World
What’s South Africa’s new school language law and why is it controversial?
A new education law in South Africa is dividing lawmakers and sparking angry emotions in a country with a complex racial and linguistic history.
Last Friday, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) bill into law but suspended the implementation of two hotly contested sections for at least three months for further consultations among opposing government factions.
Authorities insist that the law will make education more equitable. Stark economic inequalities in South Africa have contributed to lower literacy and post-school opportunities for the country’s Black majority. By 2022, even though 34.7 percent of Black teenagers had completed secondary school – up from 9.4 percent in 1996 – only 9.3 percent of Black people had a tertiary education. By comparison, 39.8 percent of the white population had a tertiary education.
“The law that we are signing today further opens the doors of learning. It lays a firm foundation for learning from an early age … It will ensure young children are better prepared for formal schooling,” Ramaphosa said during the signing event in Pretoria.
But critics of the law, mainly from the Afrikaans-speaking community, argue that clauses strengthening the government’s oversight over school language and admission policies would threaten mother-tongue education.
Here’s what to know about BELA and why some groups disagree with parts of the law:
What’s BELA and why is it controversial?
The new amendment modifies older school laws in the country: the South African Schools Act of 1996 and the Employment of Educators Act of 1998.
It includes new provisions, such as a ban on corporal punishment for children, jail terms for parents who fail to send their children to school, compulsory grade levels for children starting school, and increased scrutiny for homeschooling.
However, Sections 4 and 5, which regulate languages of instruction in school, and school admission policies, are causing upheaval among Afrikaans-speaking minority groups.
The clauses allow schools to develop and choose their languages of instruction out of South Africa’s 11 official languages, as well as their admissions policy. However, it also gives the National Department of Basic Education the final authority, allowing it to override any decisions. Until now, school boards had the highest authority on languages and admissions.
Authorities in the past have cited how some schools exclude children, especially from Black communities, based on their inability to speak Afrikaans as one reason for the policy update.
Following South Africa’s break from apartheid, Black parents were allowed to send their children to better-funded, previously white-only schools where Afrikaans was often the main instruction language.
Some Black parents, however, claimed their wards were denied placements because they did not speak Afrikaans. Accusations of racism in school placements continue to be an issue: in January 2023, scores of Black parents protested in front of the Laerskool Danie Malan, a school in Pretoria that largely uses Afrikaans and Setswana (another official African language), claiming their children were denied for “racist” reasons. However, the school authorities rejected the claim, and other Black parents confirmed to local media that their children attended the institution.
Why are some Afrikaans speakers upset over BELA?
Some Afrikaans speakers say the new law threatens their language and, by extension, their culture and identity. Afrikaans-speaking schools also accuse the authorities of pressuring them to instruct in English.
Afrikaans is a mixture of Dutch vernacular, German and native Khoisan languages, which developed in the 18th century. It is predominantly spoken in South Africa by about 13 percent of the 100 million population. They include people from the multiracial “coloured” community (50 percent) and white descendants of Dutch settlers (40 percent).
Some Black people (9 percent) and South African Indians (1 percent) also speak Afrikaans, particularly those who lived through apartheid South Africa, when the language was more widely used in business and schools. It is more commonly spoken in the Northern and Western Cape provinces.
Of a total of 23,719 public schools, 2,484 — more than 10 percent — use Afrikaans as their sole or second language of instruction, while the vast majority teach in English. Some Afrikaans speakers argue that giving locally elected officials more power to determine a school’s language will politicise the matter and could lead to fewer schools teaching in Afrikaans. Many also fault the section of the law that allows government officials to override admissions policy.
“There is only a government of national disunity,” one commenter posted on the website of the South African newspaper Daily Maverick on Friday about the divisions within the coalition Government of National Unity (GNU) that have emerged amid the language row.
“By opting to destroy Afrikaans and Afrikaans schools and universities, the ANC and Cyril are making a mockery of unity. This is what happens if the provincial department can unilaterally control the admission of learners and language mediums at schools,” the commenter said, referring to Ramaphosa and his party, the African National Congress (ANC).
Last week, Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen, who is the leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA), the second-largest party in the GNU, condemned the government’s decision to move ahead with the bill despite reservations among the ANC’s coalition partners.
The politician, who is Afrikaner, also threatened a tit-for-tat response if the law is eventually signed as is.
“The DA will have to consider all of our options on the way forward … Any leader who tries to ride roughshod over their partners will pay the price – because a time will come when the shoe is on the other foot, and they will need the understanding of those same partners in turn,” he said.
Education Minister Siviwe Garube, a Black member of the DA, did not attend the signing ceremony in Pretoria in a show of defiance.
What is the history of school language controversies in South Africa?
