The continued erosion of Afrikaans as a recognized official language and as a language of instruction is cause for concern. Afrikaans is the third most widely used language in South Africa and is the first language of more than 7.4 million people (12.2% of the population), more than half of whom are people of colour.
The latest threats to Afrikaans stem from the recent Khampepe report on Stellenbosch University and the Basic Education Laws Amendment Bill 2022 (Bela Bill).
The erosion of Afrikaans is gaining momentum despite the protection that all official languages of South Africa are supposed to enjoy. Article 30 of the Constitution guarantees the rights of South Africans to use the language and participate in the cultural life of their choice. Language rights are strongly entrenched, not only in the Bill of Rights, but also in section 6 of the Constitution, which recognizes the 11 official languages of South Africa (soon to be supplemented by sign language as the 12th official language) and requires that the government:
- Take active measures to promote and enhance the use of indigenous languages;
- Use at least two official languages at the national and provincial level;
- Adopt legislation to regulate and control the use of official languages; Y
- Ensure that all official languages are held in equal esteem and are treated fairly.
Section 29(2) guarantees the right of all South Africans to education in the official language of their choice where reasonably practicable. Despite these constitutional guarantees, there has been a continued erosion of Afrikaans at the University of Stellenbosch, which has seen Afrikaans decline through a parallel system until 2014 (prior to the entrenchment of English as its sole language of instruction).
Last year, there were shocking reports that some students were banned from using Afrikaans in private communications in university residences. If the recent recommendations by Judge Sisi Khampepe are implemented, Afrikaans will erode further.
Khampepe, who has been asked to lead an investigation into allegations of racism at Stellenbosch University, suggests in his recently published report that the reason why some non-white students and staff allegedly do not feel welcome at the institution is Afrikaans.
She suggests that “based on all the evidence about the tensions and problems created by the university’s multilingual language policy, the university should consider revising and revising this policy to eliminate the possibility of language exclusion through language preference.” Afrikaans”.
The report effectively blames the university’s minority Afrikaans community for all the subjectively felt racial tension and incidents experienced on its campus, basing its determination on evidence from an interview with only one witness and just 0.7% of the participants. of the 33,000 students and faculty at the University.
This comes after the university revised its 2014 language policy due to the “exclusion hurdle” that Afrikaans allegedly created for “specifically black students studying in Stellenbosch”. The new policy replaced dual-media instruction in English and Afrikaans with single-media instruction in English, with the main points reiterated in Afrikaans.
But tertiary institutions are not the only places where the government does not respect the language rights of Afrikaans speakers. With only 5% of public schools offering Afrikaans tuition in individual medium schools, the Bela bill seeks to disempower school governing bodies to determine their own language and admissions policies.
Instead, these powers will ultimately rest with the heads of provincial education departments, some of whom have publicly expressed their hostility towards the Afrikaans language. Unsurprisingly, many of the written and oral submissions received by the parliament’s basic education committee expressed concern that the Bela Bill would lead to the phasing out of Afrikaans from public school systems until it is completely eradicated.
Afrikaans speakers can expect little support from our courts, which, in the most recent cases, have handed down rulings that have further eroded Afrikaans as a language of instruction. Although former Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng observed, in Gelyke Kanse and others v. President of the Stellenbosch University Senate in 2019 — that “…Afrikaans is in fact an African language, our historical pride is to be treasured by all citizens”, the ruling was against Afrikaans because “it was not reasonably feasible for the University” to return to its instruction policy of double medium of 2014.
In 2017, by denying the right of AfriForum and Solidarity to appeal the judgment of the supreme court of appeal in University of the Free State v. Afriforum and Solidarity, Mogoeng also maintained that: “Afrikaans became the language most associated with the formalization and implementation of apartheid. For a large section of South Africans, it probably evokes associations of discrimination, oppression and the systematic humiliation of others above all else. Understandably, these associations often affect the approaches people take to the role and future of Afrikaans. That association with racism and race-based practices is often something that Afrikaans-speaking communities will have to confront and deal with.”
But what about the constitutional requirement that “all official languages should be held in equal esteem and treated fairly”? Mogoeng’s views appear to be based on the notion that languages may be the bearers of historical blame, in which case most of the world’s languages, including German, Russian, Japanese, and English, would be suspect. of a review of their respective “role and future”. ”.
Mogoeng’s widely endorsed conclusion that “Afrikaans as a medium of instruction has inadvertently become an instrument of racial and cultural division and discrimination” it is at the center of the problems that the language is experiencing now.
This was not always the case. In 2002, a report produced under the chairmanship of Professor Jakes Gerwel recommended that the education minister endorse “the general principle that each of the official languages be assigned to one or more universities to cater in a systematic and planned manner for the broad development of that tongue”.
The report also recommended that, in line with this recommendation, the universities of Stellenbosch and Potchefstroom should be charged with “assuming as part of their institutional task responsibility for the continued and sustained development of Afrikaans as a language of academic and institutional life”.
Unfortunately, Gerwel’s recommendations were never accepted. Instead, Afrikaans has been phased out in all formerly Afrikaans universities, except North-West University’s Potchefstroom campus and Stellenbosch, where its already marginal status may be further eroded by the implementation of Khampepe’s recommendations. . Similarly, the Bela bill may pose a devastating threat to the future of Afrikaans in our public school system.
All of this can deal a potentially fatal blow to the constitutional protection that all our languages and cultures are supposed to enjoy. In its Annual Human Rights Report for 2021-22, the FW de Klerk Foundation highlighted the continued erosion of language rights as one of the top 10 threats to constitutional rights in South Africa.
The reality is that the government has done little or nothing to promote, protect and preserve the indigenous languages of South Africa. Instead, it is simply ignoring the language requirements set out in section 6 of the Constitution by failing to enforce its own Official Language Use Act; failure to treat the official languages of South Africa equally and with parity of esteem; and, with the concurrence of our courts, not complying with the requirement that everyone must have the right to education in the official language of their choice. In doing so, it is eroding South Africa’s status as a multicultural and multilingual country, united in its diversity.
Instead, the government should focus resources on indigenous language development in partnership with educational institutions so that every person can one day choose their preferred language of instruction. The removal of Afrikaans from educational institutions and from social discourse will not encourage the use of other indigenous languages; it will simply lead to the globally evident trend of monolingualism, which favors English, and will further marginalize indigenous African languages.
Tyla Dallas is the manager of constitutional programs for the FW de Klerk Foundation.
