Cape Town - Afriforum has welcomed the recognition of Afrikaans as an African language by the Department of Basic Education.
It also applauded the department’s move to make it compulsory for all school pupils to learn a third African language - including Afrikaans.
Alana Bailey, deputy chief executive of AfriForum, said it was good to know that Afrikaans was finally enjoying the recognition it deserved.
“According to the national census of 2011, Afrikaans is the third largest language in South Africa, used by 13.5 percent of the residents of all communities. All South Africans should treasure it as part of the South African cultural heritage. Learning Afrikaans at school will help to empower learners of all language communities.”
Bailey said if the government was serious about turning this policy into a success, it would have to ensure more teachers were trained, that multilingual tertiary institutions received more funding and that all languages had economic benefit for pupils.
“While the civil service and the rest of the public sector are anglicising increasingly and the Use of Official Languages Act remains too inadequate to ensure the use, protection and promotion of any official language, it will not make much sense to study African languages.
“Learners will have to know that the languages they are studying will also serve them in practice to achieve their career objectives.”
On Thursday, DA MPL Tom Stokes said the ability to be multilingual was “essential” in a diverse country and that the move was a “ground-breaking” amendment to the curriculum.
However, because the change to pupils’ timetables would probably result in a longer school day, he suggested that the third language be taught at a conversational level.
“Experience from schools which are already teaching three languages shows that grammar is complex and doesn’t always align with popular vernacular. This often chases learners away from what they perceive as a ‘difficult’ language,” Stokes said.
Allen Thompson, deputy head of the National Teachers’ Union, said the union supported the move, despite the challenges.
Thompson was concerned about teachers switching between English and the African languages in the classroom, in the absence of well developed teaching material.
On school staffing, he said the emphasis on producing maths, science and technology teachers had been detrimental as this had left shortages in other disciplines.
SA Democratic Teachers’ Union general secretary Mugwena Maluleke was also in favour of the policy, “for nation building”. However, he was not happy with what he called the lack of a concrete implementation plan by the department.
Maluleke was worried that issues such as school governing body consultations would not be completed before next year and that “chaos” would ensue. He also said he was concerned about shortages of primary school African language teachers.
The Cape Times reported earlier this week that the proposed policy would be implemented incrementally until 2025.
Cape Times