Order! Hon members, you are conversing too loudly, and we can't hear the speakers. Please!
The DEPUTY MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES: Chairperson, following the Anglo Boer War in 1902, the majority of Afrikaans families were very poor.
My father was the youngest child of such a family. There were 10 children who qualified for the definition of today's subject. If I may define it, they were poor and deserving children who wanted to become students. Because there wasn't any money, the eldest seven children could not study further after school level and had to go and work.
The youngest three could go and study further only because the older brothers and sisters, who were working, sent money home for them to study. So, this is not a new problem at the moment. The FF Plus says it is a serious injustice perpetrated against any child who has the ability to learn and who performs well academically at school, if he or she cannot study further for economic reasons.
That is why the government's bursary scheme is so important. However, the government's bursary scheme seriously discriminates, at the moment, against certain students, specifically brown students and white students. According to statistics, only 4% of brown students recently received bursaries and only 2% of white students received bursaries. This is not representative of the general population at all.
It also appears as if Afrikaans students are being discriminated against specifically. Now you must remember that the majority of Afrikaans-speaking people in South Africa, for a long time already, have not been white people. Afrikaans is a language through which these students, especially the brown students, are empowered.
The majority of these students live in the Western Cape. The population in the Western Cape is approximately 60% brown, 20% white and 20% black. According to the national bursary scheme, 16 000 bursaries were made available in the Western Cape. Altogether 69% of these were awarded to black students; 22% were awarded to brown students; and 6% were awarded to white students. How do I explain this to the young people who phone me and talk to me about this?
We are creating a new generation of aggrieved young people - brown and white - because they feel that they are being discriminated against because they are poor, on the one hand, but also because it seems they are not black enough, on the other hand. After 16 years, surely this is a very serious matter that cannot continue. I thank you.