The Bela Act is not a silver bullet for solving South Africa’s education challenges. However, what it will potentially achieve is addressing the sad legacy of apartheid where language was weaponised and used as a tool to separate people.
In my doctoral thesis, I wrote a chapter on the history of language in South Africa. I demonstrated how dominance and power have characterised and shaped the country’s linguistic landscape since 1652. The first era was known as Dutchification and a west Germanic language, Dutch, was the only official language in the Cape Colony from 1652 until 1822.
In 1822, the British exerted dominance and power over the Dutch and replaced Dutch with English as the only official language, giving rise to the Anglicisation era.
In 1910, when the Union of South Africa was formed, the numerical minority but politically powerful English speakers (descendants of the British) reached a compromise with the numerically superior but politically weak Voortrekkers (descendants of the Dutch, German and French). That compromise saw English and Dutch being the two official languages of the union.
By the turn of the 20th century, many Voortrekkers spoke a Dutch-based Creole as a home language. In 1925, that Dutch-based Creole, now known as Afrikaans, became one of the union’s three official languages. It was only in 1983 that Dutch was dropped as an official language, because it was hardly ever used.
Afrikaans was first used for learning and teaching purposes in 1914 and the pace to develop it increased significantly after the 1948 elections. The history of Afrikaans is one of fighting for its space, particularly against English.
At a subtle or subconscious level, the fight for Afrikaans is about resistance to the continuing dominance and power of English. Of course, some will dismiss this assertion.
What opposition to the Bela Act is really about
Conspiracy theories and paranoia about a clandestine agenda to weaken Afrikaans should be understood within the context of its history of initially being a Dutch-based Creole to being allowed in 1925 to be an official language. They should be understood within a context of dominance and power that the Dutch lost to the British in the 1820s.
I submit that strong opposition to sections 4 and 5 of the Bela Act (Basic Education Laws Amendment Act), which President Cyril Ramaphosa authorised the full implementation of on 20 December, has a lot to do with the power struggle between two west Germanic languages, English and Afrikaans, which from a linguistics point of view, cannot be classified as African languages. This is a power struggle that has been there since the British interrupted the Dutchification era in the 1820s.
This covert tug-of-war is about the undeniable and strong appetite that home-language speakers of four Nguni languages (isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu and Siswati), three Sotho-Tswana languages (Sepedi, Sesotho and Setswana), Tshivenda and Xitsonga have towards English. It is about the positive attitudes that these home-language speakers hold towards English.
Of course, those opposed to the Bela Act will deny these assertions; rather they will up the ante that these speakers should join the fight for the establishment of single-medium schools in their languages, when in fact, the real fight is renting them as a crowd to join the chorus of pushing back against the dominance of English.
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I do not buy the argument that the opposition towards sections 4 and 5 of the Bela Act is about the quest to empower African languages and to promote multilingualism. How do you promote multilingualism when you advocate single-medium schools?
This opposition is about the power struggle between English and Afrikaans. Speakers of African languages, who account for more than 80% of SA’s population, are viewed as a proxy for English and thus should be dislodged from English by selling them the benefits of mother-tongue education.
There can be little doubt that the more English a school becomes, the more it attracts speakers of African languages. Getting more than 80% of the population to support mother-tongue education and single-medium schools would supposedly be the best weapon against the dominance of English.
Manipulation of Unesco’s 1951 report
In 1951, Unesco released a report in which it advocated mother-tongue education as the best way of educating learners. The apartheid government pounced on this report and segregated people according to race and home language. In 1953, it passed the infamous Bantu Education Act (No 47 of 1953).
Through this law, the government ensured that black Africans received an inferior education relative to the one designed for whites, coloured and Indians/Asians. In an academic journal article I published in 2021, I argued that the damage caused by this law is still present in the psyche of many black Africans in South Africa.
When some hear “mother-tongue education”, they hear “inferior quality of education”. Attempts to sell mother-tongue education, even in democratic South Africa, are usually received with suspicion and this question lingers in many people’s minds: “Where is the sleight of hand this time around?”
