Resist Intrusive State Attempts to Hijack Home Education

“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance”.

Silence is construed as consent.

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”

Threat to Our Children
The outrageous Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill (The BELA Bill) is potentially the most dangerous threat to parental authority and responsibility for educating their children ever devised in our country. The Department of Basic Education is proposing an Amendment Bill which would strip School Governing Bodies of many of their most important powers, enabling political appointee bureaucrats to overrule parents and School Governing Bodies on language of instruction, teaching appointments and pupil admissions.

War Against the Children
Home education parents who do not register their children could face prosecution. All education service providers would need to be accredited by a state agency such as SAQA and Umalusi! The fact that most state schools are “dysfunctional” by their own admission, does not seem to concern the drafters of this draconian BELA Bill, who now propose to greatly increase costs for all parents and even for taxpayers who do not have children of school-going age, with crushing, intrusive interference and onerous requirements. The proposed BELA Bill would require parents to pay for state assessors to evaluate your child, every year, at your own cost!

Time-Wasting Expensive Interference
Considering that South Africa’s 2,500 private school have already been increasingly harassed with time-wasting and expensive accreditation, teaching and facilities assessments from the Department of Education and that Bible Colleges that neither wanted, nor needed accreditation with SAQA have had to pay tens-of-thousands of Rands to SAQA to have their certificates and diplomas not approved. Many Bible Colleges and Mission Colleges have been ordered to shut down for not complying with state instructions and ever-changing requirements.

Violations of Constitutional Rights
The Constitution guarantees freedom of conscience, freedom of religion and freedom of association. These freedoms are violated by the intrusive, time-consuming and money-wasting demands of SAQA, Umalusi and now by the proposed BELA Bill. These proposed laws are unnecessary, unworkable and unconstitutional.

Unnecessary, Unworkable and Unconstitutional
It is essential that parents and tax payers remind government that their primary responsibilities are to curb crime, deal with pollution, clean up litter, stop deforestation and eradicate arson, all of which is leading to catastrophic drought and critical water shortages, affecting us all.

Civil Servants Should Solve, Not Complicate the Citizens Lives
Politicians should be reminded that they are meant to be civil servants, protecting citizens and taxpayers, not harassing and complicating our lives with evermore intrusive, expensive and unworkable red tape!

A Timely Call - Back to the Bible Principles
The Reformation 500 Franschhoek Declaration of 30 October 2017 addresses these very issues:

Educational Freedom
Religious freedom must include freedom for parents to educate and discipline their children according to the Bible, whether in public schools, independent or church schools, or home schooling (Ephesians 6:4; Deuteronomy 6:1-7; Matthew 28:18-20; Colossians 2:8). No state may lawfully interfere with how parents raise their children, or how churches and independent schools educate their children. Children are not made in the image of the state, but in the image of God and are entrusted to parents to bring up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

The recent OGOD vs 6 schools case (28 August) that ruled that no government school may brand themselves as a Christian school is a violation of the freedom of the governing bodies of those schools to determine the religious ethos of that school.Parents should be able to decide the religious ethos of the school through the School Governing Body, which has mostly been the case up until now. Christians should not be intimidated by this judgement into removing the public reading and teaching of the Bible or the sharing of their Christian convictions during school assemblies, classes or any other school events.

Government Interference and Financial Burden on Private Schools and Bible Colleges
The Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill –requiring that all homeschoolers register with government, and that their curriculum must conform to the government CAPS curriculum, is state interference in the religious and educational freedom of parents and is an unnecessary, financial burden and time-wasting requirement. The Constitution of South Africa already recognises the rights of parents to home educate their children. Therefore, this Amendment Bill is in violation of the Constitution.

We praise God that Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) won their recent court case (October 2017) against the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA) who had declared the ACE matric qualification invalid. All Christians should reject and resist government interference with religious and educational freedom and the unnecessary financial burden placed upon private schools, home education curriculum providers and Bible Colleges to be accredited by government authorities.

Biblical Worldview of Education
We affirm that the Bible provides the only adequate and coherent worldview and foundation for all philosophy, ethics, law, government, science, the arts and educationand that Christian parents are obligated by God to guide and educate their children to think, decide, feel and act in all areas of life according to the worldview presented in the Bible.We may not righteously allow our children to be indoctrinated in worldviews which oppose the Biblical worldview.“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”. We have the right to disagree with the spirit of the age.

We affirm that God has given parents’ custody, jurisdiction and authority over their children, as stewards to raise them as servants of Christ, to seek to discern their calling and to train, discipline and educate them in the Biblical worldview. Parents may not rightfully yield their jurisdiction or authority to the civil government.

We deny that, Biblically, the civil government has ownership, jurisdiction or authority over children, or that the civil government has authority to usurp the stewardship to raise and educate children entrusted by God to the parents.

We further deny that the civil government or the church may interfere with a parent’s education of their children except in some matters of abandonment, or criminal justice, or may impose requirements, standards or methods for training, educating or disciplining their children. Therefore, we note that it is only right and in the best interests of the child, that parents must be allocated educational vouchers to finance the educational option of the parents.

Wide Gates to Hell
“I am much afraid that schools will prove to be wide gates to hell, unless they diligently labour in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youths. I would advise no one to send his child where the Holy Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution which men are not constantly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt.” Martin Luther.

“Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage.” Galatians 5:1

Dr. Peter Hammond
Africa Christian Action
PO Box 23632
Claremont 7735
Cape Town South Africa
Tel: 021-689 4480
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Web: www.christianaction.org.za