That is what we had to listen to today. We were hoping to get some vision from the ruling party in terms of how they see higher education and how to address the problems, but he came here with no speech whatsoever. He made a few politicised remarks referring to African students - I guess he was referring to black students, because all our children are African students. But the hon member came here with no speech whatsoever!
Hon Chairperson, recently, members of the Pro-Kurdish People's Party were arrested in Istanbul. Why? Because they took part in a protest - a protest asking that the Kurdish language be used as the language of instruction in certain universities in Turkey. Why is it a sensitive issue? Because Turkey aspires to become part of the European Union and the European Union has a very strict guideline for the cultural rights of minorities, including the right to have mother-tongue education at tertiary level.
What about South Africa? This government's current education policy will not pass the international guidelines for minority languages and cultural rights. How serious are we about section 6(2) of the Constitution, which says that the state must take practical and positive measures to elevate the status and advance the use of indigenous languages? Is isiZulu a backward language? No! Can isiXhosa never become a university language? No!
In our memorandum before the Gerwel Commission many years ago, we proposed that specific universities must be made responsible for the development of the country's other official languages and their right to be used up to university level. Is government committed to taking the provisions in the Constitution with regard to mother-tongue education at all levels seriously? Our Constitution recognises 11 official languages. Ten of those languages, including Afrikaans, are African languages.
What is government doing to ensure that all these African languages are developed and protected up to tertiary level and beyond? How is it possible that this ANC government, after 17 years of rule, has not made any substantial progress towards making this possible? On the contrary, we are on a slippery one-way slide towards the colonial language of English after 17 years ... [Time expired.]