The appointment on Sunday evening of Hon. Siviwe Gwarube (DA) as Minister of Basic Education in all likelihood means that the BELA Bill is dead, at least in its current form.
BELA Bill is currently with President Cyril Ramaphosa awating signature, however, if he believes the Bill is unconstitutional it can be returned to Parliament for amendment or sent to the Constitutional Court for review. Although the President signed a number of Bills into law before the elections he did not sign the BELA Bill, already a sign that the political will of the ANC to push the BELA Bill through at all costs was waning.
DA leader, John Steenhuizen, had stated before the election that the BELA Bill and the NHI were non-negotiables for the DA in any discussion of a coalition. A statement repeated earlier today by Helen Zille, Chairperson of the DA's Federal Council, During the BELA Bill hearings the DA stood consistently against the Bill with its opposition getting stronger as the Bill progressed. This culminated in the ejection of Hon. Baxolile "Bax" Nodada from the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education's final meeting on the Bill for objecting to the final report on the Bill being written in the meeting, in violation of all previous parliamentary protocol. It is difficult to see how a Minister who is a member of the DA could support the Billl being signed now.
The diverse voices in the Government of National Unity will make DA opposition slightly less impactful than it would have been in a coalition. Support is at hand from the FF+'s Dr. Pieter Groenewald, whose party is a stauch opponent of the BELA Bill, having him in the cabinet will make the signing of the Bill less likely.
Sources familiar with the matter have revealed that ANC support for the Bill is by no means rock solid. The ten years the BELA Bill took to be finalised is in part evidence of this. It is believed that the Bill languished in the Department of Basic Education between ANC Policy Conferences, it was at Conference that the finalisation and adoption of the Bill was pushed for.
BELA Bill was simply a fight the DBE - and even the ANC - did not need and this was displayed in the BELA Bill hearings. The ACDP's Marie Sukers galvanised opposition to the Bill across all segments of society on the basis that it is a "School Abortion Bill". This became the defining conflict over the Bill with the ANC and DBE resorting to repeatedly commencing public hearings by stating, "This is not an Abortion Bill". Suker's campaign forced the ANC and DBE to meet the ACDP on its ground, a rare political coup for a small political party.
ANC concern over the traction that the "Abortion Bill" issue gained was evidenced by ANC parliamentarians in the NCOP openly attacking Sukers and explaining that they were "educating" their voters about the Bill to counter the ACDP's message. It is impossible to know if this cost the ANC votes, but their reaction shows that the ANC was clearly concerned, especially about questions coming from supporters in rural areas and traditional leaders.
The widespread opposition from homeschoolers, those concered about the "Abortion Bill" issue and parents of school-going children led to the Bill being rejected by the majority of the public. This ANC-led education committees then had the difficult task of trying to obscure this embarrassing fact. The unyielding pressure from the public is, without doubt, one of the reasons the passage of the Bill was marked by so many procedural errors.
Children were refused the opportunity to make submissions, little or no pre-education of the public took place and parliamentarians did not consider all inputs in a fair, informed and rational fashion. The Bill is also riddled with substantive flaws (like the provision that allows schools with less than 135 learners to be closed without the MEC needing to provide reasons for the closure. Section 33 of the Bill of Rights enshrines the right to just administrative action and the failure of the Bill to comply with the requirement in Section 33(2) that "Everyone whose rights have been adversely affected by administrative action has the right to be given written reasons." is a clear violation of this right).
BELA Bill can't be ignored
BELA has passed Parliament and cannot simply be ignored. While BELA Bill is on its last legs, it will not die without further pressure being applied.
In order to win any debate over the issues, parties like the DA and FF+ will have to convince the Cabinet that the procedural flaws that occurred during passage are so serious that it would be a dereliction of duty for the President to sign the Bill. They will also have to show that better solutions exist for controversial clauses such as home schooling and for pollicies in respect of admissions and language.
While research is needed to determine to what extent language and admissions policy is used to exclude black learners from schools, members of the portfolio committee and a number of members of the public in the hearings claimed to have experienced this. A carefully balanced model that protects the right to access as well as the rights to mother tongue instruction and quality education needs to be proposed to settle the issue.
The general public will also need to support campaigns asking the President not to sign the Bill. Organisations like the Pestalozzi Trust and LearnFree have already submitted detailed letters to the President and members of the public are urged to endorse those.
The Bill is dead - Long Live the BELA Bills
Hon. Gwarube's appointment provides a unique opportunity to propose widescale educational reform, both including and wide of the BELA Bill. One of the ciriticisms of the BELA Bill is that after 30 years of a new educational dispensation it is an unambitious, tinkering Bill that did little to nothing to address the real education crisis in the country.
Emerging education modalities like online and hybrid education were going to be included in the Bill, all parties in the Portfolio Commitee on Basic Education agreed to this, but these were then quietly not included.
The second Children's Amendment Bill that deals with Early Childhood Development (ECD) has been published for public comment. Unfortunately, it appears to be repeating all the same mistakes of the BELA Bill, with its lack of a Socio-Economic Impact Assessment, the faillure to engage with the broad public and listen to them while the Bill is being developed, and an attempt to limit freedom of curriculum choice. ECDs were also going to be included in BELA Bill, at the suggestion of Hon. Manyi of the EFF, with the support of the ANC and the whole PCBE, but this resolution was also mysteriously overlooked.
With the President's call for a national dialogue and the likely death of the BELA Bill, the opportunity now exists for widespread educational reform and true BELA Bills (multiple BELA Bills amending the education law architecture) being passed. It is hoped the new Minister will drive this reform process.
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