M as in Multilingualism in South Africa (Part 1)

Introduction

Nach einer ruhigeren Phase nehmen wir mit dem 2026-Blogprojekt wieder Fahrt auf. Passend zum Thema „Mehrsprachigkeit in Südafrika“ konnte ich nicht aufhören, immer mehr zu schreiben und parallel dazu zu forschen. So sind zwei Teile entstanden. Der erste Teil klärt Zahlen, Fakten und etwas Geschichte, inklusive moderner Geschichte mit Bezug auf Identität und ein wenig Sport. Ursprünglich sollte nur etwas zur Sprache im Bildungssystem folgen, doch dann geriet ich tief in die angewandte Linguistik und Semiotik.

Teil zwei wird sich unter anderem mit Sprache in der universitären Bildung, im Verlagswesen, in der Kultur und den Medien sowie in der Verwaltung beschäftigen. Auch die ältesten Sprachen der Region werden Thema sein. Ob wir dabei noch einmal in der Semiotik landen? Ihr, dear readers, dürft gespannt sein.

A South African dozen

Family relations

When exactly is a language a language and when is it a dialect? This issue is contested in many parts of the world and South Africa is no different. If we take English and Afrikaans out of the equation, nine African languages remain. They all belong under the banner of Southern Bantu languages, which in turn falls under Bantu languages, which in turn is a branch of the Niger-Congo language family. The spread of the Bantu languages maps a series of migrations starting in central Africa and moving southward from about 3000 to 2500 years ago.⁴

Most speakers of an African language in South Africa fall under the Nguni cluster – comprised of isiZulu, isiXhosa, siSwati, isiNdebele – or the Sotho–Tswana cluster – comprised of Sepedi, Sesotho, and Setswana. Within these clusters mutual intelligibility is high. It’s hard to quantify exactly, but we could say the gap between the clusters is wide enough that speakers don’t understand one another, roughly like German and English, even though a linguist can see the shared bones.

The borders between these languages aren’t exactly scientific so much as – as is also the case elsewhere – a mix of history, happenstance, cultural identity, and politics. Some linguists and other commentators have pointed out, for example, that the Sotho–Tswana cluster has unnecessary differences in orthography, including, for example, between Sesotho in Lesotho and South Africa.⁵ This is partly the case because different groups wrote down the languages they encountered in different places according to different principles and because formalization was split between different administrative bodies.⁶ Proposals to harmonize languages within the two main clusters have been made. The politician Jacob Nhlapo initially brought forth the idea in 1944 and it was later revisited by Neville Alexander and C.T. Msimang.⁷ Alexander⁸ was an intellectual, linguist, and political activist (also originally a Germanist, for the German audience) who argued that each cluster could have a standard form for formal and written contexts, including education, while the languages within them could continue functioning as isiZulu, isiXhosa, etc. in their own right in many other contexts. The apartheid government purposefully did not pursue this, he claimed, and kept the languages systematically separate and starved of essential resources so that ‘they could not be used in contexts that implied or demonstrated real power’.⁹ Though Alexander had many worthwhile arguments supporting this line of thought, it has not been uncontroversial.¹⁰

The two other official South African languages, Tshivenda and Xitsonga, each have their closer relatives in bordering nations. (Babane and Chauke have argued that borders also present unnecessary separation and that Xitsonga in South Africa and Shangani in Zimbabwe could be harmonized.)¹¹

Pen to paper to press

The African languages and cultures of South Africa have significant symbolic systems embedded in dress, decoration, and rich oral traditions, among others. Written language, however, was first introduced by Western missionaries, starting in the 1800s.¹² In 1846, in a joint effort of the Wesleyan, Glasgow and Berlin missionary societies, the New Testament was translated into isiXhosa.¹³ The first full isiZulu Bible was completed in 1883.¹⁴

Before long, through missionary education, native speakers of these languages took up their pens and went to the presses to produce some of the earliest African-language journalism on the continent. John Tengo Jabavu was one key figure. He was first invited to edit Isigidimi samaXhosa [The Xhosa Messenger] and later founded Imvo Zabantsundu [Black Opinion].¹⁵

Magema Magwaza Fuze also came up through missionary schooling and journalism and wrote Abantu Abamnyama Lapa Bavela Ngakona [The Black People and Whence They Came], published in 1922. The book is highly significant in its contribution to chronicling the history of the Zulu people.¹⁶

Afrikaans was also coming of age in the nineteenth century. Key among the influences that transformed Dutch at the Cape into a new language was the Muslim community, who used the Perso-Arabic script to write Islamic texts in Afrikaans.¹⁷ Afrikaans was also written with the Latin alphabet, though it took some time to be taken as more than a corrupted form of Dutch, and, as such, Dutch persisted as the ‘correct’ form for some time in education and the church. Die Afrikaanse Patriot [The Afrikaans Patriot] was the pioneer Afrikaans-language newspaper, first published in 1876.¹⁸

