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Languages, development and reconstructing education in South Africa

Article  in  International Journal of Educational Development · July 1999

DOI: 10.1016/S0738-0593(99)00030-9

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 Int. J. of Educational Development 19 (1999) 301–313
www.elsevier.com/locate/ijedudev

Languages, development and reconstructing education in

South Africa
Kathleen Heugh*
PRAESA, University of Cape Town, 6.06 Education Building, Private Bag, Rondebosch, 7700 South Africa

Abstract

The educational crisis in South Africa is examined against the history of language-in-education policy over the last
25 years. The Soweto student revolt in 1976 is identified as a pivotal point, resulting in educational responses which
have exacerbated academic failure amongst the majority of school students.
`
The vexed role of African languages in education, vis-a-vis structural constraints, including international ‘aid’, across
the continent is discussed as a textured background from which innovative South African educators have had an oppor-
tunity to take cognisance.
The argument in this article is that curriculum and language-in-education policy changes which came into force in
1997, whilst based on the goal of an equitable school system, are unfortunately flawed both in the conceptualisation
process and implementation strategy. The role of African languages, despite policy statements to the contrary, is not
adequately addressed.
Suggestions which are influenced by developments elsewhere on the continent are offered as alternatives to recon-
structing viable education in the country.  1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Language-in-education policy; Medium of instruction/language of learning; Educational failure; African languages; Multi-
lingualism

1. The South African issues Government of National Unity (GNU), which

As South Africa wrestles with the challenges of
reconstruction, it is gripped with comprehensive
educational failure. The extent of failure has wors-
ened inexorably over the two decades since the
1976 rebellion of students in Soweto against the
implementation of a language-in-education policy
which required them to learn through Afrikaans as
well as English in secondary schools. The new
* Fax: ⫹ 21-650-3027; e-mail: kh@education.uct.ac.za
came into being after the first democratic elections
of 1994, was quick to identify the urgent need for
educational transformation. The argument in this
paper is that, in its haste to implement a new cur-
riculum ahead of the next elections in 1999,
government did not cast its net widely enough to
ensure that it was able to identify and adequately
address all the major factors which determine edu-
cational success or failure in this country. Specifi-
cally, it did not take sufficient cognisance of the
relationship between learning and the language(s)
of learning. More specifically, it did not weigh up

0738-0593/99/$ - see front matter  1999 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 7 3 8 - 0 5 9 3 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 3 0 - 9
302 K. Heugh / Int. J. of Educational Development 19 (1999) 301–313

Table 1
Pass rates at matriculation level

Year African language speaking % pass rate Overall total (% pass rate)
students

1955 595 43.5

1976** (Soweto) 9595 83.7
1982 70 241 48.4
1992 342 038 44 448 491 (56%)
1994 392 434 49 495 408 (58%)
1997 559 233 (47.4%)*

Data compiled from: SAIRR (1996 p. 101), Hartshorne (1992 pp. 69, 72), Department of Education (1998).
*After 1994, the matriculation results were no longer published according to a racial/ethnic breakdown of data. Thus the 1997 results
should be interpreted against an estimation that about 80% of candidates who passed would have been speakers of African languages.
The 10% overall decline in the pass rate between 1994 and 1997 is cause for considerable alarm.
**Until 1976, African language speaking students had mother tongue instruction for 8 years. After Soweto this was reduced to 4
years, followed by a sudden switch to English medium.

