- South African Sign Language is to become the 12th officially recognised language in the country.
- On Wednesday, President Cyril Ramaphosa will sign a new law amending the Constitution of 1996 to add the language to an existing list of 11.
- Around 600 000 people are estimated to use South African Sign Language across the country.
In May, the National Assembly of South Africa approved South African Sign Language (SASL) to become the 12th official language. At that time the approval was to amend section 6 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 and add sign language to a list already famously containing 11 languages.
According to SA News, on Wednesday President Cyril Ramaphosa will sign into law the South African Sign Language Bill during a ceremony at the Union Buildings in Pretoria. This will slightly change the South African Constitution, the country’s most important set of laws, and add SASL as an official language.
Government is hoping to promote the rights of persons who are deaf or hard of hearing through this mostly ceremonial act.
“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,” said the Presidency on the new addition.
The official languages of South Africa are in alphabetical order:
- Afrikaans,
- English,
- isiNdebele,
- isiXhosa,
- isiZulu,
- Sesotho,
- Sepedi,
- Setswana,
- siSwati,
- Tshivenda,
- and Xitsonga.
Now SASL will be added to the list. The University of the Free State estimates that around 600 000 South Africans use SASL, making it the official language with the least users in the country. The most spoken language by users is isiZulu with around 27.3 million, according to estimates.
The new legislation will seek to advance the cultural acceptance of SASL, as well as promote inclusivity and eliminate unfair discrimination. Finally, it hopes to ensure the realisation of the rights of persons who are deaf or hard of hearing have equal protection to those that are not.
South Africa will now become the fourth country on the African continent to recognise sign language as an official language. The others are Kenya, Zimbabwe and Uganda.
Zimbabwe is the country with the second most official languages at 16, followed by South Africa now at 12. Bolivia has the most with a recognised 37 official languages.
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