Language, identity, and singing our way to a new nation

Language and identity is a wonderfully complex topic, not least in the South African context. One arena for contesting a joint yet diverse national identity has been – and to an extent still is – the national anthem. My time in primary school started with singing only Die Stem¹⁹ during school assembly, then, after a few years, we learnt Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika²⁰ and sang them back to back, and in 1997 we were presented with the current anthem. It opens with a verse from Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika in isiXhosa and isiZulu, follows with an adapted verse from Nkosi in Sesotho, then melodically modulates into the opening of Die Stem in Afrikaans and closes with a new verse in English that strongly emphasizes national unity.²¹ This mix of languages is broadly popular, even among speakers of languages that weren’t included.²²

The anthem is however debated again and again. Chiefly, the white settler-colonial history and apartheid oppression tied up in Die Stem’s history cannot be denied, while, at the same time, it includes a nod to the past and Afrikaner identity that Nelson Mandela insisted was an important part of reconciliation, despite protest within his party at the time when the new anthem was written and composed.²³ In what follows, I’ll leave it to readers to think about the shifts in meaning of the old texts included in the current anthem over the last decades. Specifically, the lines included from Die Stem reference ‘our’ landscape and its natural beauty. On the one hand, the ‘we’ referred to by this ‘our’ in 1918 was most likely not inclusive of all South Africans; on the other hand, taken by itself, the landscape is something everyone can indeed take pride in and the meaning of ‘our’ can, over time, perhaps be reconstituted.

So to experience it closely, I’ve curated three YouTube videos for readers to immerse themselves in the anthem changes and shifts in political and national identity over the years. The bit of sports that is sprinkled in here is rugby: though it was of course played in other communities, the apartheid-era teams only included white players. And, as some readers might recall, South African athletes and teams were boycotted by the international community in the fight against apartheid.²⁴

[Link to first video.²⁵] In 1992, as the negotiations to dismantle apartheid were underway,²⁶ the sporting boycott was lifted. The South African men’s rugby team, the Springboks, were to play a much-anticipated match against their New Zealand rivals, the All Blacks, at Ellis Park Stadium in Johannesburg. The African National Congress had asked that no apartheid-era symbols be shown or used and a minute’s silence be taken for the dead of the Boipatong massacre.²⁷ Yet white Afrikaners were defiant: oranje-blanje-blou flags dominated and the crowd spontaneously sang Die Stem twice before Louis Luyt, then-head of the South African Rugby Union, played it over the PA.

[Link to second video.²⁸] Fast forward to 1995 and chants of ‘Nel-son, Nel-son!’ for South Africa’s first democratically elected president resound in the very same stadium. A master of nation-building, he knew the attire for that moment was not a suit or one of his signature Madiba shirts. He stands tall in a green and gold Springbok jersey, waving to the crowd with his Springbok cap in his hand. This Rugby World Cup was the first South Africa took part in and hosted. The Springboks faced the All Blacks in the final, so tensions were high. This was a major moment for the dual anthems to be sung back to back. Typical for this new era, Nkosi was treated with respect, but Die Stem was what the predominantly white crowd belted out with pride. This time around, the new flag in red, green, blue, white, black, and yellow flew above the cheers.

[Link to third video.²⁹] Finally, I invite you to the same stadium once again, this time in 2024 for another match between the Springboks and the All Blacks. Everyone on the pitch and in the stands knows every word of the anthem and the energy is electric throughout, perhaps especially for the closing English lines – ‘Sounds the call to come together, And united we shall stand. We shall live and die for freedom, in South Africa our land.’ The announcer is left almost speechless, commenting in awe: ‘What can you say …’

The impact of the anthem has been undeniable. Yet knowing a few lines of a song in another language does not a fully multilingual nation make. So join me for a deep dive for the rest of this article: language in education.

Language in schools: Easy for a few, sink or swim for many

Scientific literature has long emphasized the importance of mother-tongue education for children to grasp basic concepts in early education well.³⁰ This has been a challenge to implement in South Africa, where ‘over 80% of South African children learn in a language that isn’t their mother tongue’.³¹ As in other contexts around the world, parents look to a language like English and the access, power, and prestige associated with it and want to get their children on board as early as possible. Yet pushing English early while neglecting the mother tongue often negatively affects a child’s acquisition of basic concepts, their first language and, as it turns out, their acquisition of English itself.³² And yet the impulse is understandable, especially against the backdrop of trying to make up for years of being left behind in education and hindered from advancing in society in general.³³

Additionally from a historical and political perspective, English was the antidote to Afrikaans, which the apartheid government at one point tried to force onto African students – a spark that ignited the 1976 Soweto Uprising.³⁴ As Neville Alexander argued, English was the only alternative ‘that could compete with Afrikaans as a means to power (jobs and status)’ in overturning white rule and oppression and it was ‘the only means to international communication and world culture at the disposal of South Africa’s elites’. And so it became, as in other African countries’ anti-colonial struggles, ‘the “language of liberation”’.³⁵