Those who oppose sections 4 and 5 of the Bela Act strengthen their stance on mother-tongue education by citing a case study of Afrikaans-speaking learners who have largely done well in education relative to black African learners who are not taught in African languages.
What they conveniently chose to omit from the narrative is the fact that a disproportionate number of resources were channelled towards the education of Afrikaans-speaking learners, particularly after 1948.
They will not tell you how much money was spent on the education of an Afrikaans-speaking child relative to that of a black African child, say in 1976 when I was in Grade 1. They will not acknowledge the enormous number of resources that an Afrikaans-speaking child had access to, relative to a black African child like me, say in 1987 when we were in Grade 12. This is a very uncomfortable conversation for them.
Let me be clear: I do not dispute the potential benefits of mother-tongue education in any language, be it English, Afrikaans, Setswana, Siswati, etc. What I am challenging is the carefully crafted narrative that attributes successes in education to one variable, mother-tongue education to the exclusion of all else. There are so many enabling variables at play, including adequate resources.
However noble or innocent the intention to invoke Unesco’s 1951 report is, albeit indirectly, it lacks appreciation of the painful history of language injustices in South Africa. It is insensitive to the fact that language in education was weaponised against black Africans during the apartheid era.
Through the Bantu Education Act, generations of black South Africans were psychologically damaged; they were made to feel inferior and inadequate about who they were as a people, and they found solace in English, a language that unified them politically. It is no coincidence that at Codesa, the ANC’s initial position was to have English as the only official language of a new South Africa.
To disrupt this unity, in 1974, the apartheid government decided to amend the language policy for schools by introducing Afrikaans as a language of learning and teaching for some subjects. This decision backfired on 16 June 1976 when black African learners swamped the streets of Soweto and other major townships across the country to demonstrate their rejection of the new policy. Hundreds of them were murdered and many others were permanently scarred physically, psychologically and emotionally.
Centurion: A case study of language matters in education
Allow me to use Centurion as a case study in my analysis of language matters in the education landscape of South Africa. I know this town very well because I became a resident there 20 years ago when there was some unoccupied land on which estates such as Kosmosdal and Thatchfield now stand.
Every year, affluent black Africans move to Centurion and they come from different linguistic backgrounds. So, if those who oppose the Bela Act were to be granted their wish, then the government would have to build new primary schools for children whose families speak African languages.
The next conversation will be: “Does South Africa follow through this by building new institutions of higher learning for each group of learners who receive their basic education in their home languages?”
There is no prize for guessing that the proposal to build single-medium schools for each group of learners is not only impractical from a financial and logistics point of view, but will also take the country to the era of separateness; an era in which learners’ home languages determined which schools they went to. South Africa cannot afford to go back to its sad past, particularly for black Africans.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that a good number of Afrikaans-medium schools in Centurion have empty classes which could be used by learners whose parents prefer that they be taught in English. These parents have a right to choose English as their preferred language for their children’s learning and teaching.
They do not need to be patronised and lectured by those who oppose the Bela Act that they should choose their home languages as languages of learning and teaching for their children. There is nothing wrong with their preference for mother-tongue education in Afrikaans, and the Constitution protects that right, but one right they do not have is to coerce black African parents to choose the same way they did.
While the demographic makeup of Centurion has changed over the years, the town’s schools have largely remained rigid in retaining language policies developed in the pre-1994 era and then copying and pasting the post-1994 one. The number of English-medium schools in the town is inadequate and they cannot cope with the number of learners who come from affluent black African families.
These affluent black African parents are barred from attending meetings called by school governing bodies (SGBs) because such meetings can only be attended by parents who have children who go to these schools. So, they live metres away from public schools but are barred from participating in the affairs of schools which are funded by their taxes. They cannot express their views on school language policies at SGB meetings. Surely, this cannot be fair to these taxpayers, and something had to give.
These parents have no choice but to take their children to English-medium private schools that have mushroomed in the town to cater for the education needs of their children.
Logic dictates that affluent black African families in Centurion will now put their faith and the fate of their children in the Gauteng Department of Education’s head of department, who is empowered by the Bela Act to consider the demographic makeup of Centurion against the number of available classrooms in the town and then to ensure that such classrooms are occupied and taxpayers’ money is used maximally.