the evidence of failure amongst the 80% of stu-
dents, whose languages at home are other than
English, in a school system which, since 1979, has
been based on and taught through English as a
second language.
The numbers of African language speaking stu-
dents at secondary schools has increased dramati-
cally from the mid-1950s when the apartheid edu-
cation policy began to take effect. Table 1, below,
shows that there were only 595 African language
speaking students who sat for their matriculation
(school leaving examination) in 1955, and that this
number increased to 392 434 in 1994 which consti-
tuted 79% of the total number of matriculation can-
didates for that year. By 1997 the total number of
candidates presenting themselves for matriculation
had increased to about 560 000, a 12% increase
over 3 years.
Education for African language speaking stu-
dents had been based on principles encapsulated in
the Bantu Education Act of 1953, and these
included:
쐌 a primary school curriculum which would pre-
pare students for their subservient role in
society, in contrast to the more academic cur-
riculum in “white”, “coloured” and “Indian”
schools (see Hartshorne, 1992, pp. 65–681);
1
Hartshorne (1992 p. 65) quotes one of the architects of
apartheid, Dr Verwoerd, in 1954 as criticising earlier edu-
cational curricula and systems in the following: “By blindly
쐌 mother tongue instruction to the end of the pri-
mary phase (8 years) for reasons which were
designed to further separate development and
prevent African language speaking students
from developing ambitions outside their own
communities (see Hartshorne, 1995, pp. 309–
310);
쐌 the introduction of Afrikaans and English as
subjects in primary school;
쐌 a switch of medium of instruction in secondary
school to both Afrikaans and English (in equal
proportions);
쐌 a secondary school curriculum similar to that in
“white” schools, but available, in reality to the
small proportion of students who had not
already dropped out of the school system at
some point during the primary phase.
African language speaking parents and students
resented “Bantu Education” and correctly inter-
preted the mother tongue policy in primary school
as a mechanism to prevent access to power. From
the early years of African resistance to segregation,
English had come to symbolise the language
through which access to power and international
ideas were possible. “Bantu Education” not only
producing pupils trained on a European model, the vain hope
was created amongst Natives that they could occupy posts
within the European community despite the country’s policy
of ‘apartheid’”.
 K. Heugh / Int. J. of Educational Development 19 (1999) 301–313
appeared to make access to English recede to sec-
ondary school, but brought an unwelcome compul-
sion to learn through Afrikaans alongside English.
To make matters worse, in the years following the
Bantu Education Act, “Afrikaans became the
dominant language in black education, especially
at the levels of management, control and adminis-
tration, and teacher-training” (Hartshorne, 1992, p.
197). It is not surprising, therefore, that the resist-
ance to Afrikaans as a language of repression esca-
lated together with a rejection of the enforcement
of mother tongue medium throughout primary
school.
An inflexible implementation of Afrikaans as a
medium for 50% of the subjects in secondary
school in 1975 precipitated the student uprising in
Soweto the following year. The Government was
forced to back down and in 1979, the Education
and Training Act was passed, reducing mother
tongue to 4 years of primary school followed by a
choice of medium between Afrikaans and English.
Most schools opted for English medium.
Ironically, whilst the resistance to “Bantu Edu-
cation”, the role of Afrikaans and the mother
tongue was escalating, the matriculation pass rate
of African language speaking students increased
dramatically from 43.5% in 1955 to 83.4% in
1976. Despite the poor primary curriculum, the
increase in the pass rate may very well be partly
attributed to the maintenance and development of
the home language for 8 years of formal education,
during which time English and Afrikaans were
introduced and taught as subjects. In other words,
students had 6 or 7 years to learn these two langu-
ages before they were required to study through
them. A number of educators have variously
argued that it is both necessary to maintain the
home language and learn a second language (L2),
under optimal conditions, for between 5 and 8
years before the L2 can be used as a language of
learning (see for example, Cummins 1984, Liddi-
coat 1991 and Ramirez 1994, cited in Heugh,
1995a, pp. 46–47). During the time that the mother
tongue was phased in and maintained for 8 years as
the primary language of learning, the matriculation
results steadily improved, reaching their zenith in
1976. This year is remembered for the rebellion
and the resultant compromise with regard to langu-
303
age-in-education policy from government. It
should, however, also be noted that it was the end
point of a period during which the fruits of 8 years
of mother tongue instruction could be seen in the
matriculation results. Subsequent to the reduction
of mother tongue to 4 years of school, Macdonald
(1990 pp. 137–144) discovered that African langu-
age speaking learners had exposure to about 800
words in English by the end of 4 years of school.
However, they needed to have 5000 words of
English in order to cope with the content of edu-
cation in the fifth year of school, the point at which
there was an abrupt transition to English. This in
itself was problematic. In addition, it needs to be
noted that most teachers in schools for African lan-
guage speaking students were themselves first lan-
guage speakers of languages other than English.
They had been used to and equipped to teach
through the mother tongue, not English. Thus those
primary teachers who were suddenly expected to
teach through English from the fifth year onwards
after 1979 were not prepared. Young, as early as
1978 warned of the consequences of teachers inad-
equately proficient in English (Young, 1978, pp.
188–189). Almost 20 years later Young observes
that his own experience as a teacher educator, in
schools where the students are L1 speakers of
African languages, has shown that despite English
medium after the fourth year:
“...much classroom teaching is in the first langu-
age, rather than in English, in all standards. This
derives, variously, from established African
first-language teachers’ lack of proficiency in
English; excessively large classes; indifferent
