South Africa’s new official language becomes law this week
President Cyril Ramaphosa will on Wednesday, 19 July 2023, sign into law the South African Sign Language Bill during a ceremony at the Union Buildings in Pretoria.
The National Assembly approved the new laws in May, which will see Section 6 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 amended to include South African Sign Language (SASL) as an official language to promote the rights of persons who are deaf and hard of hearing.
The recognition of South African Sign Language (SASL) as the 12th official language is an important step towards the realisation of the rights of persons who are deaf or hard of hearing, the presidency said.
“South African Sign Language is an indigenous language that constitutes an important element of South African linguistic and cultural heritage. It has its own distinct grammatical structures and lexicon and it is independent of any other language,” it said.
The new legislation seeks to:
- Advance the cultural acceptance of SASL;
- Ensure the realisation of the rights of persons who are deaf and hard of hearing to equal protection and benefit of the law and human dignity; and
- Promote inclusive and substantive equality and prevent or eliminate unfair discrimination on the grounds of disability, as guaranteed by Section 9 of the Constitution.
With this initiative, South Africa becomes the fourth country on the African continent to recognise sign language as an official language; other countries are Kenya, Zimbabwe and Uganda.
After the changes are signed into law, South Africa’s list of official languages will be:
- Sepedi
- Sesotho
- Setswana
- siSwati
- Tshivenda
- Xitsonga
- Afrikaans
- English
- isiNdebele
- isiXhosa
- isiZulu
- SASL
In South Africa, the majority of deaf people (95%) are born to hearing parents and therefore do not acquire SASL as a mother tongue but learn it in school. Despite regional differences, just like spoken languages, SASL is interesting in that it has the same grammatical structure countrywide.
There is also not a one-to-one relationship between English and SASL, with a sign being open to being translated by more than one word.
[Headline image: https://www.realsasl.com/]
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