There is growing consensus among language planning scholars that, in developing languages such as those of Africa, there is a need for a deliberateeffort to effectuateand acceleratethe process of language intellectualisation.Intellectualisationof the African languages should be seen within the context of national development initiatives. This paper examines the situation in South Africa where the government is obliged by the Constitution to develop all official languages, especially the indigenous languages. Although all nine indigenous languages have been partially developed, that is, they have written forms, literary works, dictionaries and terminology lists, they are lagging far behind in the area of modern terminology as compared to the neo-colonial languages. During the apartheid regime, the indigenous languages were only important in so far as they served as tools for the division of the African people into conflicting and competing so-called ethnic groups. Despite many problems, with a clear national language policy and plan, intellectualisation in South Africa is more likely to succeed than in most developing countries. Research that is being conducted on strategies towards language intellectualisation provides a strong sense of optimism that this process of language intellectualisation will achieve increasing degrees of momentum, support and success.
Universities in South Africa have over the last few years adopted multilingual language policies with a view to implementing multilingual education. The adoption of these language policies and the implementation of multilingual education accords with the new democratic constitution which recognizes 11 official languages at national level and the Language Policy for Higher Education (LPHE) adopted by government in 2002 to promote equity of access and success for all students in higher education. The aim of this article is to discuss the implementation of multilingual education in traditionally white English universities, and at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The argument of this article is that although multilingual education is not yet fully realized at UCT, the existing multilingual language policy has created agentive and implementational spaces for multilingual education in that university. The article draws insight from ethnographic theories and the multilingual education projects initiated at the university.
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