bureaucratic support; poor textbook resourcing;
and inadequate teacher training to support the
demands of English as a medium of instruction”
(Young, 1995, pp. 107–108).
By the early 1990s, mother tongue/home langu-
age instruction had been further whittled away to
a maximum of 3 years of primary education at
most, but very often schools chose to switch to
English earlier than this. It is now widely accepted
that the timing and manner in which the medium
of instruction changed from mother tongue to
English has contributed to the failure of black edu-
304 K. Heugh / Int. J. of Educational Development 19 (1999) 301–313
cation in South Africa. There had been, from an
educational point of view, nothing inappropriate
about the use of mother tongue in education, rather
it had been the distortion of this under apartheid, in
its application alongside an impoverished primary
curriculum for African language speaking students,
which was reprehensible.
The parental and student pressure to reduce the
duration of mother tongue instruction, whilst
entirely understandable, was unfortunate. Resist-
ance to “Bantu Education” had been directed at the
language-in-education policy in its entirety rather
than at its implementation in secondary school,
where students were expected to study through two
languages, rather than a single language of their
choice. Had parents and students focused on
demanding their choice of medium in secondary
school and a primary curriculum which synchron-
ised with that for students from other language
backgrounds, we may not have faced the catas-
trophe we now do. The result of the partial identi-
fication or misdiagnosis of the source of the prob-
lem was that African language speaking students
have, for the last two decades, been obliged to
undergo too rapid and too early a change from the
use of the mother tongue as the medium of learning
for effective or successful transfer to occur.
Given these developments, it is perhaps not sur-
prising that matriculation results began to deterio-
rate. Many other factors will have contributed
toward what is understood to be a decline in stan-
dards of education, such as the pressure of increas-
ing numbers of students attending school and polit-
ical turmoil. Nevertheless, the reduction of the use
of the mother tongue has coincided with decreasing
pass rates which dropped to as low as 48.3% by
1982, and 44% by 1992. A slight aberrant increase
in pass rates in the mid-1980s has been attributed
by Ken Hartshorne to an artificial inflation of true
results (Hartshorne, 1992, p. 84). By 1997, the
overall pass rate for all matriculation students in
the country, including speakers of English and
Afrikaans who have historically been able to per-
form better under the prevailing conditions, was
47.4%. The results were far worse in those prov-
inces where there is an overwhelming majority of
African language speaking students. There was a
68% failure rate in the Northern Province, 57% in
the Free State, and 54% in each of Mpumalanga
and the Eastern Cape2. It is not surprising that the
number of teachers who are underqualified on
paper is highest in these provinces (see Table 2).
2. The impact of issues on the African
continent
Many of the influences on the education system
reflect not only forces peculiar to South Africa but
ones which have had, and continue to have, their
effect on the rest of the continent. The history of
the relationship between language in education, in
Africa, during this century, is one of repeated com-
missions of enquiry which result in recommen-
dations based on the centrality of indigenous langu-
ages as initial languages of literacy and languages
of learning. There are literally dozens of major
reports attesting to this particular issue, the follow-
ing have been selected purely for illustrative pur-
poses.
쐌 The United Missionary Conference in Kenya in
1909 which advocated vernacular languages and
Swahili (Gorman, 1974, p. 405);
쐌 The Commission on Education in the East
Africa Protectorate in 1919 (Gorman, 1974, pp.
405–407);
쐌 The Phelps–Stokes Commissions of 1922 (West
Africa) and of 1924 (East Africa) (Gorman,
1974, pp. 407–410);
쐌 The Report of the East Africa Commission,
1925 (Gorman, 1974, pp. 410–411)3;
2
The Information Service of the Department of Education
(1998) processed raw data to provide information for this arti-
cle.
3
This report made the following declaration: “During the
elementary and primary stages we regard it as essential that the
medium of education should be a native language, and that
English should be introduced only at a later stage...When
English is taught at all, it must be taught thoroughly and com-
pletely and only to such pupils as are undergoing a period of
school life long enough to enable English to be learnt properly”
(quoted in Gorman, 1974, p. 411).
 K. Heugh / Int. J. of Educational Development 19 (1999) 301–313
Table 2
Teacher underqualification in 1994
African Coloured Indian
45.5% 41.13% 7.35%
SAIRR (1996 p. 122).
쐌 UNESCO’s Report on the Use of the Vernacular
Languages in Education (UNESCO, 1953)4;
쐌 The Lagos Conference of Education Ministers
of African Member States 1976 (UNESCO,
1977)5;
쐌 The Harare Declaration by Ministers of Edu-
cation of African Member States (UNESCO,
1982)6;
쐌 The OAU’s “Language Plan of Action for
Africa” (Organization of African Unity, 1986);
쐌 The Pan African Colloquium on Educational
Innovation in Post Colonial Africa, held in Cape
Town in 1994.
Respected educators and language planners on
the continent have reiterated their convictions that
educational failure on the continent is linked to a
system where the home languages of the learners
are seldom maintained beyond the early years of
school if they are used at all. Ayo Bamgbose
claims that rather than reducing the number of pri-
mary school drop-outs and the figures of those who
never reach school, the continent is steadily mov-
ing toward a situation where more than 50% of
children of school going age are not in school and
he attributes one of the causes of this situation to
4
Most unfortunately this report coincided with the Bantu
Education Act in South Africa and the legislation conveniently
used the promotion of the “mother tongue” in education to have
differentiated (impoverished) curricula for African language
speaking pupils in primary schools.
5
Bamgbose records that this conference recommended that
“democratization, national character, authenticity and mod-
ernization of education” could only be achieved if national lang-
uages are restored as national languages of instruction
(Bamgbose, 1996, p. 9). The Lagos conference also advocated
