The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca

South Africa – like many others on the continent – is a multilingual country. The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (1996) declares 11 languages as official, granting 9 previously marginalised indigenous languages “parity of esteem” alongside English and Afrikaans. However, as far as international visitors and the majority of middle-class citizens are concerned, English is the lingua franca and the language of prestige in South Africa.

A commercial enterprise that markets South Africa, Brand South Africa (2016), declares on its website that “English is the most commonly spoken language in official and commercial public life – but only the fourth most spoken home language”. Being so low down on the list does not, however, upset its number one status. Numerous attitudinal studies, particularly among higher education students and the parents of school-going children, show the belief that English is a global language that guarantees upward social mobility and prestigious jobs (Bosch and De Klerk, 1996, p. 244; Evans and Cleghorn, 2014, p. 2; Mashiyi, 2014, pp. 156–157; Parmegiani and Rudwick, 2014, p. 117).

In this chapter, we provide a brief historical background to the prominence of English despite less than 10 per cent of the ±54 million South Africans claiming it as their mother tongue. We allude to the levels of proficiency and various forms of English in South Africa. We follow with a description of the functions of English and the domains where it dominates. Against this background we argue that in reality there is a disjuncture between the perceived status of English and its actual grassroots usage with several other viable contenders for the position of lingua franca.

The initial linguistic landscape of South Africa was primarily shaped by African migration and Anglo-Dutch colonisation throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In 1820, the first large contingent of British settlers established themselves in regions that today remain enclaves of White English speakers although Zulu (Natal), Xhosa (Eastern Cape), and Afrikaans (Western Cape) are the dominant languages in terms of numbers.

In the aftermath of the South African War (1899–1902), the English and Afrikaans speaking groups lived acrimoniously. An attempt at reconciliation was made in 1910 when the “English” provinces of the Cape and Natal and the Afrikaans-speaking provinces of Transvaal and Free State, were declared the Union of South Africa remaining under imperial governance until 1931. Under the then Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd a decision was taken to break away from the Commonwealth and declare itself an independent republic in 1961. Afrikaans was then recognised as an official language alongside English. Despite the rich cultural and linguistic diversity of the country, white supremacy negated other groups, including their languages (Gautschi, 2010; Gough, 1996; Khokhlova, 2015).

For the next three decades, Afrikaans dominated the public domain culminating in the 1976 Soweto uprising that saw schoolchildren vehemently oppose the introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in certain subjects. It was not until 1994 that the hegemony of Afrikaans was broken, when nine Bantu languages were afforded official status in a democratic attempt to extend citizens’ linguistic rights. Four of these are Nguni languages (Zulu, Xhosa, Swati and Ndebele), three are Sotho-Tswana languages (Northern Sotho, Southern Sotho and Tswana) while Venda and Tsonga stand on their own as minority languages.

Table 15.1, shows an uneven distribution of English speakers across the country. Provinces that are mainly rural have few, self-professed English home-language speakers. Provinces, where more than a million people use English as a home language, remain the original settler regions of the Western Cape, Kwa-Zulu Natal and Gauteng – the economic hub of the country.

The notorious Apartheid racial labelling is still used for census data and Table 15.2 makes it clear that English is claimed as a first language by 9.6 per cent of the population cutting across all racial categories. The most recent national census (2011) indicated that this number was up from 8.2 per cent in a decade, ascribing this 1.4 per cent increase to “Black Diamonds” – a rising middle class with international aspirations.

At present, the six most widely spoken South African languages are Zulu at 22.7 per cent, followed by Xhosa at 16 per cent, Afrikaans at 13.5 per cent, English at 9.6 per cent, Tswana at 8 per cent and Sesotho at 7.6 per cent (Statistics South Africa, 2016).

