The Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) welcomes the move by the Higher Education Minister, Blade Nzimande, to revive African languages at universities and make proficiency in an African language a condition for graduation.
PanSALB believes that the initiative would not only benefit students academically but improve communication with the general public.
“It would be ignorant for anyone to oppose Nzimande’s move. For a very long time, African languages have been ignored in universities, which lacked language units, policies and budgets to implement them,” said PanSALB Acting Chief Executive Officer, Chris Swepu, in Pretoria today.
He said government should also consider making it a requirement for job applicants in the public service to know one African language in order to be employed.
“This can’t be discrimination against our people because we have been living together black and white and we have to learn each other’s languages. We see it all the time: most university graduates who work in government can’t speak to the public because they don’t know an African language,” said Mr Swepu.
PanSALB points out that this initiative will work hand in hand with the introduction of indigenous language policies already in place in some South African universities.
This will strengthen not only students in higher learning institutions but also the working class in various work environments.
PanSALB sees this as a national effort to foster respect for all official languages and embrace multilingualism as a democratic nation.
Such initiative must be extended to all layers of education and not just higher education. In that way we will have the necessary synergy for this to succeed.
PanSALB will continue encouraging such initiatives in government and non-governmental institutions to ensure that multilingualism is implemented in practice in order for South Africa to become truly non-racial, with no discrimination based on language.
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