the use of indigenous languages as the vehicles for scientific
and technical progress.
6
Here education was linked in African languages to socio-
economic development.
305
White Total
1% 35.8
the inadequate use of languages familiar to young
school pupils (Bamgbose, 1996, p. 13).
Since the late 1980s, reports from Zambia, for
example, have shown that the use of English as
the medium of instruction from the word go has
resulted in:
쐌 massive student drop-outs in the first years of
school;
쐌 a widening gap between those who are proficient
in English and those who are not; and
쐌 a decreasing level of proficiency in English
since independence (see for example Tripathi,
1990, p. 38; Siachitema, 1992, p. 19).
Furthermore, and increasingly, scholars point to
a relationship between the failure of development
programmes and the failure of education on the
continent to embrace its multilingual reality. Paulin
´
Djite, for example, argues that policy-makers and
planners in Africa need to recognise:
“...the central role national languages can play
in a process of global and integrated develop-
ment. Language is an important element of
social organization and control that can be used
in improving social life. This would probably
be better achieved in Africa if the focus is
placed upon the macro-sociolinguistic picture of
communication networks, an approach that
makes language planning and language policies
possible and realistic. Reliance and dependency
on superimposed international languages to ach-
ieve development in Africa over the last three
decades have proven to be a failure. Instead of
leading to national unity, this attitude has sig-
nificantly contributed to the socioeconomic and
political instability of most African countries....”
“...real development is not possible in Africa
without the integration of national languages
306 K. Heugh / Int. J. of Educational Development 19 (1999) 301–313
and the full and intelligent participation of all
´
the forces of the continent” (Djite, 1993, p.
149).
´
Djite’s argument is based on a systematic analysis
of the use of lingua francas in West Africa, parti-
cularly, which lubricates the channels of communi-
cation across national boundaries on a significant
and useful level. Use of the standard varieties of
English, French and Portuguese on the continent,
however, is limited to the upper levels of govern-
ment and administration.
“The masses have managed and developed these
networks of communication over the years,
showing not only a willingness to identify them-
selves as members of a larger group but also a
willingness to cooperate with others who may
be culturally and linguistically different. The
linguae francae... are being perceived as neutral
languages.... They are, in the true sense, the de
facto national and international mediums of
communication, for they satisfy the criteria of
efficiency, adequacy, and acceptability (Haugen
´
1966:61–63)” (Djite, 1993, p. 159).
In other words, Africa is not Babylon. There are
efficient lingua francas which facilitate regional
communication and trade. On the other hand, the
role of superimposed international languages has
been hugely overestimated in their capacity to
serve the interests of the majority on the continent
as useful vehicles of communication. In a nutshell,
these languages serve only the interests of the rul-
´
ing elites.
What is equally important to acknowledge is that
the territorial boundaries between African states do
not correspond with linguistic boundaries. If we
are to acknowledge properly the existing channels
of linguistic communication for economic pur-
poses, then perhaps we need to be reconfiguring
the nature and role of languages in the educational
systems which currently differ from country to
country. It might mean reconfiguring or extending
existing patterns of regional educational co-oper-
ation, in order to ensure that the linguistic reper-
toires of the relevant communities are matched and
built upon.
´
Djite argues that just as Africans will learn inter-
national languages of communication, particularly
for economic reasons, it would be short-sighted to
ignore the potential of efficient regional languages
in global development strategies.
3. Are we asking the right questions?
Why then given the support of scholars, edu-
cational commissions and reports on the continent,
which promote the use of African languages, have
there been very few successful attempts to extend
the use of African languages in education?
The answer is both simple and complex. There
are both internal and external political and econ-
omic forces which structurally militate against the
rational use of the linguistic reality of the conti-
nent. Partly these are a result of the colonial heri-
tage and a collective conquered consciousness of
this continent. This consciousness has, in many
countries, arisen where an international language
has come to signify the point of access to power,
whilst the local languages may have been used in
education. One of the ironies is that they were used
in this capacity, not so much in order to guarantee
more effective education, but to ensure separate
development as conceived of under British colonial
rule and perfected under apartheid. Partly, also, the
structural forces which undermine the use of
African languages in education are a function of
neo-colonial economic forces which impact on the
continent through Western development and donor
agencies such as the World Bank. Alamin Mazrui
(1997), in an analysis of the role of the World Bank
and its role in language-in-education practice on
the continent, argues that despite the bank’s out-
ward espousal of support for local languages in
education, its continued advice to governments on
how to cut expenditure in education leaves little
choice but to opt for the use of the international
language. Tollefson (1991); Phillipson (1992) and
Skutnabb-Kangas (1998), for example, and
amongst many others, have all pointed to the larger
structural forces within the Anglophone world, in
particular those emanating from the USA and Bri-
tain, as ones which are bent on imposing English
as a tool to ensure the maintenance of an under-
 K. Heugh / Int. J. of Educational Development 19 (1999) 301–313
educated class which provides cheap labour. This
might very well explain why, despite the long his-
tory of recommendations for the use of African
languages in education, a practice which gives pre-
eminence to the international languages has
become entrenched. Mazrui (1997) further sug-
gests that the effect of World Bank–IMF inter-
vention in Africa, via its structural adjustment pro-