Parmegiani and Rudwick (2014, p. 118) describe the distribution and use of English in relation to the other South African languages as “a scenario where African languages continue to be extensively used in informal domains, while English continues to be the undisputed intra-national lingua franca in formal domains” despite few speakers being truly fluent in the language. Ironically, the entrenchment of the status of this colonial language has also been fuelled by Apartheid struggle veterans’ claim that it is the “language of liberation” (Bekker, 2012; Gough, 1996; Khokhlova, 2015; Silva, 1997).

Table 15.1 Spread of English across provinces (%)

Source: Census 2011, p. 25.

Table 15.2 Spread of English across racial groups

Source: Census 2011, p. 25.

Most South Africans are at least bilingual; many are multilingual yet English does not necessarily count as one of the languages they speak with confidence or fully understand. English is “disproportionately influential” and “acquiring competence in English is highly desirable” yet it is used with vastly “varying degrees of sophistication” (Khokhlova, 2015, p. 985).

As reported on the website SALanguages.com (2016), a national sociolinguistic survey of English language proficiency conducted by the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) in 2000 found that

• 40 per cent of the respondents reported that they used English in interaction with line managers (followed by Afrikaans – 28 per cent and Zulu – 11 per cent);

• 80 per cent reported the use of English as a language of tuition in the wider educational setting (followed by Afrikaans – 16 per cent and Zulu – 6 per cent);

• Only 22 per cent fully understand political, policy and administrative-related speeches and statements made in English.

Webb (2002, p. 7) states that “English is probably known by more than 50 per cent of the SA population at a very basic level of communication”, which would not bode well for its use as a lingua franca. He also reports on a survey of English language proficiency in which

49 per cent of their respondents often did not understand or seldom understood speeches in English. This lack of English language proficiency rose to 60 per cent among speakers of Tswana, Ndebele and Venda, particularly among less educated respondents, respondents in rural areas, and respondents in semi-skilled or unskilled communities. The lack of English comprehension skill is also apparent in informal contexts. Respondents rated their ability to follow a story on radio or television in English as follows: Sotho: 28 per cent, Tswana: 14 per cent, Pedi: 19 per cent, Swazi: 27 per cent, Ndebele: 3 per cent, Xhosa: 24 per cent, Zulu: 32 per cent, Venda: 0 per cent and Tsonga: 24 per cent.

More recently, the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS, 2008) polled a representative sample of South Africans to determine, among others, their self-reported English language proficiency. The NIDS data require self-assessment of language proficiency, specifically reading and writing, in the home language as well as in English on a 4-point Likert scale. In their discussion of this survey, Posel and Zeller (2010) provide an overview of previous sociolinguistic surveys and agree with Deumert, Inder and Maitra (2005) “that self-assessed levels of proficiency are mostly over-estimated and that the language skills of those participants who report average or high proficiency in English are often less than basic”. In Posel and Zeller’s (2010, p. 14) analysis of the NIDS data, they note differences between younger (between 15 and 30) and older (over 30) respondents in perceived reading and writing ability in English:

African adults aged 15 to 30 years are almost twice as likely as older African adults to report reading very well in English; and whereas only 5 per cent of young adults reported not being able to read in English at all, almost 31 per cent of older adults reported no ability to read English.

Similar changes are apparent when comparing male and female respondents in the different age groups, with more female respondents reporting good language proficiency in their home language and in English. Although these differences can be attributed to young people over-reporting their competence, Posel and Zeller (2010, p. 14–15) suggest that “the data would also be consistent with socio-economic changes since the ending of apartheid”, since it seems unlikely that young women as a group would over-report their language abilities. Attempting to obtain an overview of language proficiency, the authors compare respondents who reported high levels of proficiency in both their home language and in English: “the NIDS data suggest that approximately 65 percent of adults in South Africa are home language proficient whereas only 47 percent are English language proficient. Both home language and English language proficiency are lowest among African adults (Posel and Zeller, 2010, p. 17). Nel and Müller (2010, p. 636) suggest reasons for this situation:

Lack of access to newspapers, magazines, TV and radio; lack of opportunity to hear or to speak English; lack of English reading material at home and at school; and poor language teaching by teachers whose own English proficiency is limited.