Afrikaans is historically emotive in South Africa, dating back to British colonial rule.
To some, Afrikaans represents self-determination, but to many more, particularly in the Black community, it evokes memories of the brutal days of segregation and apartheid.
Originally, Afrikaans was regarded as an unsophisticated version of Standard Dutch. It was called “kitchen Dutch”, referencing the enslaved Cape populations who spoke it in the kitchen and to their settler masters. In the late 1800s, after the first and second Boer wars that saw Dutch settlers or “Boers” fight their British colonists and win independence, Afrikaans came to be regarded as a language of freedom for the white population. In 1925, it was adopted as an official language.
During the apartheid years, however, Afrikaans became synonymous with oppression for the majority Black population which faced the worst forms of subjugation under the system. Some scholars note (PDF) that the apartheid government uprooted Black families from urban areas to destitute self-governed “Bantustans” (homelands) partly based on their inability to speak the two official languages at the time, Afrikaans and English.
Most Black schools in South Africa at the time taught in English, as it was regarded as the language for Black emancipation. However, the government attempted to impose both English and Afrikaans as compulsory medium languages in schools starting from 1961.
That move ignited a series of student protests in June 1976 in the majority-Black community of Soweto, where the policy was meant to be implemented first. Between 176 and 700 people were killed when apartheid security forces used deadly force on schoolchildren in what is now known as the Soweto Uprising.
Apartheid authorities rescinded the language policy in July 1976. When Black schools were allowed to choose their medium of education, more than 90 percent opted for English. None chose the other African languages, such as Xhosa or Zulu, which the apartheid government had also pushed: it was seen as a measure to promote tribalism and divide the Black community. In addition to those, the country’s other official languages are Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, Siswati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga and Ndebele.
What’s next?
Authorities say the different arms of government will debate Sections 4 and 5 for the next three months. However, barring a resolution, the law will fully be implemented as is, President Ramaphosa said.
Meanwhile, Afrikaner rights groups such as the AfriForum, have declared they will contest the decision in court. The group has been described as having “racist” leanings, although it denies this.
“Afrikaans has already been eroded in the country’s public universities in a similar way,” Alana Bailey, AfriForum’s cultural affairs head, said in a statement last week.
“The shrinking number of schools that still use Afrikaans as a language of instruction now is the next target. AfriForum is therefore preparing for both national and international legal action to oppose this,” she added.
NEW YORK (AP) — Launching an artificial intelligence tool to take notes and summarize important information from a virtual meeting can be alluring. Seconds after one of the agents attends an hour-long video conference, it can deliver a recap of key points and outline a to-do list for all the participants.
But the way popular AI notetakers accomplish those tasks makes some people avoid using them. The technology turns everything said during meetings into data. Confidential personnel information, corporate strategies, trade secrets and remarks that could later be seen as incriminating — all of it could end up in the wrong hands.
“There are huge risks to the organization on AI notetakers,” Amy Dufrane, the chief executive of human resources training and certification provider HRCI, said. “I don’t think companies should use it at all.”
An AI notetaker is a software application or device that uses artificial intelligence, speech recognition and large language models to record, transcribe and summarize conversations. The tools are intended to save time and improve participation, but professionals in a number of fields say there are reasons to be wary.
This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.
Chief among them is uncertainty about where the collected data is stored and for how long. Privacy advocates worry the companies behind the AI notetakers are creating voiceprints without consent. Voiceprints — a type of biometric profile similar to a fingerprint but tuned to the unique intonations and characteristics of one’s voice — can be used to access restricted or confidential information, including the contents of bank accounts.
Some tech companies resell data from the notetaking tools they created or use confidential meeting transcripts and recordings to train their AI models. There’s also the risk that conversations between an attorney and client could become fair game in legal proceedings; a New York federal judge in February ordered a criminal defendant to provide prosecutors with documents he created for his lawyers because it already had been shared with a third party, which was Anthropic’s Claude.
“People who use AI notetakers, they don’t always know where the data goes,” said Justin Daniels, an Atlanta-based corporate attorney at law firm Baker Donelson. “And in my context, if the data goes anywhere else and they’re not aware of it, that attorney-client-privileged conversation may not be attorney-client-privileged anymore.”
Here are some tips on the etiquette of kicking an AI notetaker out of a meeting, the risks of using one and how to protect yourself.
The first step when you join a meeting is check for bots
When you join a meeting, make it a habit to check whether an AI notetaker is present. It might appear as a meeting attendee, often labeled as an AI notetaker, or a pop-up message on the screen informing participants the meeting is being recorded. The latter could signal the presence of an AI notetaker.
