Civic movement Save South Africa has called on President Cyril Ramaphosa to “act seriously” against Minister of Basic Education, Siviwe Gwarube after she snubbed the signing of the contentious Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill into law.
On Friday, IOL reported that Gwarube, a senior official of the Democratic Alliance (DA), announced that she would not attend the event at the Union Buildings where Ramaphosa signed the Bill.
Tebogo Mashilompane, campaigns and communications director at Save South Africa described Gwarube’s conduct at “arrogant”.
“We view this type of arrogance as the one not only directed to the president but to the entire education fraternity. This arrogant behaviour by the minister comes a day after Minister John Steenhuisen addressed the media and in his address, he came up with scare tactics of saying the so-called GNU is loved by the investors and insinuating that the failure of this fake marriage will see a drop in the rand. Democratic Alliance used the rand and investors story as their ticket to the Cabinet,” said Mashilompane.
“So as citizens we want to know from the minister of basic education if she is a DA minister or South African minister. The minister must come clear and straightforward to all of us.”
Mashilompane argued that Save SA has “studied” the behaviour pattern of the DA in the Government of National Unity and concluded that the political party was “feeling more important than the rest of the members of this nonsensical GNU”.
Mashilompane added that the DA bullies “everybody including the president”.
“We further state that the failure by the president to act harshly against Minister Gwarube will set precedent for unruly and undermining behaviour. There is no doubt, the minister undermined the president and she did this publicly so,” said Mashilompane.
In signing the the BELA Bill, Ramaphosa announced that he has resolved to delay the implementation of certain clauses of the Bill which deal with schools’ admission and language for three months while consultations happen.
“In the last few days, the parties to the Government of National Unity have expressed their wish to further engage each other on sections of the bill that deal with issues of admission and language. In the spirit of cooperation and meaningful engagement, I have decided to delay the implementation date for clauses 4 and 5 of the Bill by three months,” said Ramaphosa.
“This will give the parties time to deliberate on these issues and make proposals on how the different views may be accommodated. Should the parties not be able to agree on an approach, then we will proceed with the implementation of these parts of the Bill.”
IOL NEWS