While speakers of African languages have had to contend with learning in non-native languages to varying degrees over the last decades, speakers of English and Afrikaans were educated in their home languages (the term used by the government in the South African education context). They typically filled the curriculum’s language requirements by taking the other of these two – Afrikaans for English learners and vice versa – as their first additional language. In my primary school, isiXhosa briefly featured at a very basic level in grades five and six, after which it was dropped in our last primary grade, grade seven, because we ‘needed more time in the schedule for science’. At my high school, along with two others that were very close, we were offered the elective second additional languages German, French, isiXhosa, and Latin. (These were offered alongside other electives, so a third language was not required.) I checked the available subjects again today and the two I remember being the least popular back in the 2000s, namely isiXhosa and Latin, are no longer offered.³⁶

Speakers with an African home language could go in two directions. In schools that under apartheid were situated in segregated black communities, and which post-apartheid still almost exclusively serve those communities, an African language is the medium of instruction from grade one to three, then learners switch to English in grade four for all content subjects – though recent changes to this will be discussed shortly. If a learner goes on to a high school in the same area, they would have, say, isiXhosa as home language, English as first additional language and all other content subjects taught – at least theoretically – and assessed in English. Since the apartheid era’s skewed division of resources had and still has a strong legacy in what schools are able to offer, many schools that teach in African languages remain under-resourced and are situated in under-resourced areas. Some families with the means or other opportunities to access a better-resourced Afrikaans or English school thus may choose to send their children there, even if this means extensive travel every day. Other families may have moved closer to such schools, since after apartheid people were no longer limited by law in terms of where they could live (today, economic factors rule). The level of difficulty caused by the fact that instruction isn’t in their home language can vary widely: some children may be balanced bi- or multilinguals whereas others struggle. The level of support parents can offer also varies due to their own language and literacy skills.

For those children who aren’t strong in the language of instruction, either path – early switch to English or being schooled in English or Afrikaans entirely – can have the ‘sink or swim’ effect. This was the title of an episode of the investigative journalism programme Special Assignment in the early 2000s. As I recall it, for one segment, at a Cape Town boys’ school, a science lesson was flipped as an experiment: instead of English, it was taught in isiXhosa. The white boys had learnt only a bit of isiXhosa so far, so the lesson was a challenge for them. Not so for the one Xhosa boy in the class: he never hesitated to put up his hand to answer the teacher’s questions. His classmates’ mouths hung open: someone who had been fairly quiet before was transformed into an admired genius, simply because he could participate in the lesson with speed and confidence. Some children who aren’t at home in the language of instruction of course manage to go on to great things regardless, buoyed by opportunities gained in a relatively better-resourced school. But many others may bring home meagre report cards for their whole school career. Special Assignment’s simple experiment showed how much potential might be hiding behind difficulties in communication.

I saw the switch-to-English side of sink or swim during my bachelor’s degree, around 2007. One of our applied linguistics lecturers took us on an outing to a high school in Kayamandi, Stellenbosch. Upon arrival, we waited in a shipping container serving as a staff room for a few minutes before being taken to classes. I glanced through a pile of test papers on a table – ninth grade, business economics, in English. I was frustrated for the learners’ part: the keywords they strung together in their answers showed that they understood the question and had studied the appropriate content to answer it, but their spotty English grammar meant that their answers didn’t make any good formal sense.

Turning the knobs on education outputs versus inputs

Already in 1999, the government had introduced a so-called language compensation policy to address the problem of written expression. The main target was the final exit exams at high school level, year twelve, known as the National Senior Certificate or matric exams. Learners assessed in a non-native language got 5% of their achieved grade added to content (i.e. non-language) subjects.³⁷ This policy has been debated several times, which I won’t go into. As Stephen Taylor concludes in his review though, such debates ‘should not distract from more important policy questions around language, such as how to improve the acquisition of reading in both first language and English, how to ensure a smooth transition to English as the language of instruction and at what stage this transition should occur’.³⁸ These are the measures that will make a long-lasting difference in people’s lives.

How desperately genuine improvements are needed was clear to me on the aforementioned visit to the high school in Kayamandi. There, I had the opportunity to sit with a group of fifteen- or sixteen-year-old girls at the end of a lesson. I asked them about family, siblings. Many had older siblings, some in their 20s or even 30s. When I asked them where these siblings lived and what they did professionally, the answer was almost always ‘here, in Kayamandi’ and ‘nothing’. I asked the girls about their job aspirations. They went around the circle. An engineer. Everyone giggled. A fashion designer. Everyone giggled. And so the future dreams came, followed by giggles, until the last girl said, ‘I guess I’ll work at the supermarket,’ and no one giggled. I realized that this was the only answer that didn’t seem far-fetched, unrealistic, literally laughable.

When will policy hit the mark?