grammes is advancing socio-economic or class
division on the continent—the use of the inter-
national languages in education effectively advan-
tages the children of the ruling class and disadvan-
tages or marginalises the remainder of society.
“The World Bank and the IMF have become the
principal organisations through which the capi-
talist West seeks to control the destiny of the
rest of the world. In this respect, the establish-
ment and reconstitution of structural inequalities
(in institutional set-ups and financial
allocations) and cultural inequalities... between
the imperial European languages and other lang-
uages become indispensable strategies towards
that attempted control” (Mazrui, 1997, p. 43).
Jonathan Pool in an article on linguistic exploi-
tation, develops a theory about the relationship
between political power and language:
“...the nature of politics may be influenced by
the fact that linguistic competition is one of the
determinants of political success... those who
have political power use it to get power over
language, and those who have power over lang-
uage use it to get political power, with the result
that the ideal of democratic government is never
achieved” (Pool, 1993, p. 31).
In other words, he argues that there is a particular
dynamic which takes over once a group comes to
political power. The preservation of power
becomes an overriding force and language is used
as a tool to protect that power by keeping others
from accessing some of it. Pool further argues that
the more inaccessible the language of rule is for
the majority, the greater becomes the pressure from
below to gain access to this language (Pool, 1993,
pp. 53–54).
307
Now, in South Africa, this argument is illus-
trated by African language speaking parents who
have become determined to jettison their home lan-
guage in favour of English as the dominant langu-
age of education, because they understand that
English represents the key to power. What they
have not yet recognised is that it represents the key
´
to power only for a small elite. If we accept Pool,
Tollefson and others, then the point of exclusion
would in any event continue to be reinvented in
´
order to protect the elite. If this is the case, how
then can a language-in-education policy, which
promotes the use of indigenous languages in edu-
cation succeed? It is not only the structural forces
themselves which prevent the successful
implementation of such a policy, but these have
now become manifest in the beliefs and percep-
tions of the public.
4. One step forward, two steps back...
The latest in a succession of ironies in South
Africa is that 20 years after the Soweto riots and
the reduction of mother tongue education, the
country has embraced through its Constitution the
principles of a language policy which espouses the
validation and promotion of multilingualism and,
in particular, the development of indigenous langu-
ages. Within a year of the final Constitution (1996),
the Department of Education released its language-
in-education policy, which is based on the notion
of additive bilingualism, and promotes the use of
the home language alongside an additional langu-
age (which for most students will mean English).
In other words the policy, by implication, is geared
towards the promotion of African languages along-
side English, for the duration of the school system.
At face value this appears encouraging. It is
exactly what had been proposed over a decade of
intensive lobbying from the NGO educational sec-
tor7. The Department of Education consulted this
7
Particularly in the work of the National Language Project
and its journal, the Language Projects’ Review, later Bua!
between 1987 and 1996; and the Project for the Study of Alter-
native Education in South Africa from 1992 onwards (see
Heugh et al., 1995).
308 K. Heugh / Int. J. of Educational Development 19 (1999) 301–313
NGO sector during a 2 year period (1995–1997)
as it developed its proposal for a new language-in-
education policy. Subsequent to the policy
announcement in mid-1997 the department began
a tentative process of searching for an implemen-
tation plan. However, there is a fundamental prob-
lem with this process. All the while there was a
parallel but separate process in place: one which
was to culminate in the development of a new cur-
riculum, the essence of which was to guarantee
equitable education for all and was to be outcomes
based. Curriculum 2005, as it is called, has eight
learning areas, one of which is “Communication,
Literacy and Language Learning” (Department of
Education, 1997a). For the entire duration of the
curriculum drafting process, issues relating to lang-
uage were curtailed to this area as if learning in the
other seven areas were disconnected from language
altogether. Unstated, however, was the premise
that in the end all students in this country would
somehow end up learning through the medium of
English. Thus the issues of terminology develop-
ment, text-book and materials production in all 11
official languages of the country, and
bilingual/multilingual teacher training for the new
curriculum were never discussed. In February 1997
the Minister of Education announced the new cur-
riculum and declared that it would be phased in
from the beginning of 1998 (Department of Edu-
cation, 1997a). If there had been a serious intention
to provide materials for the foundation phase of
education in all 11 languages, there would have
been some indication of how this was to be facili-
tated given the time lapse between commissioning
materials and having these processed through the
publishing industry. By mid-July 1997, the minis-
ter had made the language policy announcement
(Dept. of Ed., 1997b), some 4 months after the
Curriculum 2005 announcement. Thus, it is obvi-
ous that the language-in-education policy was
finalised after the curriculum changes had been
completed. Only in the final stages of drafting the
new curriculum was a draft version of the new lan-
guage-in-education policy tacked on and it had cer-
tainly not informed or been part of the major dis-
cussions about curriculum changes. At the time of
writing, the new curriculum has been phased into
the first two years of primary school where 80%
of classes are taught through the medium of an
African language. No materials for teachers or lear-
ners have yet been produced in any of these langu-
ages. Thus the teachers are expected, whether or
not they are proficient in English, to be able to
negotiate the new curriculum, written in English,
through other languages without any material sup-
port.
It is almost inconceivable that despite 90 years
