The emergence of South African Sign Language as South Africa’s 12th official language

Abstract

On Wednesday, 19 July 2023, the President of South Africa ratified the 18th Constitutional Amendment Bill in terms of which South African Sign Language (SAGT) was declared as South Africa’s 12th official language. South Africa was the sixth country to grant legal recognition to its sign language in 1996, only four years after the United Nations’ 1992 Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities and three years after South Africa had adopted its 1993 constitution which ushered in the political transition period in South Africa. Against this “lightning fast” recognition stands the full officialisation of the language in 2023, which was only realised after a further period of 27 years (after 1996). This inevitably raises the question of why the latter took relatively longer and why the initial constitutional recognition and officialisation in education in 1996 had happened relatively quickly. This question is investigated on the basis of a comparative study between the two “eras of officialisation” viewed in terms of a framework of language policy and language planning against the background of related international case studies. The investigation found that in both cases DeafSA as a sign language campaigner played a central role in achieving the organisation’s aims. It was also found that the relative “speed” with which the first recognition had been achieved could largely be attributed to the political zeitgeist of the so-called Mandela era.