Choosing a better-resourced school in the hopes of improving opportunities for further education and career options seems an obvious choice for those who can make it happen. And, as mentioned, some children have strong skills in the language of instruction even if it isn’t strictly their home language. As the system is currently set up, this choice does, however, likely affect whether or on what level speakers of African language can study their home language. If, for example, Xhosa learners at my Afrikaans high school wanted to take their own language as a subject, they could only do so as if it were a foreign language, like German. That left them studying their third language, Afrikaans, at a first language level, their second, English, as a second, and their first, isiXhosa, as a third.

This gap seems to remain, despite the ‘Incremental Introduction of African Languages’ policy,³⁹ phased in from 2015. The policy envisaged an African language being offered as a full second additional language at five hours a week in Afrikaans or English schools (e.g. home language English; first additional language Afrikaans and second additional language isiXhosa weighted roughly equally). Yet, as Babalwayashe Molate documents in her 2025 PhD thesis, this level is not reached and, as a result, the rather basic instruction of the African language has no benefit for mother-tongue speakers in the school. In the Cape Town primary school she studied, isiXhosa was taught for a single hour a week and filed under ‘attitudes and values’ on the report card, while English and Afrikaans held five to six hours each as full subjects. While the other languages’ content advanced year on year, the isiXhosa workbook held steady on the topics of greetings and body parts from the first grade to the seventh.⁴⁰

More recent policy change has taken aim at using African languages more and making the switch to English less abrupt. South Africa’s Government of National Unity calls this Mother-Tongue-Based Bilingual Education (MTbBE). In 2025, grade four learners wrote exams both in maths and in natural sciences and technology in an African language for the first time in thirty years. The goal is still to arrive at good academic command of English, but MTbBE starts out much more gradually, offering the bulk of the content in an African language at the lower levels and bringing in more teaching and assessment in English year-by-year. Additionally, MTbBE ‘focuses on language use, decoloniality and translanguaging perspectives’.⁴¹

I find the explicit acknowledgement of translanguaging interesting, because this names the reality teachers and learners have been living for decades. I recall, on the same outing mentioned previously, a history teacher switching between English and isiXhosa all throughout a lesson to make sure learners were following. Naming this natural practice and seeing how it can be used ‘on purpose’ and productively developed, rather than seeing it as a crutch or deficit, paves a potential new way.

Getting to grips with learners’ true multilingual reality

What exactly is translanguaging? The concept has its origins in Cen Williams’ work on bilingual education, which proposed actively using two languages in a single lesson. In this paradigm, further developed by García and Wei, among others, the languages a person brings to a particular context are no longer seen as discrete systems – as marked by external social labels – but as integrated in a unitary linguistic repertoire.⁴² Rather than switching between separate codes, or different psycholinguistic silos, bi- or multilinguals dynamically draw on and strategically employ their repertoire in the form of multiple discursive practices. Broadly speaking, we can see a shift from a product to a process perspective – from single languages employed separately and linearly in a fixed, prescribed form to multiplicity in meaning-making, relational, and discursive practices.

Translanguaging can, for example, promote deeper understanding of subject matter. If learners read or listen to information in one language and produce their own output in another, they – as any translator will know – will necessarily have had to decode carefully before being able to actively rebuild meaning. Mere regurgitation of content becomes impossible. Learners can also bring their various identities into the educational context in new and exciting ways. Reviewers do however repeatedly note that many of the strong beneficial claims are asserted more than clearly demonstrated with rigorous, controlled outcome studies.⁴³ Additionally, it is noted that translanguaging applied randomly can backfire, so a teacher’s careful planning within the framework is essential.⁴⁴ Another aspect where – from my experience as a foreign language teacher – I imagine both targeted teacher training and careful planning are crucial, is using this pedagogy when the teacher is not an expert on all languages at play: in this case, the teacher can act more as a facilitator or co-learner, letting the learners be the language experts.⁴⁵

Of course well-intended policies, even when they include concepts allowing for flexibility, are often befuddled by reality on the ground. Given the complex South African context, it is perhaps unsurprising that MTbBE has already run into challenges. Some schools can’t find teachers to teach in the required languages.⁴⁶ And the language assumed to be the home language of a school’s area might not be: some children may have moved to South Africa from elsewhere, speak a language not common in the region, or grow up using a newer mixed-origin language that has been neither formalized nor recognized.⁴⁷ Indeed, the very idea of a singular L1 or home language and the linear acquisition of further languages might be misplaced for many South African children.⁴⁸

An African evolution of translanguaging, namely ubuntu translanguaging pedagogy, could offer some solutions. Professor Leketi Makalela of the University of the Witwatersrand has proposed this augmentation via the African value system or philosophy of ubuntu,⁴⁹ which is based on ‘harmony, mutual dependence, and co-existence’ and illustrated in the injunction motho ke motho ka batho or umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, which means ‘a human is a human because of others’ or ‘I am because you are; you are because we are’.⁵⁰ Fans of Mikhail Bakhtin might already have recognized that his concept of heteroglossia⁵¹ was influential in the formation of translanguaging theory⁵²: a language isn’t unitary but rather made up of many different languages – more or less formal, adapted to various contexts, etc. – that exist in tension with one another.⁵³ What Makalela does is to reframe meaning-making processes less as spaces of contestation, boundaries rubbing up against one another, and more as spaces of communion, various entities overlapping and complementing one another, because none of them are ever complete by themselves anyway. Indeed, ‘it is this constant desire to be complete that makes linguistic entities gravitate towards one another’.⁵⁴

The way(s) forward?

