“Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth”

Abstract

This chapter describes the role of different institutions and language entrepreneurs in advocating for an inclusive multilingual education policy involving African languages so that these languages are as prominent in education and statecraft as English and Afrikaans. It focuses on the history of bilingual language education in South Africa to create a context for the current state of multilingual education. The chapter highlights some of the attempts to include African languages as part of South Africa's bilingual education policy which, in fact, provides insight into the quest to include so many stakeholders in language policy decisions. It examines the different language academies. During the apartheid period, the bilingual education introduced was an attempt to replace the hegemony of English with the dominance of Afrikaans. The post-apartheid government's multilingual policy is deeply embedded in the South African constitution. In addition to English and Afrikaans, nine African languages acquired official-language status.

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