Virtual meeting platforms such as Zoom and Google Meet let users know when recording is underway, but some meeting software does not make it clear when a notetaker is present, according to Thorin Klosowski, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s senior security and privacy analyst.
Participants also may use personal notetaking devices that are separate from the meeting platform, in which case the other attendees wouldn’t necessarily know a discussion was being recorded and transcribed.
“You hope the other person would tell you that they’re doing that,” Klosowski said. “Asking everyone for consent before doing a sensitive meeting would be the most polite approach to take.”
If you’re unsure whether someone has deployed an AI notetaker, you can ask. You can also state at the beginning that a meeting is not authorized for recording.
A polite way to establish such a boundary is to say, “Our company policy is that this meeting cannot be recorded,” Dufrane suggested. This relieves the employee, such as a salesperson who wants to make a good impression, of having to be the “bad guy,” putting the onus on the company instead, she said.
Another option is to allow the notetaker for part of the gathering but turn if off at the end to dedicate time for more delicate topics.
“I won’t start talking about anything substantive until it’s shut off, because I just don’t want to take the risk,” Daniels said.
Assert your privacy rights to protect voiceprints
Many AI notetakers determine unique acoustic signatures, or voiceprints, for each speaker in the room, said Chris Pluymers, associate attorney at The Dillon Law Group in East Lansing, Michigan. That’s how the companies distinguish one speaker from another, labeling them with monikers “Speaker 1” or “Speaker 2.”
One way voiceprints are used is to verify the identities of bank account holders over the phone. If bad actors got ahold of a person’s vocal signature, they could use it to access files, commit fraud or take over accounts, he said.
Laws in some states govern how voiceprints can be created and stored and provide rights that individuals can assert to object to the use of an AI notetaker during meetings they attend.
In Illinois, voiceprints are considered biometric identifiers, similar to fingerprints, and are covered under the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, which requires written notice and informed consent before an AI notetaker or other agent collects voiceprints. The law also mandates a documented data retention schedule and destruction policy, Pluymers said. But most companies using the tools have none of those systems in place, Pluymers said.
“In the world of AI, the world of data and privacy, the world of biometric identification, I don’t think you can have such a lax approach to it,” Pluymers said. “I think getting out ahead of it is crucial.”
Under the Illinois law, employees can say they don’t want to attend a meeting with an AI notetaker until they have assurances of where and why the data is being stored, and when it will be deleted, Pluymers said. They can also ask if there is a policy and written consent form to sign.
If an AI notetaker shows up at a meeting unexpectedly, a participant could say, “I prefer we keep this meeting without AI recording or transcript tools and I’d be happy to take my own notes and share a recap if that’s helpful,” Pluymers suggested. “Just being warm and genuine about it and asking them to respect your wishes.”
Know where your data goes
When working with AI notetaking apps, find out whether the companies that built them retain recordings, transcripts or metadata indefinitely or use them to train AI models, said Danielle Kays, a partner at Fisher Phillips who represents businesses on privacy and employment law matters.
“If there is some sort of speaker ID or voice recognition, really understand what that is and how it works,” Kays said.
Even when content is deleted, metadata about meetings can remain stored with the vendor, meaning sensitive business information could influence how the model behaves and in some cases could be memorized or reproduced, she said.
AI notetakers generate text, and that’s easier for outsiders to search through than video or audio files, according to EFF.
“Storing a bunch of video isn’t easy, it’s costly and hard to look through, but text is much easier to search and cheaper to store,” said Klosowski of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
___
Share your stories and questions about workplace wellness at [email protected]. Follow AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health at https://apnews.com/hub/be-well
World
Argentinian flight instructor jumps to death from plane, 22-year-old student forced to land alone
NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
A flight instructor jumped to his death out of a small aircraft over Argentina, forcing the student pilot he was teaching to land the plane herself.
Leandro Andrés Bertazzo, 42, was on board a two-seat Cessna 150G on Saturday when he made the decision to jump out over the province of Córdoba, according to CNN, which cited its Argentinian affiliate TN.
“He made this tragic decision on board an aircraft with another person by his side,” Eduardo Álvarez, director of the Flying Parrot Córdoba flying school where Bertazzo worked, told TN. “It’s impossible to think about it or understand it, but the human mind is so complex.”
An undated photo of Leandro Andrés Bertazzo, a 42-year-old pilot who jumped to his death from a plane on Saturday, July 4 in Argentina. (Instagram/Leandro Bertazzo)
PILOT DECLARES MAYDAY BEFORE SEAPLANE COMES DOWN IN NEW YORK CITY’S EAST RIVER
Rosario, the 22-year-old student, later told authorities that Bertazzo told her, “You know what you have to do, carry on,” before taking off his gear, opening the door and leaping out, according to Álvarez.