Multilingualism is thus positively posited as an abundance-creating norm rather than a detracting deviation that needs to be managed. Beautiful – but how is a teacher to concretely apply these ideas in a classroom setting? On the one hand, translanguaging pedagogy has a more robust footing in bilingualism⁵⁵ than multilingualism, especially of the highly varied kind we might encounter in many African classrooms.⁵⁶ On the other hand, classrooms and society in general are now being infiltrated by language technologies that are developing faster than anyone can study them.

When MTbBE was first announced, the minister pointed to artificial intelligence as a potential vehicle for driving the intended developments.⁵⁷ Expanding terminology, compiling materials for both learners and teacher trainees – the list for useful applications is long. Though, as it stands, of the more than two thousand languages spoken in Africa, only a few dozen are on mainstream translation platforms, and the overwhelming majority are ‘severely underrepresented’⁵⁸ in computational linguistics. Initiatives like Masakhane (isiZulu: ‘we build together’) and various African-language labs are trying to address this imbalance.⁵⁹ Language preservation and revitalization, which I’ll say more about in Part 2, is one sphere where there is a lot of hope placed in AI, but both here and in education we have to remain cautious in terms of technology’s advantages and its shortcomings.

The minister did not specifically mention technology use directly in the classroom. But we are currently living in a climate of ‘Well, won’t technology just solve that?’, so let’s think it through. There already are and will be many more exciting ways to use technology in multilingual educational settings. Translanguaging has been tested with digital technologies like dictionaries or machine translation.⁶⁰ At the moment, artificial intelligence is developing faster than concrete studies of using LLMs and translanguaging can keep up with. One study conducted in Germany notes that using these technologies can have the advantage, if well considered and planned, of including critical AI literacy in the process. Noteworthy: both this critical literacy and productive use of the technology are, as the study notes, highly dependent on good planning and prompting by the teacher.⁶¹ And it almost goes without saying that the skills the teacher would need must be embedded in good training and robust pedagogical frameworks.

In my opinion, pedagogy and policy cannot be planned to depend on any specific kind of technology. In South Africa, the African context more broadly, and in many other places around the world, we must keep in mind that access to digital devices and internet infrastructure as well as levels of digital literacy might present roadblocks. Additionally, we need to consider what undesirable qualities the design of certain digital tools might perpetuate.⁶² Analysis of large language models, for instance, has already shown clear biases⁶³ and a ‘flattening’ of language can be observed as well. Indeed, some countries are currently rebalancing how much and in what exact ways digital technology forms a part of the school day, especially for the very young.⁶⁴ And, if I look at the ‘Factors affecting success of mother tongue-based bi/multilingual education policies’ in Jessica Ball’s 2011 UNESCO report, Enhancing Learning of Children from Diverse Language Backgrounds, I don’t see ‘computers’ or ‘technology’. I see things like ‘teacher training’ and ‘curriculum resources’ and ‘effective pedagogy’ – yes, technology can play a role, but ultimately time and money invested in people will be the key to improvement and success.⁶⁵

I would thus conclude that education and language policy needs a robust base, well adapted to the South African context, to function well, and new technologies might be nice to have but not necessary compared to other basics. As a reality check, it helps to remember that many schools and learners face challenges regarding safety, nutrition, hygiene, and other elementary needs.⁶⁶ Language policy and literacy are crucial pillars, but the house of a secure childhood that enables learning is made up of many more parts.

Conclusion

Das war’s für Teil 1, dear readers. Ihr habt es vielleicht gemerkt: Diese Themen beschäftigen mich schon sehr lange, und es hat mir großen Spaß gemacht, noch einmal einzutauchen und die aktuelle Situation zu erforschen.

Ich verabschiede mich erst einmal in den Urlaub und hoffe, bald Teil 2 präsentieren zu können. Über Kommentare und Fragen freue ich mich – vielleicht finden sie auch Platz im nächsten Teil.

