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South African higher education relies primarily on English as the medium of education. This is a result of the colonial history of the country, yet it disadvantages a large section of South African students who undertake their education in a language that is not their first language. It also reproduces the monolingual norm and anglonormativity. This can be read as a social justice issue, since students are impacted negatively by discrimination through language. Indeed, recent protest movements, particularly Rhodes Must Fall, have highlighted language as a critical issue in the "decolonisation" of the university curriculum. This article presents translanguaging pedagogy as a way to address this issue; it analyses the implementation of translanguaging pedagogies in an introductory course at the University of Cape Town in 2015 and 2016. Through an analysis of lecturer reflections, classroom practice and assessments, it highlights how translanguaging pedagogies can empower students who are disempowered by English monolingualism and it demonstrates how students respond positively to these pedagogies. The article makes the argument that multilingual pedagogies are a necessary response to the current crisis in South African higher education.

This paper examines the status of an informal urban variety in Cape Town known as Tsotsitaal. Similar varieties, going by a plethora of names (Flaaitaal, Iscamtho, Ringas) have been described in other South African cities, especially Johannesburg, Pretoria and Durban (see also Sheng in Kenyan cities). This paper seeks to describe the essential characteristics of Cape Town Tsotsitaal, which is based on Xhosa, and to argue for its continuity with similar varieties in other South African cities. However, this continuity eventually calls into question many of the previous assumptions in the literature about Tsotsitaal and its analogues: e.g. the thesis that these varietiesnecessarilyinvolve code-switching, or that they are pidgins, even ones that are creolising in some areas. More generally, this paper serves several purposes: (a) to comment on and elucidate why there is a proliferation of often contradictory names, (b) to examine the degree and types of switching in the different varieties, and (c) to clarify the relationship between what are essentially tsotsitaalregistersand the urban languages they are part of.

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