of commissions and reports on education
reaffirming the centrality of language-in-education
on this continent, the role of language in the learn-
ing process, across the entire spectrum of edu-
cation, was again overlooked at this critical point
in South Africa’s history. What makes this all the
more extraordinary is that a major report, outlining
a comprehensive language plan for South Africa,
had been commissioned by the Minister for Arts,
Culture, Science and Technology and was com-
pleted by August 1996. The Final Report of the
Language Plan Task Group (LANGTAG)
(Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Tech-
nology, 1996, pp. 124–132) focused particularly on
the need for a multilingual approach to language
in education and made significant recommen-
dations for the realisation of this. The sub-commit-
tee responsible for this included senior members of
the Department of Education, who were also those
responsible for finalising the language-in-education
policy. Thus the Department was fully aware that
languages across the curriculum needed to be inte-
grated into curriculum development. Partly it is a
reflection of political expediency which required
the appearance of rapid change in education in
order to fulfil election promises made in the days
prior to the 1994 election. Partly it is a reflection
of the larger structural forces which, in the end,
support the language(s) of rule only, and this is
why the curriculum planners found themselves
confined to a paradigm which anticipated that there
would be a single main language of education,
namely English. The prospects of effective
implementation of the new curriculum and langu-
age-in-education policy which have not been con-
ceived of simultaneously and are not fundamen-
tally integrated, cannot look promising. The most
likely scenario which will play itself out is that
the curriculum as it has been conceived will take
 K. Heugh / Int. J. of Educational Development 19 (1999) 301–313
precedence over the language policy in terms of an
implementation plan. However, until such time as
both curriculum and language policy are re-exam-
ined together, it is unlikely that the majority of
African language speaking students in school will
succeed. The gap between the middle class and the
working class will not narrow since most students
will continue to remain linguistically excluded
from meaningful access to learning. The bottom
line is that until there are materials (text-books) in
each of the learning areas from Grades 1–12 in all
11 official languages, and until matriculation
examinations can be written through each of these
languages, there can be no equality of education in
South Africa. Since, however, the language policy
is based on additive bilingualism which means that
in all likelihood the majority of students will have
English as their second language of learning, there
also has to be massive in-service teacher-training
to equip the majority of teachers with bilingual
teaching skills, plus an adequate proficiency in
English for teaching purposes8. Teacher educators
across the country agree that the current level of
the English language proficiency of teachers is
entirely inadequate for effective teaching and
learning to occur through English. Similarly, the
majority of teachers who are English-speaking do
not have the required proficiency in a second lang-
uage to teach in schools which implement an addi-
tive approach to bilingualism.
5. A functional viewpoint
The question about how African languages
might successfully become integral to education is
one which is equally pertinent to most of the conti-
nent. But it may not be the most useful way of
posing the question. In fact, perhaps we ought to
be asking a different question designed to establish
8
Of the students who are hearing, about 80% of students
are African language speaking; about 15% are Afrikaans speak-
ing and probably only about 5% are English speaking. Many
deaf children are currently not in school, but the new language-
in-education policy regards South African Sign Language as the
12th official language for educational purposes. This still has
to be put into effect.
309
the functional value of African languages in econ-
omic activity.
Ten to 15 years ago, in South Africa, we were
considering the role of local languages from a
human rights point of view. We believed that it
was wrong to deny people the option to use the
language of preference and many educators were
deeply worried about the alienating and discrimi-
natory effects of African language speaking stu-
dents having to negotiate their way through a
Western (essentially British based) curriculum
through a second language. However, whilst the
human rights paradigm might very well have a use-
ful place in Europe and North America, where the
gap between the state administration and civil
society is not as wide as it is in Africa, an approach
which is rights based only, with regard to language
or education, will not succeed here. (For a fuller
discussion of this argument see Heugh, 1995b.)
Appealing to governments to take appropriate
action to validate the use of the languages of the
majority in education and beyond, for sentimental,
ideological or ethical reasons, will have little suc-
cess. There have been no examples in Africa of the
successful implementation of a rights based langu-
age policy, neither has there been any example of
the implementation of a policy which is instrumen-
tally weak. The inertia of the OAU’s Language
Plan for Africa is testimony to this. There have to
be instrumental or functional reasons to support the
rights based approach if there is to be any shift
towards harnessing the resources which African
languages offer.
5.1. Language as a resource: linguistic
pluralism and globalisation
The notion that language is a resource or an
asset includes social, educational and economic
domains wherein language facilitates effective
communication and co-operation amongst people.
In most parts of the world people have always had
cause to communicate across language boundaries
for purposes of trade, even though for domestic
purposes, small communities may have found it
possible to communicate predominantly through
one language. The continent of Africa, for
example, abounds in many languages, such as Ara-
310 K. Heugh / Int. J. of Educational Development 19 (1999) 301–313
bic, Kiswahili, Hausa, Fulfulde, Kanuri, Kikongo,
which cut across national boundaries and are used
for purposes of regional trade and co-operation.
Contrary to the expectations of South African
industrialists, globalisation demands greater flexi-
