Les Cahiers de l’IFAS #11: The Standardisation of African Languages
Language political realities.
Proceedings of a CentRePoL workshop held at the University of Pretoria on March 29, 2007, supported by the French Institute of Southern Africa.
In all human communities, education is crucially important: taken in its broadest meaning, it is, ultimately, the strategy through which the youth is groomed to, eventually, take over the community destiny, and allow it to maintain and further its existence. Education therefore shapes the character of communities and their performance in the future.
With the growing globalisation process, there is a tendency to limit the concept ‘education’ to school education. This is particularly so in South Africa, even though ‘traditional’ education, as instanced in, inter alia, initiation schools, is maintained in some communities at least. This emphasizes the importance that, for better or for worse, school education now assumes in the country.
Indeed, since the advent of democracy, the SA government has placed (formal or school) education at the core of the transformation process. While ensuring general access to primary education, which was not effective under the previous dispensation, government has been adamant in its resolve to make education at all levels, particularly in scientific domains, accessible to all those to whom it was previously denied. Beyond social justice and equity, the government’s avowed objective is to train highly qualified experts from among the African or black communities, to ensure that the transformation process is carried across the full breadth of the SA society.
Michel Lafon & Vic Webb (Dir.), 2008, The Standardisation of African Languages. Language political realities, Johannesburg, CentrePol/IFAS, Les Cahiers de l’IFAS N°11.