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What South Africa needs to explore
I agree with Unesco’s position that mother-tongue education is the best way of educating learners. However, the best way should not be interpreted to mean the only way. There are other routes to attaining success in education. Here are two significant questions:
- Despite their undisputed benefits, do mother-tongue education and single-medium schools unite or divide South Africans along race and linguistic background?
- Are there viable alternatives to mother-tongue education if South Africa is to realise social cohesion and nation-building within a generation?
To answer the first question, South Africa stands the best chance of bridging its racially divided citizenry by allowing its children to attend the same schools regardless of their linguistic background. There is concern that over time, some Afrikaans-medium schools could potentially become English-medium ones. This concern is valid.
I know of a primary school and a high school in Centurion which were dual-medium Afrikaans-English schools in 2014, but are now English-medium schools.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that parents who prefer their children to be taught in Afrikaans moved their children to Afrikaans-medium schools in town. Such decisions led to decreased demand for teaching in Afrikaans at those two schools and a decision was taken to move to teaching only in English.
I suspect that with the onset of the Bela Act, many families will run away from dual-medium schools until they cannot run any more but have to accept dual-medium schools as a reality.
Dual-medium Afrikaans-English schools are inevitable, particularly in big towns like Rustenburg and cities like Tshwane. The sooner all of us accept this, the better for our sanity. The Bela Act will be a game-changer in bringing children together and South Africa stands to be a much more cohesive society.
Read more: Basic Education Laws Amendment Act is exactly what South African education needs
With regards to the second question, we need not go too far looking for an answer. Many African countries with fewer resources continue to outperform South Africa when it comes to learner performance. These countries educate their children in English, French and Portuguese.
This is a legacy of colonisation that many so-called Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone countries in Africa have accepted as reality and have moved on. They have embraced and domesticated colonial languages and now claim them as their own. This is an area that South Africa appears to be struggling with.
South Africa appears to have misdiagnosed the problem of poor learner performance by blaming it on teaching them in English. If teaching in English is the reason for poor learner performance, why then do other so-called Anglophone countries in Africa not produce poor results? Why are their learners thriving? There must be other factors that lead to learner poor performance in South Africa, and scapegoating English is a cop-out, if we are to be blunt.
It may well be that South African learners perform poorly because those who teach them English and in English from the Foundation Phase have a weak competence in the language, while their counterparts in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Kenya, Uganda, etc. are taught by educators with a strong competence in English.
South Africa needs to invest time in studying teaching and learning models used by other multilingual countries on the continent as opposed to citing examples of European and Asian countries which chose monolingualism, such as Japan, South Korea, Germany, France, etc.
It is not helpful to the basic education project to tell us that children in a homogenous country like South Korea perform well because they are taught in Korean, while South Africa is a multilingual and multi-ethnic country. Why not assist the basic education project by talking about comparable countries such as Kenya, Nigeria, etc?
By focusing on these countries, South Africa will realise that there are alternatives to mother-tongue education. While mother tongue is the best way, it is not the only way to succeed in education. South Africa should pursue social cohesion and nation-building even if it means adapting tested models to teach its children instead of mother-tongue education.
The Bela Act is not a silver bullet for solving South Africa’s education challenges. However, what it will potentially achieve is addressing the sad legacy of apartheid, which weaponised language and used it as a tool to separate people.
In October 2023, I gave a keynote address at a national language stakeholder engagement forum organised by the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture in Pretoria. I proposed that South Africa must organise a national language summit where frank discussions about language use and/or management should take place. Such a summit must be attended by those with expert knowledge in linguistics, education, social psychology, sociology, etc.
Codesa 1 and 2 were not attended by society’s rank and file but by those whose knowledge was crucial to discussions and decisions to take the country forward. The same should apply to a national language summit.
Such discussions should explore models which the country should develop and/or customise for the education of South African children. Unless and until there are such discussions, South Africans will continue to adopt a piecemeal approach and knee-jerk reaction when dealing with its “language question”. DM