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Language Rights, Ethnic Politics: a Critique of the Pan South African Language Board

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Language Rights, Ethnic Politics: a Critique of the Pan South African Language Board Language rights, ethnic politics: A critique of the Pan South African Language Board Timothy Perry 1 Contents List of Figures ..............................................................................4 Abbreviations ..............................................................................5 Prologue........................................................................................7 Introduction ...............................................................................20 Chapter 1 The panoply of rights: language, human, individual, group .................................................25 1.1 The rights of individuals and groups: a brief history.......... 27 1.2 Individual and group (language) rights: theoretical debate ......................................................................................... 35 1.3 Contrast with a dissident liberal............................................. 42 1.4 A special case: solidarity rights............................................... 44 1.5 Language rights and linguistic human rights....................... 47 1.6 Problematising language rights .............................................. 50 1.7 Are language rights individual or group rights?................. 54 Chapter 2 Ethnicity and (dis)unity in South Africa ..........56 2.1 Some definitions........................................................................ 57 2.2 Ethnicity ..................................................................................... 62 2.3 The importance of language.................................................... 69 2.4 The experience of ethnicity in South Africa: conceptual wrinkles................................................................. 72 2.5 (Dis)unity in the South African state: three theses............... 78 2.6 Theories of group conflict........................................................ 85 2.7 The goods: what groups fight over ........................................ 90 2.8 A visual corollary...................................................................... 92 Chapter 3 Language politics in South Africa (AD100−2003) ..........................................................94 3.1 Khoekhoe, San and Bantu language groups ......................... 95 3.2 The ascendance of Afrikaans................................................... 97 3.3 Autochthonous languages and missionary influence........ 106 2 3.4 Language-in-education policy for black South Africans: Part 1 ........................................................... 108 3.5 The Soweto Uprising .............................................................. 113 3.6 Language-in-education policy for black South Africans: Part 2............................................................. 114 3.7 On the verge of democracy.................................................... 116 3.8 Demographics ........................................................................ 122 Chapter 4 Language law in South Africa...........................124 4.1 International language law .................................................. 125 4.2 The language clause of the South African Constitution ... 131 4.3 Impending language-related legislation ............................. 139 4.4 The Pan South African Language Board—foundations ... 143 4.5 PanSALB—structures and representation .......................... 148 4.6 The courts................................................................................. 155 4.7 Characterisation of South African language rights law .... 156 Chapter 5 A critique of PanSALB .......................................159 5.1 Does PanSALB give rise to ethnic competition?................. 160 5.2 PanSALB is not independent ................................................ 172 5.3 Canary in the constitutional mineshaft: does PanSALB evince an authoritarian ANC?............................. 178 5.4 PanSALB delivers services irregularly................................. 183 5.5 Hopeful signs ......................................................................... 189 5.6 Other lessons learnt ................................................................ 191 Conclusion ...............................................................................195 Notes .........................................................................................198 Bibliography ............................................................................207 3 List of Figures Figure 1 Graphical representation of the method used to distinguish group rights from individual rights ............................................ 93 Figure 2 Graph of L1 speakers of major languages ................................. 123 Figure 3 Depiction of language policy structures ................................... 154 Figure 4 Graphical characterisation of South African language rights law ...................................................................................... 158 4 Abbreviations ANC - African National Congress ATG - Afrikaans Taalgenootskap ATKV - Union of South African Railways and Harbours AZAPO - Azanian People’s Organization DA - Democratic Alliance DAC - Department of Arts and Culture DACST - Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology DoE - Department of Education ECCSA - Education Coordinating Council of South Africa FAK - Federasie van Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge GRA - Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners HRC - Human Rights Commission HSRC - Human Sciences Research Council IFP - Inkatha Freedom Party LANGTAG - Language Plan Task Group LHRs - Language Human Rights LMS - London Missionary Society NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organization NEPI - National Education Policy Investigation NLP - National Language Project NP - National Party NNP - New National Party PanSALB - Pan South African Language Board PAC - Pan Africanist Congress SAP - South African Party SASI - South African San Institute SASM - South African Students’ Movement Section 185 Commission - Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities TAC - Treatment Action Campaign UNESCO - United Nations’ Economic, Social and Cultural Organization VOC - Dutch East India Company 5 6 Prologue Is it important to study language policy? Exponents of the field can invoke an increasingly long and loud parade of answers in support of an emphatic Yes. But unfortunately to date, a scarce few outside the field can do the same. For this reason, a basic enumerative exercise—a brief review of the parade—precedes this paper. Let’s ask again: Is it important to study language policy? Well, yes. (1) First, the latest writings on language policy all acknowledge that language policy is almost inevitably political, an endeavour complicit in the exercise of state control (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000; May, 2001; Pennycook, 2002). Most significantly in this respect, language policies at the local, national and international level frequently operate as a means of social exclusion. To see the truth of such an assertion, one need look no further than the notion of linguistic “elite closure” (Myers-Scotton, 1990). Linguistic elite closure (developed in various incarnations by authors such as Alexandre, 1972 and Prah, 1995: 56) describes a system where language policy perpetuates the privileged status of an elite class, commonly by way of enshrining a minority language as the de facto or de jure official language of the state. Wherever proficiency in this (minority) official language serves as a favourable condition for success, the lucky few who speak that language as a first language will naturally have an advantage over the many who speak it as a second or third language. Members of the privileged elite, in other words, are given a head start over the disadvantaged majority. In order to fortify the bounds of this closure, the elite class additionally may attempt to make the acquisition (if not also the learning, to use the terms of psycholinguistics) of the official language especially difficult for 7 the majority. To such an end the elite class may, for example, underfund public schools or set in place a language-in-education policy that hampers language learning. As a result elites furnish for themselves a system of built-in advantage that perpetuates their privilege and tends to exclude all others. Crucially, elite closure does not always occur as a result of official policy. Indeed, unofficial policies that prefer de facto a particular language prove as destructive as official policies that do so de jure (see Bamgbose, 1991, 2000: 104; Schiffman, 1996: 30). In such scenarios oftentimes the dominant language of business in a region will become the de facto language of a state located within that region, and give rise to all the symptoms of elite closure exhibited by de jure policies. There exist a number of real-life manifestations of the phenomenon of linguistic elite closure, a few of which will here serve as examples. First, we bring our attention quite close to home. South Africa, though its progressive Constitution proclaims eleven languages and implies an admirable array of language rights, has over the nine years since liberation made little headway in implementing any national language policy “on the ground” (Heugh, 1995; Macfarlane, 2002: 5). This, abetted by what appears to be calculated neglect on the part of an identifiably, and sometimes avowedly, “anglophile” ANC (Mandela, 1995; Heugh, 2003), has allowed English to become the sole and de facto language of power. If we are to judge by early indications, the
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