Members of Parliament commemorated International Mother Tongue Day in the National Assembly this week. Many MPs touched on the importance of mother tongue languages, while others used the platform to highlight deficiencies in the education system relating to the language curriculum.

Some political parties say South Africa’s language policies remain untransformed.

MK party’s Wesley Douglas talks about no space given for Khoi and San Languages.

His counterparts across party lines agreed with him.

EFF’s Eugene Mthethwa says, “As the late dr ben ngubane stated, a persons language is in many ways a second skin. a natural progression through which we express hopes, ideals, thoughts, values and shape society. Linguistic freedom in South Africa is elusive. Out of 35 languages, only 11 are official. This means 24 languages remain suppressed, regardless of the highly acclaimed constitutional democracy. A clear example of this is the exclusion of the Khoi and San languages from official recognition. despite their deep historical roots in Southern Africa.”

IFP’s Albert Mncwango says, “Language is more than just a means of communication. It is the soul of the people, a vessel that carries history, traditions, and indigenous knowledge from generation to generation. It is in our mother tongues that our grandparents passed down wisdom through fairy tales, poems, and praises. Yet, despite this, we continue to witness the erosion of indigenous languages.”

PA’s Ashley Sauls says, “Unfortunately, for the first nation of this country, the Khoi and San, and us, their so-called coloured descendants. This day serves as a sad reality that Khoi and San languages are still not recognised as official. It is further disheartening that the mother of the Afrikaans tongue, known as Khoe Afrikaans, or afrikaaps, is still considered a watered-down inferior version of Afrikaans as we know it. Afrikaaps is a creole language that predates to colonial encounters at the cape, between diverse cultures.”

Others said today, language is still used as a tool of exclusion.

FF Plus’s Wynand Boshoff says, “For the nation to live in English, vernacular languages were relegated to private and limited spaces. Attempts to promote the use of African languages in education were viewed with suspicion as nothing more than the age-old strategy of divide and rule. The result is clear today. An African population divided between the haves and the have nots.”

Action SA’s Dr Tebogo Letlape says, “My everyday experience of languages in South Africa, we use it to exclude, not to include. Right here in parliament, when we go on an oversight visit, if you sit in a car and we want to exclude you, we’ll speak an African language you don’t understand. In another car, we’ll break into Afrikaans so you don’t understand. The past is gone, but we must be truthful about the past.”

Other parties appealed to the education department to play its role in promoting languages in the country.

ACDP’s Wayne Thring argues, “The ACDP positions that without effective mother tongue education we will continue to witness dropout rates and children struggling to cope academically. The ACDP wants mother tongue education in the early grades with a structural transition to English as key to a learners effective education.”

BOSA’s Nobuntu Hlazo-Webter adds, “We cannot continue to structure education systems in a way that privileges some languages while marginalising the rest. Our policies must be one of inclusion and we must invest in teacher training and competency but most important language must be a bridge and not a barrier.”

“Our mother tongues are not just a means of communication. They are the very soul of our cultures, our traditions, our history. They are the foundations upon which our children’s learning and development should be built,” explains ATM’s Thandiswa Marawu.

International Mother Language Day is observed worldwide on the 21st of February. The day is commemorated to promote linguistic and cultural diversity.

International Mother Language Day | discussion with Lance Schultz and Dr Naledi Mbude-Mehana