Although spoken by so few and not understood by many, as Probyn (2001, p. 250) notes, “English remains the language of power and access – economically, politically, socially – despite the fact that it is the mother tongue of a relatively small minority . . . indigenous languages, although spoken widely at family and community level, are relatively disempowered”. This trend may worsen if the highbrow push for “English-only” by the next generation of upwardly mobile South Africans continues.

Linguistic studies on the features of native and non-native varieties of English in South Africa are scant. The existence of particular varieties is an obvious remnant of the Apartheid system where ethnolinguistic groups were separated and particular norms for English language use developed in each community. However, all local languages have enriched the English spoken at the tip of the African continent, adding not only unique vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, intonations and pronunciations but also attempting to cement a national identity in post-apartheid South Africa.

The point of English as a lingua franca is for it to be used as an additional language by the majority of South Africans and census records give an indication of the English language resources that are available in the form of teachers, civil servants and the like. In terms of language acquisition, both in- and out-of-class experiences with English will probably be with native and non-native varieties of English. Such English language resources are spread unevenly throughout the country, with rural areas having the least exposure to English. This is the situation referred to by Balfour (2002, p. 27) when he notes that “In South Africa, however, what is understood to be ‘English’ [. . .] is problematic because the quality of language instruction is dependent on social-economic as well as geographical variables”.

Calls for a specific South African standard for English language teaching have died down since the 1990s. This is not ideal, since it assumes that speakers know what the most desirable variety may be for acquisition purposes and in the process prejudice regarding “proper English” is painfully evident in particular teachers’ attitudes (see e.g. Van der Walt, 2007). The phenomenon that Bobda (2006) calls “the new mother tongues” in his country (Cameroon) is also evident in South Africa, where parents who are home-language speakers of African languages or Afrikaans make a conscious decision to introduce English as their home language and children grow up as home-language speakers of a variety of South African English. Bobda (2006, p. 67) argues that there should be reference to new mother tongues since “French, English and Pidgin English have taken over the mother tongue status and functions of indigenous languages”. Acknowledging the role of English as a lingua franca in this way could work against additive bi-/ multilingualism, since its role as a “traffic” language requires describing not only its context-specific use but also its place among the many other South African languages.

The importance of access to a standardised (and by implication powerful) variety of English is rejected by Balfour (2002, p. 10) when he says that

[t]he need for common access seems to me to be another way of defining the need for one standardised variety available to all; yet the question of “whose standard?” has become, most unhelpfully, the focus of a now sterile debate.

From an ELF perspective it seems necessary to revive the debate not in terms of a standard per se, but certainly in the form of what Seidlhofer (2009, p. 241) calls codification, “with a conceivable ultimate objective of making it a feasible, acceptable and respected alternative to ENL [English as a native language] in appropriate contexts of use”. By codification we mean the acknowledgement of native and non-native varieties of English in South Africa, since it goes much further than standardization towards a single South African English.

When one thinks of English language use in terms of Kachru’s 1985 distinction between the inner, the outer and the expanding circle of English language users, it becomes difficult to find an easy fit for the country as a whole. We concur with Branford (1996, p. 48) when he says, “an intelligent respect for one another’s ‘Englishes’ is one of the many tolerances that must be learned and practised in a future South Africa”. However, the concern ought to be less the variety of English spoken but rather the quality of an English that can ensure success in a globalised world.

Very topical is the current national student drive (2015/2016) for decolonised, free education that again includes violent opposition against Afrikaans being permitted as a language of tuition at tertiary institutions. Ironically, English with its undisputed colonial roots is unquestionably the preferred language of learning and teaching despite few students being sufficiently academically literate in it (Smit, 2010; van Dyk, 2005).

