Legal advice sought on police’s English-only policy

‘The good news is the Commissioner of Police has... gone to the State Attorney in Cape Town, who has asked to study our documents and legal opinions,’ the director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights of the FW de Klerk Foundation, Paul Hoffman, said yesterday. Hoffman said the Foundation would allow the other side to study its case and expected a response within ‘a week or so’. A report on the News24 site notes the matter came to light after a group of Afrikaans-speaking members of the police approached the Foundation when they felt their language rights were being trampled on. Afrikaans is the first language of two-thirds of the population in the Western Cape. Hoffman said the provincial police\'s deputy commissioner, Ganief Daniels, earlier on Monday told radiosondergrense that police were sensitive to the rights of Afrikaans speakers and that, in the near future, new standing orders would see these sensitivities taken into account. The Foundation said it hoped the problem would see a ‘negotiated settlement’. Full report on the News24 site