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Higher Education Act, 1997 (Act No. 101 of 1997)

Notices

Language Policy for Higher Education

Introduction

 

“… the building blocks of this nation are all our languages working together, our unique idiomatic expressions that reveal the inner meanings of our experiences. These are the foundations on which our common dream of nationhood should be built…The nurturing of this reality depends on our willingness to learn the languages of others, so that we in practice accord all our languages the same respect. In sharing one’s language with another, one does not lose possession of one’s words, but agrees to share these words so as to enrich the lives of others. For it is when the borderline between one language and another is erased, when the social barriers between the speaker of one language and another are broken that a bridge is built, connecting what were previously two separate sites into one big space for human interaction, and, out of this, a new world emerges and a new nation is born.”

 

President Thabo Mbeki

27 August 1999

 

 

1) South Africa is a country of many languages and tongues. However, our languages have not always been “working together”. In the past, the richness of our linguistic diversity was used as an instrument of control, oppression and exploitation. The existence of different languages was recognised and perversely celebrated to legitimise the policy of “separate development” that formed the cornerstone of apartheid. However, in practice, all our languages were not accorded equal status. The policy of “separate development” resulted in the privileging of English and Afrikaans as the official languages of the apartheid state and the marginalisation and under-development of African and other languages.

 

2) The use of language policy as an instrument of control, oppression and exploitation was one of the factors that triggered the two great political struggles that defined South Africa in the twentieth century – the struggle of the Afrikaners against British imperialism and the struggle of the black community against white rule. Indeed, it was the attempt by the apartheid 3state to impose Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in black schools that gave rise to the mass struggles of the late 1970s and 1980s.

 

(3) The role of all our languages “working together” to build a common sense of nationhood is consistent with the values of “democracy, social justice and fundamental rights”, which are enshrined in the Constitution. The Constitution, in line with its founding provisions of non-racialism, nonsexism, human dignity and equity, not only accords equal status to all our languages, but recognises that given the marginalisation of indigenous languages in the past, the state “must take practical and positive measures to elevate the status and advance the use of these languages” (Section 6 (2) of the Constitution).

 

(3.1) The Constitution, furthermore, in the Bill of Rights, grants that:

 

(3.1.1) "Everyone has the right to use the language and to participate in the cultural life of their choice, but no one exercising these rights may do so in a manner inconsistent with any provision of the Bill of Rights” (Section 30 of the Constitution).

 

(3.1.2) “Everyone has the right to receive education in the official language or languages of their choice in public educational institutions where that education is reasonably practicable. In order to ensure the effective access to, and implementation of, this right, the state must consider all reasonable educational alternatives, including single medium institutions, taking into account-
(a) equity;
(b) practicability; and
(c) the need to redress the results of past racially discriminatory laws and practices” (Section 29 (2) of the Constitution).

 

(3.2) The Constitution delineates clearly the limit to the right of individuals to receive education in the language of their choice. The exercise of this right cannot negate considerations of equity and redress in the context of the values that underpin our shared aspirations as a nation. In this regard, as the late Chief Justice Ismail Mahomed, stated in 1995:

 

“All Constitutions seek to articulate, with differing degrees of intensity and detail, the shared aspirations of a nation; the values which bind its people and which discipline its government and its national institutions; the basic premises upon which judicial, legislative and executive power is to be wielded; the constitutional limits and the conditions upon which that power is to be exercised; the national ethos which defines and regulates that exercise; and the moral and ethical direction which the nation has identified for its future.”

Chief Justice I Mahomed in S v Makwanyane and another 1995

 

(3.3) The values and shared aspirations of a democratic South Africa, which are enshrined in the Constitution of 1996, require the Constitution, as Justice Kate O’Regan suggests, to compel transformation.She argues that the attainment of the vision of the Constitution is dependent on urgently addressing “the deep patterns of inequality which scar our society and which are the legacy of apartheid and colonialism”. The Constitution, is therefore, according to Justice O’Regan:

 

“…a call to action to all South Africans, to seek to build a just and free democratic society in which the potential of each person is freed”.

Justice O’Regan in Equality: Constitutional Imperatives, 2002

 

(4) The role of language and access to language skills is critical to ensure the right of individuals to realise their full potential to participate in and contribute to the social, cultural, intellectual, economic and political life of South African society.

 

(5) Language has been and continues to be a barrier to access and success in higher education; both in the sense that African and other languages have not been developed as academic/scientific languages and in so far as the majority of students entering higher education are not fully proficient in English and Afrikaans.

 

(6) The challenge facing higher education is to ensure the simultaneous development of a multilingual environment in which all our languages are developed as academic/scientific languages, while at the same time ensuring that the existing languages of instruction do not serve as a barrier to access and success. The policy framework outlined below attempts to address this challenge.