English remains the gatekeeper in higher education, although some academics call for increased attention to African languages (Maseko, 2014) and highlight the benefits of mother tongue education (Alexander, 2000, 2002; Heugh, 2005; Smit, 2010). Likewise, voices calling for English plus multilingual education seem louder (Koch and Burkett, 2005; Hibbert and van der Walt, 2014; Van der Walt and Klapwijk, 2016).

Since English is an additional language, often even third or fourth, for the majority of South Africans, its use as a language of learning and teaching (LoLT) has been blamed for low pass rates, particularly at school level, to the extent that the Department of Basic Education conducted research on the effectiveness of translating school-exit examinations into African languages. The experiment showed that “The translated paper[s] did not improve the performance of learners because of a lack of scientific concepts in African languages”¹ (National Examinations and Assessment, 2009, p. 8). This conclusion is simplistic, but it does marginally suggest that English is not necessarily the problem, as Leibowitz (2004) also concludes in her study of academic literacy in English at higher education level. In his discussion of the future of English as a lingua franca in South Africa, Balfour (2002) relativises the role of English in school success by indicating that several issues play a role; among them poverty and poor resourcing of schools. Although all these issues demand the urgent attention and rigorous investigation that Balfour calls for, the NIDS results suggest that poor reading and writing proficiency in English implies that fewer students are able to gain access to higher education, because English is the main (if not only) language of learning and teaching. It is, therefore, worrying that surveys related to English language proficiency at tertiary level indicate serious problems (Van Dyk, 2005).

For a language to be used as a lingua franca, it needs to be taught well and taught widely. In their study on the effect that teachers’ poor language proficiency in English has on their learners, Nel and Müller (2010, p. 645) conclude that, “A dark picture regarding teacher and learner English language proficiency emerges” with diverse factors (as Balfour (2002) also contends) conspiring against the teachers: overcrowded classes, lack of exposure to English print materials and media outside the classroom; in fact in any language. When this situation is coupled with “student-teachers’ perceptions of their own needs and proficiency in English, their perceptions of the level of support that they render to ESL learners, their perceptions regarding differentiated assessment of a diverse learner corps, and limited ESL resources availability” (Nel and Müller, 2010, p. 646), the future of English as a lingua franca seems dark. Moreover, voices against the dominance of English also argue that the language entrenches disadvantage because “language habits and perceptions are formed during the cognitive development of the rising generations, that is, in the process of education, and old habits tend to persist” (Kotzé, 2014, p. 17).

After at least three years of instruction in a home language, the vast majority of learners switch to English as a LoLT in fourth grade making mastery of English crucial for knowledge transfer and meaning-making. It thus remains curious that in post-apartheid education, a colonial language rather than any of the indigenous languages is favoured as a LoLT. Elsewhere in Africa, education systems have been “looking for ways to promote literacy in the vernaculars as a means of erasing the colonial legacy” (Lilly, 1982, n.p.; see also Benson, 2004; Stroud, 2002; 2003). However, the strong rejection of the local Bantu languages as LoLTs by parents and policy makers appears to stem from the historic association with the pitiable quality of Bantu education and adds to the intricacy of the current language-in-education debates (Lafon and Webb, 2008).

As the previous section showed, English is the preferred language of education, mostly owing to its perceived elite status that acts as a social marker and access to key professions. Despite desegregation at all levels, little cross-cultural socialisation occurs and most South Africans would be using their home languages for such interactions. Moving beyond the confines of the private space, geographical context and racial identity would generally determine which languages are used in service encounters. Even in urban areas, it would not be unusual to switch from an initial encounter in English to another regional language.

