Scrapping of Afrikaans teaching unconstitutional - SA court

South Africa's highest court has ruled that the University of South Africa's (Unisa's) plan to phase out Afrikaans as a medium of teaching is unconstitutional.

In 2016, the university changed its English and Afrikaans dual-medium language policy to English.

The university said it did this to address imbalances of the past and because of low demand for courses in Afrikaans.

The policy change sparked a five-year battle with the mainly-Afrikaner lobby group, AfriForum, which mounted a legal challenge against the decision.

Unisa is not the first South African university to face challenges over its language policy. In 2019, the University of Pretoria also scrapped Afrikaans.

Many have seen the language as polarising as it had been forced on black learners during the apartheid years and led to the Soweto student uprising in 1976.

AfriForum has welcomed Wednesday's ruling by the Constitutional Court.

But cultural analyst Professor Pitika Ntuli says the ruling means Afrikaans has been favoured over other African languages.

This article originally appeared on BBC News

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