The announcement by the Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga, that the Senior Certificate exams can from now on also be written in Xhosa is a step in the right direction. The sheer disregard for mother tongues is one of the factors that make underperformance a chronic phenomenon in South African education.
The power play in South Africa made a political playball of language. Mother-tongue education was disparaged as "divide and conquer".
The emerging black elite consistently used English in their internal communication and also insisted that it must be used as medium of instruction. Even the Transkei, when it gained self-government in 1963, replaced isiXhosa as a medium of instruction with English.
It seems like an example of poetic justice that it is isiXhosa, the first victim of the single-language policy, that is the first language to be restored to its rightful place after 1994.
From the start the FF Plus has been committed to ensuring that South Africans are empowered and liberated through the use of their mother tongues rather than being constrained by the language of conquest.
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