Why is Afrikaans still a compulsory language subject forced upon learners?

South Africa, post-apartheid regime, remains with many schools that were previously “White Schools”. These schools are now under a democratic government. Majority of learners are black coming from townships. For instance, most of the former “White Schools” in the Vaal, Sedibeng in Gauteng are dominated by black children coming from townships of Sebokeng, Evaton, Sharpville etc. Minority of the learners come from towns areas such as Vanderbijlpark, Vereeniging, Three Rivers etc, where schools are situated. And it is the same case with many other places in South Africa.

Learners are doing English subject as Home Language (HL) and Afrikaans as First Additional Language (FAL), yet their original home languages are indigenous, such as Sesotho, IsiZulu, SeTswana, Sepedi etc. The question arises thereafter : Is Afrikaans still relevant and necessary to be taught in these schools? Learners in Grade 12 still struggle to construct a meaningful sentence in Afrikaans and they are showing disinterest in the subject. Those who graduated Grade 12, coming from these schools, are still searching for the relevance of Afrikaans in the real world or market place post schooling days, and they haven’t found it.

English has become a universal language – one can secure a job interview conducted in English in Venezuela, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Spain, Argentina, Uruguay, United States of America etc. In turn, with Afrikaans, one will barely secure an interview in these countries and others. Even in South Africa, one has a few places where Afrikaans would be needed to secure a job. Why are the  learners still forced to do Afrikaans in these schools? How is this subject helping them and how is it relevant to what they hope in future?

Afrikaans should not be compulsory in schools of South Africa. Afrikaans should be an optional language subject that learners will choose to do or not to do. Judging from the comments learners make with regard to the subject, it’s vivid that serious amount of time is wasted in schools and this should be a conclusive indicator that Afrikaans holds no importance to the life of the learner in the current and future society of our nation. Thus, this paper argues that Afrikaans should be withdrawn from being a compulsory language subject and be an optional language subject.

Every school of this nature (former “White Schools”) can have English (Compulsory and HL) and learners can choose between Afrikaans , and other nine official languages. It can even be international languages such as Swahili, Portuguese, Spanish or French (some of African nations speak these languages and have them as lingua franca). The reality is that South African economy, politics, education, technology, and communication platforms etc, are driven by county’s lingua franca (English) not Afrikaans.