bility of communication patterns than the use of a
single international language, namely English.
Increasingly, we are trading with other parts of
Africa where French, Arabic, Portuguese and
Hausa are important vehicles of communication.
The potential of the regional lingua francas, and
the interdependence of these in Africa, neverthe-
less, still needs to be thoroughly measured in
relation to concrete economic activity. That they
function effectively within the regions is some-
thing which remains obscure to the Anglophone
ear. Certainly, indigenous languages have seldom,
in Africa, been factored into neo-colonial econ-
omic development planning.
Included in the LANGTAG Report were argu-
ments that there are bodies of indigenous knowl-
edge which reside within each linguistic com-
munity which remain either untapped or hidden in
situations where the status of some languages is
reduced (Dept. of Arts, Culture, Science and Tech-
nology, 1996, pp. 92–93). Very often this has been
lost during the process of language death, or is in
danger of being lost when languages are under
threat. On another level, research in Australia has
demonstrated that valuable expertise which people
have is often under-utilised because employers
cannot tap this expertise where communication is
limited to one language. Australian research, fur-
thermore, particularly that from the National Lang-
uages and Literacy Institute of Australia (NLLIA)
has shown the advantages of using the languages
of the target (niche) market when selling goods in
the global market place (see for example, Lo
Bianco, 1996). The impact of this research has
influenced South African language planners, but
not yet those in the private sector or in government.
What is being argued here is that multilingual-
ism is a valuable resource which needs to be
developed for both domestic and external purposes
in South Africa. Particularly, multilingualism
needs to be developed through the school system
so that South African students are able to equip
themselves adequately to cope with the demands
of the modern world, which include working with
local realities as well as those further afield. The
collective impact on a national economy which
cannot tap into the human resource potential of
speakers of languages other than the dominant one,
such as English in South Africa, is enormous. The
inability to acknowledge and build upon the
knowledge of pupils who speak languages other
than the classroom language will ultimately impact
negatively at a national level where development
is thwarted in an educational system unable to har-
ness effectively the human resources of its stu-
dents.
A language planning orientation which views
language as a resource in the South African con-
text would:
쐌 acknowledge that there are sources of knowl-
edge and expertise to which users of each of the
country’s languages have access;
쐌 ensure that effective measures would be taken
to access and harness this knowledge for the
maximum advantage of everyone;
쐌 unlock the potential of existing patterns of local
and regional multilingual communication sys-
tems;
쐌 utilise international systems for communication
across linguistic boundaries;
쐌 build a flexible network of multilingual com-
munication systems to suit the domestic and
international requirements of a national plan
for development9.
The LANGTAG Report (Department of Arts,
Culture, Science and Technology, 1996) identified
areas of research in relation to language and the
economy which need to be undertaken in order to
demonstrate the economic advantages of har-
nessing the languages of a country for its economic
development. The Report recommends pilot stud-
ies which identify the economic benefits which
local languages bring to small, medium and micro-
enterprises, as well as the degree to which use of
local languages can save time, costs and even lives,
9
The discussion thus far in this section is a revised version
of an exploratory definition and explanation given in a draft
document for the Language as an Economic Resource sub-com-
mittee of LANGTAG (Heugh, 1996).
 K. Heugh / Int. J. of Educational Development 19 (1999) 301–313
in the economic activities of the large corporations
or upper levels of the economy. However, this
view has not yet found its way into the overall con-
ception of a national plan for development, and it
certainly has not yet found its way into the overall
conception of what it might mean for education.
Francois Grin, the most prolific of the writers on
the relationship between language and the econ-
omy or the economics of language has this to offer:
“...economics can provide some of the essential
ingredients to build a convincing case to the
effect that minority language promotion could
deserve state support—not for moral, political
or cultural reasons, but for economic reasons”
(Grin, 1996, p. 16).
Grin goes on to argue that there has to be an under-
lying demand for language maintenance if langu-
age promotion is to have success.
“The strategic implication is that demand must
be strengthened, supported or created prior to
any other form of action. I consider this to be
one of the very few general results to hold in
all minority language situations” (Grin, 1996,
p. 16).
The key issue is thus in his view to establish the
tangible value in linguistic diversity/plurality.
Grin’s argument is equally valid here where our
concern in Africa is in fact with indigenous langu-
ages, many of which are languages of the majority.
At the same time, it needs to be mentioned that the
demand for action has thus far come from minority
language communities and not the larger African
language communities.
Recently, and unexpectedly, there have been
interesting developments amongst tiny pockets of
people of Khoe and San descent in the Northern
Cape province. These marginalised communities
are acutely aware that their languages are almost
extinct, and yet there are a few old people who still
have remnants of these languages in which they
are able to recollect what is known as “veldkennis”
(knowledge of the veld, its plants and animals).
This knowledge has not been passed on to the
younger generations who have adopted languages
311
of greater prestige in the local communities. The
younger generations now fear the loss of this
knowledge at the very point that they are about to
be given back rights to land which was taken away
from them during the apartheid years. The resti-
tution of their land rights would allow them to
recover survival and economic activities long
deprived them. Thus, for the San in particular,
there is a direct link between the survival of langu-