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1. ‘National Assembly approves South African Sign Language as the 12th official language’, Parliament of the Republic of South Africa, 3 May 2023, https://www.parliament.gov.za/press-releases/na-approves-south-african-sign-language-12th-official-language. Signed into law in July 2023 (Constitution Eighteenth Amendment).↩︎
2. See ‘Tsotsitaal and Camtho’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsotsitaal_and_Camtho.↩︎
3. Statistics South Africa, Census 2022: Statistical Release P0301.4 (Pretoria: Stats SA, 2023), https://census.statssa.gov.za/assets/documents/2022/P03014_Census_2022_Statistical_Release.pdf.↩︎
4. See ‘Bantu languages’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_languages.↩︎
5. ‘Sesotho: A Tale of Two Different Orthographies’, Wikimedia Diff, 27 February 2026, https://diff.wikimedia.org/2026/02/27/sesotho-a-tale-of-two-different-orthographies/; Tshokolo J. Makutoane, ‘“The People Divided by a Common Language”: The Orthography of Sesotho in Lesotho, South Africa, and the Implications for Bible Translation’, HTS Theological Studies 78, no. 1 (2022): 1–9, https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v78i1.7605.↩︎
6. See Robert K. Herbert and Richard Bailey, ‘The Bantu Languages: Sociohistorical Perspectives’, in Language in South Africa, ed. Rajend Mesthrie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 50–78.↩︎
7. See M. T. Babane and M. T. Chauke, ‘Cross-Border Language Harmonization: A Case of Xitsonga (South Africa) and Shangani (Zimbabwe)’, Journal of Sociology and Social Anthropology 6, no. 3 (2015): 435–40.↩︎
8. Theodorus du Plessis, ‘Neville Alexander Obituary’, Language Policy 11 (2012): 291–300, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-012-9257-4.↩︎
9. Neville Alexander, ‘Language Policy and Planning in the New South Africa’, African Sociological Review / Revue Africaine de Sociologie 1, no. 1 (1997): 82–92, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24487464.↩︎
10. See Sinfree Makoni, ‘Romanticizing Differences and Managing Diversities: A Perspective on Harmonization, Language Policy, and Planning’, Language Policy 15 (2016): 223–34, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-015-9375-x.↩︎
11. Babane and Chauke, ‘Cross-Border Language Harmonization’.↩︎
12. See Rachel Gilmour, ‘Missionaries, Colonialism and Language in Nineteenth-Century South Africa’, History Compass 5, no. 6 (2007): 1761–77, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00472.x.↩︎
13. ‘IsiXhosa Bible Translation’, Bible Society of South Africa, https://web.biblesociety.co.za/index.php/about-us/vision-mission/38-resources/the-bible/117-isixhosa-bible-translation.↩︎
14. ‘The Bible in isiZulu’, Bible Society of South Africa, https://www.biblesa.co.za/en/resources/about-bible-translation/bible-translations/8664/the-bible-in-isizulu.↩︎
15. ‘John Tengo Jabavu’, South African History Online, https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/john-tengo-jabavu.↩︎
16. ‘Magema Magwaza Fuze’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magema_Magwaza_Fuze; on the centenary of Abantu Abamnyama, ‘100 Years: South Africa’s First History Book in isiZulu by Magema Fuze’, The South African, https://www.thesouthafrican.com/culture/books/magema-fuze-isizulu-black-history-book/.↩︎
17. ‘Afrikaans’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afrikaans; ‘Arabic Afrikaans’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_Afrikaans.↩︎
18. ‘Die Afrikaanse Patriot’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Afrikaanse_Patriot.↩︎
19. ‘Die Stem van Suid-Afrika’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Stem_van_Suid-Afrika.↩︎
20. ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nkosi_Sikelel%27_iAfrika.↩︎
21. ‘National Anthem of South Africa’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_anthem_of_South_Africa.↩︎
22. ‘How South Africa Got Its Five-Language National Anthem’ (longread), Penguin, 31 October 2015, https://penguinblogposts.wordpress.com/2015/10/31/longread-how-south-africa-got-its-five-language-national-anthem/.↩︎
23. See the previous Penguin post; compare Fana Mokoena, ‘The call to remove Die Stem … is a stand against racist apartheid history’, EWN, 24 July 2024, https://www.ewn.co.za/2024/07/24/fana-mokoena-the-call-to-remove-die-stem-from-our-national-anthem-is-a-stand-against-racist-apartheid-history, with ‘Die Stem will stay in national anthem, Gayton McKenzie tells MPs’, TimesLIVE, 17 July 2024, https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2024-07-17-die-stem-will-stay-in-national-anthem-gayton-mckenzie-tells-mps-in-debate/.↩︎
24. ‘Sporting boycott of South Africa during the apartheid era’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporting_boycott_of_South_Africa_during_the_apartheid_era; see also Mary Corrigall, ‘International Boycott of Apartheid Sport’, South African History Online, https://sahistory.org.za/archive/international-boycott-apartheid-sport-mary-corrigall.↩︎