National and regional daily newspapers appear in other languages and their readership tends to surpass that of the English dailies. According to the South African Audience Research Foundation (Readership Summary 2015), English language newspapers like the Cape Argus (358, 000), Citizen (426, 000), The Star (602, 000) and The Times (331, 000) all have a fairly steady readership. However, the true status of English as a lingua franca is clear when one compares these numbers to newspapers that were initially published for a readership that did not use English as a home language, for example, the Daily Voice (which includes Afrikaans articles and has a readership of 437, 000), The Sowetan (which started out as a so-called township newspaper, with a readership of 1, 611, 000) and The Sun (which uses a localized form of English with a readership of 5, 157, 000), it is clear that English is not merely used, but has been appropriated for local purposes. Although there are newspapers in other languages, notably the Son (Afrikaans with a readership of 934, 000) and Isolezwe (isiZulu with a readership of 1, 128, 000), South Africans who read newspapers seem to read them mostly in English. The picture is no different when it comes to popular magazines. Of the 78 monthly magazines, 70 are English (Readership Summary, 2015).

According to the 2011 Census (Statistics South Africa, 2016), 10, 761, 27 people own television sets and 1 million fewer own a radio. For the latter group, there is a much wider choice of community language stations in addition to the public radio stations that include English. English is much more evident on TV. There are three main public television channels, of which one carries mostly English content. More importantly, people who can afford satellite TV have a slew of English language programmes, including British, American and African (outside of South Africa) channels to choose from.

Since the Constitution declares 11 languages official, one would expect adherence to this provision when it comes to service delivery at national and provincial levels as practically stated in Section 6(3) (b):

The national government and provincial governments may use any particular official languages for the purposes of government, taking into account usage, practicality, expense, regional circumstances and the balance of the needs and preferences of the population as a whole or in the province concerned; but the national government and each provincial government must use at least two official languages. Municipalities must take into account the language usage and preferences of their residents.

State departments have each drafted their own language policy; a selection of these will be described to show the differences in their responses to the call for department-specific language policies.

The SANDF was one of the first organs of post-Apartheid South Africa to draft its language policy, identifying English as its “thread language” (Language Policy for the Department of Defence 1998). Although this provision was opposed, mainly by Afrikaans-speaking members of the public, it was clear that the inclusion of former liberation army soldiers as well as troops from the former homelands called for a speedy decision regarding the language of command and operations (De Klerk and Barkhuizen, 1998).

This department’s language policy was tabled and approved on 30 October 2014, two decades after the adoption of the new Constitution. The policy seems more nuanced than that of the SANDF when it identifies six factors that “will be taken into account in arriving at the choice of official language(s) the DAC will use in each context/situation” (DAC, 2014, p. 4): usage, practicality, expense, regional circumstances and “the balance of the needs and preferences of the public it serves” (DAC, 2014, p. 5). In a table that lists the main contexts or situations, English is reserved for inter and intra-government as well as international communication.

There is a clear positioning at the start of the DST policy, where it is stated that

Compared to other government departments (e.g. the South African Police Service, or the Department of Home Affairs) the Department’s direct communication with the public is limited. Most of its communication is with the public entities and other government departments, where English is accepted as the language of common usage.

The responsibility for increasing access to science and technology in African languages is placed neatly at the door of another organ of state, the National Research Foundation:

[T]he South African Agency for the Advancement of Science and Technology, a business unit of the National Research Foundation, does the most important work in raising public awareness of science and technology, and should therefore be encouraged to increase its communications in official languages other than English.

The most recent language policy to be gazetted is that of the DCS (2016). Unlike the DAC and the DST, the policy provisions of the DCS are based on a survey (Department of Correctional Services Language Policy, 2016, p. 8):

A survey was conducted in 2006 by the DCS. The survey findings indicated that the majority of the DCS community (personnel and inmates), prefer English as a business language. Although English came up as the preferred business language, the findings further suggested that the challenge facing the Department is that the quality of written and verbal communication in English is very poor. Eighty-one percent (81 per cent) of participants in the survey had at least NQF level 1 (Grade 7) proficiency in English. Two other preferred official languages were also identified by the survey for each Region and these differ from Region to Region.

