6. Challenges for South Africa’s Medium-Sized Indigenous Languages in Higher Education and Research Environments

Abstract

It is a truism that language plays a pivotal role in learning and hence in empowering individuals to be both producers and consumers of knowledge. It is likewise obviously true that the choice of the language(s) of instruction has been a thorny issue in Africa since its former colonies gained their political independence. Prejudice and confusion about the role and potential of Africa’s indigenous languages to act as suitable languages of instruction persist and have resulted in these languages being viewed as barriers to successful learning and hence relegated to the back seat with the former colonial languages primarily being the preferred language of instruction. Ouane (2010), drawing on UNESCO’s 2004 Global Monitoring Report on Education for All, which underscores the choice of the language of instruction and language policy in schools as critical for effective learning, argues that low-quality education and the marginalisation of the African continent can be linked to its language in education practices:

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