Wa ntlwaela! Lesufi tells Hofmeyr in twar over Afrikaans ‘genocide’

Gauteng education MEC Panyaza Lesufi and Afrikaans musician Steve Hofmeyr were on Saturday morning involved in a Twitter argument over what the latter referred to as a “genocide” of his mother tongue.

Hofmeyr said: “The greatest modern killer of Afrikaans, second only to consenting Afrikaners, is Panyaza Lesufi. I’ll fix that at the 2030 TRC”, a tweet which did not sit well with the MEC.

“Mara Steve Hofmeyr wa ntlwaela!” said the MEC, who added that all he was doing was to call for all languages to be treated equally and for all children, regardless of race or language, to study under one roof.

“Is that killing Afrikaans? Non-racialism is the future whether you like it or not, it will happen. South Africa belongs to all of us,” he said.

Hofmeyr, however, said if Lesufi really wanted to improve the education system, he would build more schools instead of “killing off” good schools.

“You are calling for Marxism and genocide. Your government treats heritage and monuments the same.”

Twitter user @johanbmi, who was in agreement with Hofmeyr, asked Lesufi why there were no Afrikaans speaking teachers for all subjects in Soweto schools if he was really fighting for all languages to be treated equally. 

“Why are there not Afrikaans speaking teachers in all English medium schools? Or is it only Afrikaans medium schools that must be forced open?” he asked.

But Lesufi said he could not answer the Twitter user’s question, sending him to his “apartheid monsters who created a divided society and only prioritised one language” for answers.

Lesufi said his fight was about breaking the “apartheid mentality” which only sought to promote separate development.

“We don’t have Afrikaans nor English schools in SA, we have South African schools. Why do you run to New Zealand where there’s no Afrikaans when you leave South Africa?”

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