ages nearly extinct and the economic viability of
their land10. Some of the San and Khoe (Nama)
communities have made demands that they want
their children to be taught their languages at
school. Importantly, this province has agreed to
find the mechanisms to accomplish this. In another
development, the new constitutional provision for
11 official languages has sparked a fierce interest
in language rights amongst other marginalised
people, whose languages have not been declared
official. In the Northern Province, people who
identify themselves as speakers of Northern Ndeb-
ele, Baputhi and Khelobedu have begun to claim
language rights and special recognition, including
the use of these languages in education11. These
claims, unlike those of the San and Khoe, who
have linked language rights to land rights and their
economic independence, have thus far fallen on
deaf ears. A further development from the deaf
community has resulted in so much pressure that
the Department of Education is, in theory, treating
sign language as if it were a 12th official language.
6. Moving in from the fringe
The situation then at present is as follows: the
value of languages other than the European ones
in Africa is usually hidden for reasons already dis-
cussed. The functional use of African languages
will never be fully realised whilst the conquered
consciousness prevails and until their potential in
economic terms is unmasked, possibly alongside
10
This discussion has been informed by fieldwork conducted
by the author on behalf of the Northern Cape Administration
and the Pan South African Language Board during 1997.
11
This information has been made available by the Pan South
African Language Board.
312 K. Heugh / Int. J. of Educational Development 19 (1999) 301–313
an awareness of language rights by their users. At
the same time, at no point has any proponent of
multilingualism or local languages ever suggested
jettisoning either the use of an international langu-
age or an international curriculum from the edu-
cation systems of Africa. However, a reconcep-
tualisation of what works well in Africa in terms
of effective channels of communication, useful
knowledge, and well-established activities in small,
local and regional economies, needs to be inte-
grated into a school system which also provides
access to the outside world.
Maurice Goula refers to this as a “Rediscovery
of Africa’s (Bio)diversity and endogenous knowl-
edge as a basis for social advancement” (Goula,
1998). The essence of Goula’s proposal is to dis-
cover and establish that which is complementary
between the African and European logic for devel-
´
opment. Goula, similarly to Djite, argues that
development in the Western–Northern frame has
been unsuccessful in Africa because local realities
have not been the basis upon which development
strategies have been built. Indigenous knowledge
or experience has been ignored or under-utilised in
the policies, plans and strategies for development.
“Resource management and human capacity build-
ing have... been neglected” and he proposes that
“in the spirit of creative pluralism, human capacity
building, and enthusiasm for a thoughtful manage-
ment of natural resources....Africa should redis-
cover her (bio) diversity and endogenous knowl-
edge as a basis for societal advancement”.
It’s a matter of reclaiming a vast store of knowl-
edge, indigenous to Africa, which has been hidden
from the eurocentric and North American view of
the world because the languages in which it resides
have been marginalised in the educational, political
and mainstream economic systems. Inevitably,
their value has been lost in the process of colonis-
ing the consciousness of the continent.
National systems of education do not, at present,
have the structural capacity for the type of inno-
vation we require here. The new political space
created in South Africa during the 1990s provided
an opportunity during which, if it were possible for
those in power to work against their self-interest,
a radical reconceptualisation of education would
have taken root. That it cannot yet be sustained
beyond laudable policy statements is a warning to
educators elsewhere on this continent not to rely on
the good offices of those in power for educational
transformation. A fairly viable prospect now in
South Africa is the setting up of a network of
experimental school projects which, for the time
being, have to be independent of the national sys-
tem. Their focus needs to be the rediscovery of
useful knowledge and practices through the langu-
ages in which these are known and transmitted and
thence to find the points of intersection with inter-
national curricula. This implies, though, that
because of the patterns of shared knowledge and
languages which extend beyond our geographic
borders we need to establish useful connections
with other experimental projects in and even
beyond the Southern African region. These pro-
jects need to be conceptualised jointly both by rad-
ical educators and developmental economists in
order that they are able to:
쐌 tap into what works best in local and/or
regional economies;
쐌 use the existing channels of communication
effectively and build on regional lingua francas;
쐌 recover indigenous scientific and educational
knowledge;
쐌 integrate indigenous knowledge with what is
useful of contemporary international curricula;
쐌 ensure access to the appropriate international
language of the region; and
쐌 demonstrate that there are tangible economic
advantages in using the languages of Africa in
education and beyond.
Recent positive developments have begun to
demonstrate that recovery of the functional status
of South Africa’s many languages could very well
be encouraged and stimulated by the example
being set by the most marginalised language
groups which were not given official status in the
new constitutional arrangements. As mentioned
earlier, the Khoe and San as well as the Northern
Amandebele Organisation, the Baphuti, the Valo-
vedu and the deaf communities are actively
asserting their language rights. However, the use
of African languages in education is unlikely to be
guaranteed by a reliance solely upon a human
rights paradigm which presupposes a benign polit-
 K. Heugh / Int. J. of Educational Development 19 (1999) 301–313
ical power. The guarantee lies only in an
unmasking and recovery of the economic func-
tionality of these languages, both in education and
beyond it, where amongst the majority of people
resides a wealth of knowledge which extends far
beyond that which is material.
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