Language policy implementation in South Africa: How Kempton Park's great expectations are dashed in Tshwane1

Anne-Marie Beukes

doi:10.5774/38-0-20

Abstract

Almost two decades ago, on 2 February 1990, the waiting world learnt that the ban on the previously exiled African National Congress (ANC) was lifted and that Nelson Mandela would be released from prison within a matter of days. On that historic day when then State President FW de Klerk made his dramatic announcement in Parliament, I was one of the participants in a public colloquium, Planning for the future: Language in South Africa, held at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits). The colloquium was part of an International Symposium on Sociolinguistics in Africa of which the main objective was to re-examine the complex linguistic situation in Southern Africa in the light of changing socio-political conditions (Herbert 1992: ix).

Highlights

Almost two decades ago, on 2 February 1990, the waiting world learnt that the ban on the previously exiled African National Congress (ANC) was lifted and that Nelson Mandela would be released from prison within a matter of days
On that day, when the watershed between apartheid South Africa and the promise of a future democratic dispensation was captured in De Klerk's dramatic announcement, the renowned American linguist, Carol Eastman, introduced her colloquium at the Wits Symposium with the following categorical statement: "The African National Congress (ANC) has identified language as an area in need of planning for post-apartheid South Africa" (Eastman 1992: 95)
The road travelled from Kempton Park's 1993 constitutional provisions via the Language Plan Task Group (Langtag) policy process leading to Tshwane's subsequent policies (National Language Policy Framework 2003, and Implementation Plan 2003) has proven not to be the smooth ride that was envisaged at the start of the transition to a new democracy in the early 1990s

Summary

Introduction

On 2 February 1990, the waiting world learnt that the ban on the previously exiled African National Congress (ANC) was lifted and that Nelson Mandela would be released from prison within a matter of days. Almost two decades after the watershed Wits conference on language planning for a future South Africa, I would like to reflect on the road travelled from the constitutional settlement reached by the multi-party negotiators in Kempton Park in 1993 to the present This reflection will focus on Langtag as an "exemplary" policy process and on the range of perspectives on what may be described as the current "retrogressive" situation of widespread policy failures. It is hoped that the dynamic "dialogue" that is the result of the simultaneous utilisation of the insider's close knowledge of the Langtag process and the reflective analysis of the researcher will lead to new perspectives on and insight into the language planning initiatives of the early postapartheid era

Langtag and bottom-up language planning

Language policy development in the new democratic dispensation

Policy as process

Findings

Conclusion