Mooi man.
The DEPUTY MINISTER OF HIGHER EDUCATION, SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY: ... so I did get that. Firstly, we need to make a distinction between the Constitution treating all languages equally and the equality of all languages. That is very important. As I said in the response, the Afrikaans language is at an advance level in terms of its development, precisely because it has been privileged in the past. Over and above its privilege, there was a deliberate onslaught on the other languages. Therefore, there is a deliberate effort by the department to ensure that we promote all other languages.
Unfortunately, in some instances, there have been institutions that have been deliberate in their intention to sideline all the other languages and to advantage both Afrikaans and English as the preferred medium.
Yes, there are universities such as the University of KwaZulu- Natal that has begun to use Zulu as a language and we are beginning to see most other universities and institutions of learning beginning to experiment with promoting languages. There is a centre at the North-West University, which has been launched late last year and whose intention is the digitisation of all languages, so that we are able to give advantage to all the languages.
The question of which languages are colonial and which are not remains debatable. But, our intention, as the department, and I suppose as a nation, is to ensure that language is not used to further polarise our country and that all languages become an instrument of access to our institutions of learning. [Applause.]