To our knowledge this is the only state department that explicitly mentions the level of English language proficiency, but it does not indicate any measures to address the problem despite the provision that “English shall be the business language of the Department” (Department of Correctional Services Language Policy, 2016, p. 9).

In the final report of the Language Plan Task Group (LANGTAG) the complexity of language use in the Department of Justice was already pointed out in 1996, when the Task Group acknowledges

that in the case of the Department of Justice, the possible impact of an official language policy on inter-provincial and province-central Government relations, for example the language in which judgements are written, necessitates a special and perhaps urgent in-depth study of this sector.

When one considers the use of English as a lingua franca in court proceedings, the language becomes a stumbling block for ordinary people who need to gain access to justice in a language that they do not use every day. For this very reason the draft² language policy of the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development (2015) identifies at least three and in some cases five languages to be used in “service points” in the various provinces. English and Afrikaans appear in all the combinations (Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, 2015, p. 11). In addition, the policy states that “The doj&cd [sic] will for practical reasons, in general, use English to conduct its business and to provide services to all the citizens” (Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, 2015, p. 17).

One of the biggest problems, however, is the provision that states, “Interpretation services will be provided where necessary, subject only to limitations imposed by lack of resources” (Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, 2015, p. 17). The role of court interpreters is a problematic and contentious issue, and Lebese (2013, p. 135) in one of the few studies on the topic, finds (among many other problems) that “court interpreters omit information uttered in the original utterance and add information which was not contained in the original utterance”. Needless to say, this situation does not support the exercise of justice sufficiently.

From this admittedly brief overview, it becomes clear that “English is the undisputed de facto language of preference in government (including the Department of Education)” (Kotzé, 2014, p. 19), but this position is criticised by intellectuals who wish to raise the status of African languages. Prah (2007, p. 16) bemoans the decline of multilingualism in South African society and levels the following accusation: “African elites owe their positions of privilege and influence to the use of the colonial languages”. In Parliament Afrikaans is the only language other than English that is heard sometimes, despite the fact that interpretation services are available for the other languages. The situation has not changed since Luckett’s (1993, p. 39) description, where English is

the “vertical medium” for higher domains such as education, politics and law … seldom heard outside middle class contexts … and African languages are typically used for the “lower domains” such as family, sport, religion … [and] … are not considered suitable for higher education or for serving the needs of the modern state.

The important point that emerges from this chapter is that despite its status as an apparent lingua franca, or maybe because of its status as a lingua franca, English also acts as a barrier to social and educational mobility, particularly as far as rural communities are concerned. Although its high status is undisputed, there are other contenders for the position of lingua franca. Urban vernaculars have developed rapidly and have been adopted by multilingual communities as localised lingua francas, for example, Pretoria Sotho, tsotsitaal, or flaaitaal. Young children growing up in such environments are increasingly heard to use these varieties as their language of communication. In the Western and Northern Cape, Afrikaans is still widely used as a lingua franca. With the influx of immigrants and migrants, a case could be made for an active development of Swahili or French as a Pan-African lingua franca, as Wildsmith-Cromarty and Conduah (2015) argue.

It is in this diversity of languages, cultures and communities that English lives as one lingua franca among several and it is in this complex context that it acquires its particular shape and flavour. South Africans have developed a taste for it and its continued use will depend on the degree to which it maintains a reputation as a language that empowers. However, many voices argue that the dominance of English entrenches unequal power relations (Khokhlova, 2015, p. 990) or as Balfour (2002, p. 25) notes, “the position of English was, and continues to be, much more ambiguous; resented as an inaccessible lingua franca, envied as a ‘gateway to progress’”.

1 This perception is widespread yet not valid. No translation will help if learners have not been exposed to translated terms in the course of their schooling.

2 Although the time for feedback on the policy has expired, there is no evidence at this stage that a final policy has been gazetted.

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