Hoërskool DF Malan: Stalemate as Parents Protest Possible Name Change of School

• Hoërskool DF Malan parents are butting heads with the school's governing body as they plan to change the name of the education facility
• Daniël François Malan is the former National Party prime minister who implemented and started the Apartheid regime in South Africa
• Despite the negative connotations the name carries, parents at the school believe it would be undemocratic to rename the school

CAPE TOWN - Parents are at loggerheads with the school governing body of Hoërskool DF Malan in Bellville Cape Town over its planned renaming.

The school was named after the National Party's former prime minister Daniël François Malan who implemented the Apartheid regime and in spite of this the group of parents, who have since started a Facebook group "Trots DF Malan" (proudly DF Malan) said it would be undemocratic.

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A referendum request by the parents to vote on the renaming of the high school should it go ahead was declined by the SGB but the parents have persistently continued to fight to the point where lawyers letters and threats of legal action were directed at the school.

As a result of the heated contention, the teachers' union Sadtu has appealed for calm to squelch the hostility which is not fully perpetrated by the entire community with a large portion being in favour of the name change.

The department of education has gone on record to say that although the matter has resulted in controversy the process to rename the school was ongoing.

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On Monday Leon Schreiber, a member of the national assembly for the Democratic Alliance, lodged a complaint with the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) against Nzimande for labelling Afrikaans as a foreign language which Schreiber described as unconstitutional.

Schreiber detailed in his complaint that Nzimande was infringing on the rights of Afrikaans speakers who had a right to be taught in their mother tongue and he wanted the commission to compel Nzimande to include Afrikaans in the policy frameworks definition of indigenous languages.

A report by IOL revealed that a Constitutional Court victory on the part of AfriForum last week allowed for the language to be kept as a teaching and instruction dialect at the University of South Africa. This will be done from the 2023 academic year.

Source: Briefly News