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Civil rights organisation AfriForum supports language activist Cerneels Lourens in a case that will be heard tomorrow, 18 February 2016, from 09:00 in the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein.  Lourens argues that legislation has to be translated into all eleven official languages of South Africa.  Currently all legislation is translated into English and randomly into one of the remaining ten official languages for publication with official status.

According to Alana Bailey, Deputy CEO of AfriForum responsible for language issues, her organisation supports this case because it feels very strongly about language rights in general and Afrikaans language rights in particular.  “The current practice amounts to gross discrimination.  Translations of acts into the nine languages in which they had not been published, have no official status.  Therefore if one were to base a legal argument on such a translation containing a wrong interpretation or translation, you would have no legal defence.  In other words, by denying South Africans’ language rights, all other rights are put at risk,” Bailey said.

The South African Constitution does not provide for one first-class or “super” official language (English) and ten second-class languages.  By subordinating the ten languages to English when legislation is made available officially, approximately 49-million South Africans are denied access to legislation in their own languages.  According to Bailey, that deprives South Africans of a proper knowledge and understanding of their legal obligations and rights.  When the official status of languages is thus denied in the legal field, it creates a precedent that could also come to bear on other fields.  The practice therefore must be challenged.

International examples prove that financially and in terms of time, it is possible to make legislation available in all eleven official languages simultaneously.

Members of the public who would like to support AfriForum and Lourens are invited to send their names by SMS to 32756.  (The cost per SMS is R1).

Issued by AfriForum