Democracy and Multilingualism in South African Primary Education: Implications for Early Literacy Development

South Africa is a country of rich cultural and linguistic diversity. As a result, multilingualism has received much attention in South African education and research over the past two decades. In part this has been in response to the inclusive and democratic Language-in-Education Policy regarding 11 official languages (Department of Education (DoE), Language in education policy. Government Gazette, 17997 (383) Pretoria, South Africa, 1997). By promoting additive multilingualism in education, the Language-in-Education Policy advocates the maintenance of learners’ home languages within the framework of human and linguistic rights. This is necessary because in the current situation some children begin their schooling in a second or third language (O’Carrol, S, Hickman R, Narrowing the literacy gap: Strengthening language and literacy development between birth and six years for children in South Africa, Wordworks, Cape Town, 2012). Yet research shows that the mismatch between learners’ home languages and the language of learning and teaching often results in unequal opportunities for learners’ epistemological access to learning, especially in early schooling where they start reading and writing, in an unfamiliar language (Bloch C, Theory and strategy of early literacy in contemporary Africa with special reference to South Africa, PRAESA occasional papers, no. 25. University of Cape Town, Cape Town, 2006; Prosper A, Nomlomo, V, Per Linguam, 32(3):79–94, 2016).