The future of mother-tongue education in Afrikaans and English is promising, but the same cannot be said for our indigenous languages.

From 1925 to 1994, South Africa had two official languages: English and Afrikaans. These two languages flourished because they were funded by the government -- Afrikaans especially benefited from this and developed into a fully fledged academic language in less than 100 years, something that is regarded as a linguistic miracle.

Unfortunately, this happened at the expense of our indigenous languages that did not receive the same support from the government. I often hear people asking why the speakers of our other indigenous languages (I also consider Afrikaans to be an indigenous language) do not develop their languages themselves.

What people lose sight of is that the previous government financially supported Afrikaans. For example, the Language Monument (Taal Monument) and Language Museum in Paarl and their staff salaries are provided by the government. The same has not been afforded to the other languages.

With the dawn of our democracy in 1994, a new direction was taken. Then president Nelson Mandela could hardly hide his excitement about the future of our indigenous languages, saying "we are extremely proud that the new Constitution asserts equality among South Africa's languages, and...