25. Lukas Dreyer, ‘The 1992 return match – Teams, Anthems and Haka’, YouTube video, 29 May 2011, https://youtu.be/ky2rtZg7wAk.↩︎
26. ‘Negotiations to end apartheid in South Africa’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negotiations_to_end_apartheid_in_South_Africa.↩︎
27. See ‘Boipatong massacre – 17 June 1992’, South African History Online, https://sahistory.org.za/article/boipatong-massacre-17-june-1992.↩︎
28. World Rugby, ‘Anthem: South Africa sing passionately at RWC 1995’, YouTube video, 9 September 2015, https://youtu.be/5ZQ3mTEdDD0.↩︎
29. Ugan Rajoo, ‘South African Anthem – Ellis Park – Springboks vs All Blacks – 31 August 2024’, YouTube video, 31 August 2024, https://youtu.be/ULhFVp2KxrE.↩︎
30. See Jessica Ball, Enhancing Learning of Children from Diverse Language Backgrounds: Mother Tongue-Based Bilingual or Multilingual Education in the Early Childhood and Early Primary School Years (Paris: UNESCO, 2011), https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000212270.↩︎
31. Angie Motshekga, ‘Address by the Minister of Basic Education at the Language and Literacy Workshop’, Department of Basic Education, 4 June 2024, https://www.gov.za/news/speeches/minister-angie-motshekga-language-and-literacy-workshop-04-jun-2024.↩︎
32. See UNICEF, The Impact of Language Policy and Practice on Children’s Learning: South Africa Case Study (2016), https://www.unicef.org/esa/sites/unicef.org.esa/files/2018-09/UNICEF-2016-Language-and-Learning-South-Africa-Case-Study.pdf.↩︎
33. See ‘Bantu Education Act’, Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/event/Bantu-Education-Act; ‘Language Policy and Oppression in South Africa’, Cultural Survival Quarterly, https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/language-policy-and-oppression-south-africa.↩︎
34. See ‘June 16 Soweto Youth Uprising’, South African History Online, https://sahistory.org.za/article/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising.↩︎
35. Alexander, ‘Language Policy and Planning’.↩︎
36. In the interest of completeness, there is a note that learners interested in taking isiXhosa can contact a teacher who, I presume, will facilitate this outside of the regular schedule in some way.↩︎
37. ‘Matriculation in South Africa: Language compensation’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriculation_in_South_Africa#Language_compensation.↩︎
38. Stephen Taylor, ‘Reviewing the Language Compensation Policy in the National Senior Certificate’, Perspectives in Education 32, no. 1 (2014): 124–41, https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v32i1.1848.↩︎
39. Department of Basic Education, The Incremental Introduction of African Languages in South African Schools (Pretoria: DBE, 2013), 5–6, https://www.education.gov.za/Portals/0/Documents/Policies/IIAL%20Policy%20September%202013%20(3).pdf.↩︎
40. Babalwayashe Molate, ‘Resisting Dominant Language and Literacy Ideologies through Family Multilingualism and the Making of Ikhaya’ (PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 2025), 2–3, 178–208, https://open.uct.ac.za/items/4ef3ddbe-b9ff-478f-ad33-f90300c4ae5f.↩︎
41. Department of Basic Education, ‘Mother Tongue-Based Bilingual Education (MTbBE)’, https://www.education.gov.za/Programmes/MTbBE.aspx.↩︎
42. See Ofelia García and Li Wei, Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 2: ‘Translanguaging is an approach to the use of language, bilingualism and the education of bilinguals that considers the language practices of bilinguals not as two autonomous language systems as has traditionally been the case, but as one linguistic repertoire with features that have been societally constructed as belonging to two separate languages.’↩︎
43. See Maria Prilutskaya, ‘Examining Pedagogical Translanguaging: A Systematic Review of the Literature’, Languages 6, no. 4 (2021): 180, https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6040180.↩︎
44. See Jasone Cenoz and Durk Gorter, Pedagogical Translanguaging (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).↩︎
45. See Cenoz and Gorter, Pedagogical Translanguaging; García and Wei, Translanguaging.↩︎
46. ‘Here to stay: mother-tongue bilingual learning reinforced as a silver bullet to solve SA’s dire literacy crisis’, GSMN, 24 November 2025, https://gsmn.co.za/2025/11/24/here-to-stay-mother-tongue-bilingual-learning-reinforced-as-a-silver-bullet-to-solve-sas-dire-literacy-crisis/.↩︎
47. See the GSMN report above; Koketso Botlholo, ‘Challenges Faced by Learners and Teachers in the Teaching and Learning of Setswana Home Language’, Journal for Educators, Teachers and Trainers 16, no. 6 (2025): 82–112, https://jett.labosfor.com/index.php/jett/article/view/2872; Berington Zanoxolo Gobingca, ‘Examining Teachers’ Views on the Adoption of Mother Tongue-Based Bilingual Education in Mathematics Teaching and Learning: A South African Context’, South African Journal of Education 43, suppl. 2 (2023): S1–S12, https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v43ns2a2242.↩︎
