Abstract

BECKMANN, Johan. The trajectory of Afrikaans as indigenous education language from 1925 to 2025: Thoughts on the past, the present and the future. Tydskr. geesteswet. [online]. 2025, vol.65, n.1, pp.256-284. ISSN 2224-7912.  https://doi.org/10.17159/2224-7912/2025/v65n1a12.

This article presents a critical overview of 100 years of Afrikaans as an official and an indigenous language of education. It is, however, perhaps not the type of Afrikaans article (philosophical/historical/theoretical) with which the readers of the Tydskrif vir Geestes-wetenskappe (Journal of Humanities) would normally be expected to engage - notwithstanding the fact that the article is about Afrikaans as a language of education. While I was searching for sources about language policy in higher education and training, I came across the vast amount of research that UNESCO has¹ already done on language matters (among others that a language "dies" once every two weeks). The question arose as to how that fact could be linked to Afrikaans as a relatively new language of education (slightly more than 100years old). I decided to focus on the development of Afrikaans as a language of education since 1925. In the introductory comments in the Afrikaans version of this article I set out reasons why I wanted to focus on the development trajectory of Afrikaans as an educational language. It started with a relatively calm development period, with some minor incidents having an impact on the development trajectory. Things started changing dramatically with the publication of the Bantu Education Act of 1953. Subsequent system changes followed, starting with the Soweto uprisings in 1976 and continuing until the beginning of the democratic era in 1994 when Afrikaans began facing intense pressure from a government dispensation that apparently sought to transform South Africa into a country in which English became the dominant language at the expense of all other languages spoken in South Africa, thereby creating a situation where these languages could eventually face extinction. After considering all the developments since 1925, I was inclined not to discard the possibility that Afrikaans might become extinct within the next 100 years, as suggested by Lagardien (2022). In an autobiography by Meiring (2022), I unexpectedly came across official reports on how the British and the Americans² attempted to use language assimilation, in addition to the Indian Residential School System (IRSS) in order to change the Canadian and American youth into well-mannered English-speaking Canadian and American youth with an English way of life deep into the 20th century. Apart from the Soweto uprisings in 1976, the past hundred years was a relatively calm time for the development of the trajectory of Afrikaans as language of education. However, the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act (Bela)³ 32 of 2024 (16 September 2024) changed the situation dramatically. The President has already signed the major part of the Bela Act into law. Sub-sections 4 and 5 which amend sub-sections 5 and 6 of the South African Schools Act of 1996 respectively are, however, still "frozen" (not signed into law yet subject to negotiations on the proposed amendments of the admission and language policies of public schools). The proposed amendments to the two sub-sections of the Bela Law caused great trepidation, in particular in the school governing bodies and management structures of Afrikaans-speaking people. The two proposed amendments could be interpreted as mechanisms whereby schools ' competencies and capabilities to determine the admission and language policies of schools with regard to especially the use of language, in particular Afrikaans, as language of Learning and Teaching, could be transferred to the Provincial Head of the Department of Education (HOD).⁴ In this article I will investigate the position of Afrikaans as language of education between 1925 and 2025. The timeslot between 1925 and 1994 (when education was governed solely by the apartheid government) will feature strongly, as will the post-democratic period from 1994 onwards (which will include important elements of the Bela law). UNESCO's reports will include discussions of the causes of the destruction of especially indigenous languages and will form part of the arguments. It would seem that there are many phenomena and strategies that may influence the future of Afrikaans. The steps taken to reduce the status of indigenous languages in the face of the provisions of the negotiated Constitution of1996 (RSA, 1996a) as the supreme law regarding the status of the languages of South Africa as a multilingual and diverse country should be taken into account. At this stage, English seems to be the only language of instruction at higher education level and it is also viewed as the sole language used in communication in the Department of Basic Education. The linguicism or language discrimination/assimilation phenomenon provides lenses through which to observe the history of the trials and tribulations of Afrikaans. There are implications for the rights of language speakers emanating from the observations of what is happening to Afrikaans. I will refer to some of the implications and other phenomena that could be viewed as strategies that may be used to harm languages, shorten their lifespan, and even lead to their demise. Other forms of pressure exerted on languages by discrimination, assimilation, and linguicism, as well as pressure from outside and within languages as well as phenomena known as the death of language (or language murder or even language suicide) could have the same implications for indigenous languages. These can all alter the trajectory of languages, although they have not become generally used terminology in South Africa as yet. Towards the end of the 19th century, Afrikaans emerged as an indigenous language from the interaction between Dutch, Khoisan and Malay languages. Attempts to establish it as a language of teaching and learning (LOLT)⁵ started then, but it had to face fierce opposition from Dutch and English. Efforts to introduce Afrikaans as an official LOLT in schools began in the Cape Province in 1914 at the initiative of the well-known Afrikaans author CJ Langenhoven, and then spread to the entire country. One can distinguish two sentiments about the future of Afrikaans: an optimistic one (Afrikaans will not be destroyed) and a negative one (Afrikaans is not going to survive the onslaught). This article will survey the trajectory of the status of Afrikaans as an official language since 1925 (after it had become an official language in 1910 alongside English when the Union of South Africa was established). This article will attempt to enable readers to develop a graphic representation of the development strategy of Afrikaans.

Keywords : education language policy; language assimilation; language deterioration; language development; language discrimination; language pressure; language rights; language survival; mother-tongue education; multilingualism; statism.

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