would threaten mother-tongue education.

Here’s what to know about BELA and why some groups disagree with parts of the law:

What’s BELA and why is it controversial?

The new amendment modifies older school laws in the country: the South African Schools Act of 1996 and the Employment of Educators Act of 1998.

It includes new provisions, such as a ban on corporal punishment for children, jail terms for parents who fail to send their children to school, compulsory grade levels for children starting school, and increased scrutiny for homeschooling.

However, Sections 4 and 5, which regulate languages of instruction in school, and school admission policies, are causing upheaval among Afrikaans-speaking minority groups.

The clauses allow schools to develop and choose their languages of instruction out of South Africa’s 11 official languages, as well as their admissions policy. However, it also gives the National Department of Basic Education the final authority, allowing it to override any decisions. Until now, school boards had the highest authority on languages and admissions.

Authorities in the past have cited how some schools exclude children, especially from Black communities, based on their inability to speak Afrikaans as one reason for the policy update.

Following South Africa’s break from apartheid, Black parents were allowed to send their children to better-funded, previously white-only schools where Afrikaans was often the main instruction language.

Some Black parents, however, claimed their wards were denied placements because they did not speak Afrikaans. Accusations of racism in school placements continue to be an issue: in January 2023, scores of Black parents protested in front of the Laerskool Danie Malan, a school in Pretoria that largely uses Afrikaans and Setswana (another official African language), claiming their children were denied for “racist” reasons. However, the school authorities rejected the claim, and other Black parents confirmed to local media that their children attended the institution.

Members of the South African Teachers Union, the African National Congress, and the Congress of South African Students march against the language and admission policies at a majority Afrikaans-speaking school they claimed were discriminatory in 2018 [File: Gulshan Khan/AFP]

Why are some Afrikaans speakers upset over BELA?

Some Afrikaans speakers say the new law threatens their language and, by extension, their culture and identity. Afrikaans-speaking schools also accuse the authorities of pressuring them to instruct in English.

Afrikaans is a mixture of Dutch vernacular, German and native Khoisan languages, which developed in the 18th century. It is predominantly spoken in South Africa by about 13 percent of the 100 million population. They include people from the multiracial “coloured” community (50 percent) and white descendants of Dutch settlers (40 percent).

Some Black people (9 percent) and South African Indians (1 percent) also speak Afrikaans, particularly those who lived through apartheid South Africa, when the language was more widely used in business and schools. It is more commonly spoken in the Northern and Western Cape provinces.

Of a total of 23,719 public schools, 2,484 — more than 10 percent — use Afrikaans as their sole or second language of instruction, while the vast majority teach in English. Some Afrikaans speakers argue that giving locally elected officials more power to determine a school’s language will politicise the matter and could lead to fewer schools teaching in Afrikaans. Many also fault the section of the law that allows government officials to override admissions policy.

“There is only a government of national disunity,” one commenter posted on the website of the South African newspaper Daily Maverick on Friday about the divisions within the coalition Government of National Unity (GNU) that have emerged amid the language row.

“By opting to destroy Afrikaans and Afrikaans schools and universities, the ANC and Cyril are making a mockery of unity. This is what happens if the provincial department can unilaterally control the admission of learners and language mediums at schools,” the commenter said, referring to Ramaphosa and his party, the African National Congress (ANC).

Last week, Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen, who is the leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA), the second-largest party in the GNU, condemned the government’s decision to move ahead with the bill despite reservations among the ANC’s coalition partners.

The politician, who is Afrikaner, also threatened a tit-for-tat response if the law is eventually signed as is.

“The DA will have to consider all of our options on the way forward … Any leader who tries to ride roughshod over their partners will pay the price – because a time will come when the shoe is on the other foot, and they will need the understanding of those same partners in turn,” he said.

Education Minister Siviwe Garube, a Black member of the DA, did not attend the signing ceremony in Pretoria in a show of defiance.

Children at the Hector Pieterson Memorial in Soweto observe the iconic image taken by photographer Sam Nzima on June 16, 1976, when apartheid police shot dead Black schoolchildren protesting against Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in their schools [File: Themba Hadebe/AP Photo]

What is the history of school language controversies in South Africa?

Afrikaans is historically emotive in South Africa, dating back to British colonial rule.

To some, Afrikaans represents self-determination, but to many more, particularly in the Black community, it evokes memories of the brutal days of segregation and apartheid.

Originally, Afrikaans was regarded as an unsophisticated version of Standard Dutch. It was called “kitchen Dutch”, referencing the enslaved Cape populations who spoke it in the kitchen and to their settler masters. In the late 1800s, after the first and second Boer wars that saw Dutch settlers or “Boers” fight their British colonists and win independence, Afrikaans came to be regarded as a language of freedom for the white population. In 1925, it was adopted as an official language.

During the apartheid years, however, Afrikaans became synonymous with oppression for the majority Black population which faced the worst forms of subjugation under the system. Some scholars note (PDF) that the apartheid government uprooted Black families from urban areas to destitute self-governed “Bantustans” (homelands) partly based on their inability to speak the two official languages at the time, Afrikaans and English.

Most Black schools in South Africa at the time taught in English, as it was regarded as the language for Black emancipation. However, the government attempted to impose both English and Afrikaans as compulsory medium languages in schools starting from 1961.

That move ignited a series of student protests in June 1976 in the majority-Black community of Soweto, where the policy was meant to be implemented first. Between 176 and 700 people were killed when apartheid security forces used deadly force on schoolchildren in what is now known as the Soweto Uprising.

Apartheid authorities rescinded the language policy in July 1976. When Black schools were allowed to choose their medium of education, more than 90 percent opted for English. None chose the other African languages, such as Xhosa or Zulu, which the apartheid government had also pushed: it was seen as a measure to promote tribalism and divide the Black community. In addition to those, the country’s other official languages are Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, Siswati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga and Ndebele.

What’s next?

Authorities say the different arms of government will debate Sections 4 and 5 for the next three months. However, barring a resolution, the law will fully be implemented as is, President Ramaphosa said.

Meanwhile, Afrikaner rights groups such as the AfriForum, have declared they will contest the decision in court. The group has been described as having “racist” leanings, although it denies this.

“Afrikaans has already been eroded in the country’s public universities in a similar way,” Alana Bailey, AfriForum’s cultural affairs head, said in a statement last week.

“The shrinking number of schools that still use Afrikaans as a language of instruction now is the next target. AfriForum is therefore preparing for both national and international legal action to oppose this,” she added.