Litigation on languages

The Arts and Culture portfolio committee in parliament will meet today to discuss public submissions on the controversial Languages Bill, which if enacted would force government departments and other organisations of national scope to use a minimum of three South African languages.

Despite threats of court action to halt the bill, Pan South African Language Board chairman Sihawu Ngubane was confident yesterday that the draft law would be approved next month.

He is already questioning the lack of punishments that could be imposed on government departments that contravene the law.

"What concerns us is that this bill does not provide punishable measures for those who do not conform to it, but we hope that such provisions would be made," he said at an event to commemorate last week's International Mother-Tongue Day.

The Western Cape government, which has a language policy, the DA and AfriForum are against the bill and are considering legal action on the grounds that the proposed legislation would marginalise Afrikaans.

If the bill is passed, government departments will have to choose between English and Afrikaans to use alongside two indigenous languages.

Ngubane said the perception that the board was anti-Afrikaans was false and that the bill was to ensure that South Africans could communicate with the government, particularly on service delivery, in a language that they understood.

"It's not true that we don't want Afrikaans, but all we say is that vernacular languages must also be used as medium of instruction in schools.

"In multiracial schools vernacular languages are given one period and are taught by teachers who hardly speak proper indigenous languages and that has to change," he said.

He said South Africans should not be forced to speak English when they approach government departments.

"No one can be arrested for speaking their own language. For far too long, we have been advocating for indigenous languages to be treated equally to other languages like English and Afrikaans.

"In this country, 87.3% of people speak indigenous languages but these people are forced to speak English, even if they don't want to or have to."

KwaZulu-Natal arts, culture, sports and recreation MEC Ntombikayise Sibhidla-Saphetha said the language policy in KwaZulu-Natal acknowledged Zulu, Xhosa, English and Afrikaans as official languages.