The Democratic Alliance (DA) announced on Thursday that it will take the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Bill on legal review, saying the Bill will empower the African National Congress (ANC) to “capture, corrupt and collapse schools – just as it has done in other sectors of society”.

The DA led a picket against the BELA Bill in front of the gates of Parliament, with a range of civil society leaders and other political parties.

The Bill is being tabled at the National Assembly on Thursday.

“In keeping with our commitment to leading a whole-of-society approach, the DA can today announce that we are not only preparing our own legal challenge to the BELA Bill, which we will fight all the way to the Constitutional Court. We can also announce that we are reaching out to all of the organisations that have indicated that they too will go to court to prevent school capture,” said DA Shadow Minister of Basic Education Baxolile Nodada.

Nodada highlighted that while the DA supported educational reform, it would not support a Bill that disempowered schools, parents, and communities and failed to address a single one of the systemic challenges that impeded quality education, such as overcrowding, poor literacy and numeracy, dropouts, terrible school infrastructure, poor quality teaching and lack of resources.

He noted that forming a united front against the “ANC’s plans to capture and collapse schools” had never been more urgent.

He said the party aimed to coordinate and unite all of these various legal challenges into the biggest education court case South Africa had ever seen.

The DA will send formal letters to all organisations that intend to challenge the BELA Bill in court, inviting them to pool resources and work together to mount the strongest possible court challenge.

“In this way, by uniting the voices of school governing bodies, civil society and opposition parties into one consolidated court attack against ANC school capture, we will defeat the BELA Bill,” he said.

AfriForum head of cultural affairs Alana Bailey explained that AfriForum was preparing for litigation, saying the ANC was clearly trying to steamroll the Bill through all the required processes to get it implemented before the 2024 election.

Bailey said the organisation viewed the Bill as a direct attack against Afrikaans education, which would have extremely negative consequences for quality education in Afrikaans single-medium schools in particular, but ultimately also for all South African schools.

Bailey stated that the Bill must also be passed by the National Council of Provinces before it can be presented to the President for final approval.

“Only then can it be implemented. It is therefore essential to take a visible stand at each of these steps in an effort to prevent us from having to embark on legal action after implementation. Everyone who has the duty to decide on this Bill must realise that some of the content is unconstitutional and has the potential to cause incalculable damage to education and mutual relations in the country,” she said.