48. Leketi Makalela, ‘Ubuntu Translanguaging: An Alternative Framework for Complex Multilingual Encounters’, Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 34, no. 3 (2016): 192; see also his talk, University of Johannesburg, ‘Professor Leketi Makalela – University of the Witwatersrand’, YouTube video, 21 May 2013, https://youtu.be/6zr2y7JGET0.↩︎
49. ‘Ubuntu philosophy’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_philosophy; ‘Hunhu/Ubuntu in Traditional Southern African Thought’, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/hunhu-ubuntu-southern-african-thought/.↩︎
50. Makalela, ‘Ubuntu Translanguaging’, 188.↩︎
51. ‘Heteroglossia’, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heteroglossia. The concept originates in Bakhtin’s ‘Discourse in the Novel’ (1934–35), in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981).↩︎
52. See García and Wei, Translanguaging, 42–45.↩︎
53. Ricardo Otheguy, Ofelia García and Wallis Reid, ‘Clarifying Translanguaging and Deconstructing Named Languages: A Perspective from Linguistics’, Applied Linguistics Review 6, no. 3 (2015): 281–307.↩︎
54. Makalela, ‘Ubuntu Translanguaging’, 192. The resonance with Derrida’s différance is intriguing, but a topic for another day.↩︎
55. See Cenoz and Gorter, Pedagogical Translanguaging.↩︎
56. See Mariyeni Mtanha-Matariro and Leketi Makalela, ‘Challenging Monolingualism: A Global South Perspective on Translanguaging in Teacher Education’, Educational Research for Social Change 14, no. 2 (2025): 52–66, https://doi.org/10.17159/2221-4070/v14n2a4.↩︎
57. See Motshekga, ‘Address … Language and Literacy Workshop’; ‘AI and sign language: 2025 timeline set for language policy changes in schools’, The Citizen, https://www.citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/education/ai-and-sign-language-2025-timeline-set-for-language-policy-changes-in-schools/.↩︎
58. See Nekoto et al., ‘Participatory Research for Low-resourced Machine Translation: A Case Study in African Languages’, Findings of EMNLP 2020, https://aclanthology.org/2020.findings-emnlp.195/.↩︎
59. Masakhane, ‘One-Year Reflection’, https://www.masakhane.io/masakhane-african-languages-hub/updates/one-year-reflection.↩︎
60. Taha Ertuğrul Kuzu, ‘AI-Supported Translanguaging Processes in Primary School: Empirical Insights into ChatGPT’s Role in Multilingual Interactions’, Technology, Knowledge and Learning (2026), https://doi.org/10.1007/s10758-026-09974-7.↩︎
61. Kuzu, ‘AI-Supported Translanguaging Processes’.↩︎
62. Oluwarotimi Randle, Ajayi David and Fisayo Kaka, ‘Adoption of Technology in the Promotion of Translanguaging in African Higher Education’, International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research 24, no. 12 (2025): 776–808, https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.24.12.33.↩︎
63. Valentin Hofmann et al., ‘AI generates covertly racist decisions about people based on their dialect’, Nature 633, no. 8028 (2024): 147–54; Zhivar Sourati, Alireza S. Ziabari and Morteza Dehghani, ‘The Homogenizing Effect of Large Language Models on Human Expression and Thought’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2026), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2026.01.003.↩︎
64. The OECD’s analysis of PISA 2022 data found that unstructured, student-led device use in class was negatively associated with achievement, while moderate, teacher-directed use was positive: OECD, Students, Digital Devices and Success (Paris: OECD Publishing, 2024), https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/students-digital-devices-and-success_9e4c0624-en.html. On the resulting policy shift, see Dan Novak, ‘Sweden Brings Books, Handwriting Back to School’, VOA Learning English, 11 September 2023, https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/sweden-brings-books-handwriting-back-to-school/7277000.html; Lawrence Bonk, ‘Norway Imposes Broad Restrictions on AI for Elementary School Kids’, Engadget, 19 June 2026, https://www.engadget.com/2198117/norway-imposes-broad-restrictions-on-ai-for-elementary-school-kids/.↩︎
65. Ball, Enhancing Learning, 46.↩︎
66. See South African Democratic Teachers’ Union. “SADTU Post National Executive Committee Statement.” SADTU, 28 June 2025. https://www.sadtu.org.za/2025/sadtu-post-national-executive-committee-statement/.↩︎

Ingrid Lezar absolvierte einen B.A. in Visual Arts (Visual Communication Design) in ihrer Heimatstadt Stellenbosch, wo sie zusätzlich Kurse in Angewandter Linguistik belegte. Ihre Bachelorarbeit befasste sich mit Einstellungen gegenüber Mehrsprachigkeit in Südafrika, unter anderem anhand ihrer Darstellung in zeitgenössischer Werbung. Danach unterrichtete sie drei Jahre Englisch als Fremdsprache in Japan. Später absolvierte sie einen M.A. in Humanities (Semiotics) an der Universität Tartu in Estland. Neben Lektorat und Übersetzung in den interdisziplinären Geisteswissenschaften fertigt sie Graphic Recordings bei Veranstaltungen an. Sie ist Vizepräsidentin des DVÜD e. V.

Bild: Martijn Vonk / Unsplash