Opening the door of a plane midair is incredibly difficult. Álvarez said it would be akin to trying to open the door of a car traveling 124 miles per hour.
Cessna 150m FRA150M climbing out after take-off with flaps deployed and hills behind. (aviation-images.com/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
FRANTIC SEARCH UNDERWAY FOR CREW AFTER BOEING 737 WRECKAGE FOUND BY OFFICIALS
Álvarez said that Rosario managed to land the plane safely, despite being in “complete shock.” There was no damage to the plane, according to TN.
Álvarez noted that Bertazzo had gone on a flight with another student earlier in the day.
A view from the main road of the flight school Bertazzo worked at, Flying Parrot Córdoba. (Google Maps)
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Álvarez also told TN that Bertazzo had visited a psychiatric institute, something that was only known by his family prior to his death.
Prosecutors in Córdoba will lead the investigation into Bertazzo’s death. The plane he jumped from is now in police custody.
Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn denies damaging US President Donald Trump’s Washington, DC reflecting pool renovation.
Published On 9 Jul 2026
A former US Olympian has pleaded not guilty to vandalising the newly renovated Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, in a case that has drawn national attention amid accusations that the administration of US President Donald Trump is trying to shift blame for a troubled renovation.
David “Davey” Hearn, a 67-year-old three-time Olympic canoe racer, entered his plea in federal court on Thursday after prosecutors accused him of “maliciously” damaging the “American flag blue” lining installed at the bottom of the reflecting pool at Trump’s request ahead of celebrations taking place at Washington’s National Mall for the 250th anniversary of the United States’ independence on July 4.
list of 4 itemsend of listRecommended Stories
Federal prosecutors allege Hearn pulled at the liner on June 19, causing more than $1,000 in damage. He has been charged with destruction of government property, an offence that carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.
Hearn denied the allegations. He admitted he stopped at the pool during a bike ride, reached inside and touched a section of lining that was already peeling away, but that he did not remove or damage it. He told The Associated Press he let go when a park employee told him to stop.
Hearn’s lawyers argue the prosecution is an attempt by the Trump administration to deflect attention from what they describe as a botched renovation project.
“This indictment reflects the administration’s effort to shift blame for their own failures,” they said in a statement. “The justice system exists to determine facts, not to provide political cover.”
The 620-metre (2,030-foot) reflecting pool reopened in June after Trump ordered the new liner to be installed across the bottom. He said he was compelled to go ahead with the $14.7m renovation after a friend visiting from Germany called the pool dark and disgusting.
But within days, algae began to spread across the surface, the water turned chartreuse green, and sections of the liner began peeling away.
Experts have explained that the dark new coat of paint at the bottom of the pool would elevate the temperature and allow algae to grow, and that algae blooms in water are common at this time of year, especially in shallow, stagnant water like that of the pool.
Trump blamed the issues on vandals, claiming without evidence that “corrosive and destructive chemicals” were poured into the pool and that vandals “took some form of knife or blade” and put a long “gash into the beautiful facade”, although no one has been charged over those alleged acts.
The US president warned that anyone who allegedly damaged the pool could face long prison terms. “Please remember that there is a 10 year prison sentence for the destruction, or even the attempted destruction, of such things — Which will be fully enforced!” he wrote on Truth Social.
Last week, US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro announced the indictment against Hearn, accusing him of intentionally damaging the liner.
The US Department of the Interior has said that at least six people were arrested on suspicion of vandalising the pool in the weeks after it reopened. National Guard troops and US Park Police were deployed to protect the site, which was fenced off during July 4 celebrations.
Thursday’s hearing drew a packed courtroom, with dozens of supporters waiting outside after Hearn entered his plea.
The reflecting pool’s problems have continued, with Trump acknowledging it will need to be drained again so the damaged liner can be repaired.
-
Connecticut6 minutes agoCBIA BizCast: Snapshot of Connecticut’s Economy » CBIA
-
Delaware9 minutes agoDelaware will collab with 2 Chainz, years after huge event canceled
-
Florida14 minutes agoFlorida Airport Officially Renamed After Trump. Here’s What to Know
-
Georgia21 minutes agoWest Nile infections starting to raise concerns in Georgia
-
Hawaii24 minutes agoFirst 5 Hawaii is a comprehensive online resource that helps families with young children find and connect to state and federal programs and services.
-
Idaho29 minutes agoBrush fire prompts GO NOW evacuations near Mesa in Adams County
-
Illinois36 minutes agoIllinois waives tax penalties for 11 counties hit by storms, including Stephenson and Winnebago
-
Indiana38 minutes agoAttempted murder suspect arrested in Indianapolis for Bloomington shooting
