Chairperson, hon members and honoured guests, we use language to communicate but, more than that, languages are carriers of the culture of the people who speak those languages. I have listened with interest to people trying to convey a cultural concept of one community in the language of another community. You will find that the translation does not carry the full meaning and original idiom.
If a language is allowed to disappear, so does the culture of the people who speak that language. We therefore support the idea that indigenous languages have to be promoted and supported because the disappearance of a language also means that writers and authors in those languages are discouraged from writing because there would be no market for their books. Researchers and scientists have told us that one of the factors contributing to the high failure rate in our schools is the fact that many children are taught in a foreign language. Azapo therefore supports the idea of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction or language of teaching and learning. We are not calling for the scrapping of English or any other language. We could have the mother tongue as a language of teaching and learning, while studying other languages as subjects.
If we are serious and invest in the promotion and revitalisation of indigenous languages, we should find that any language can be used as a medium of instruction. By so doing, we will be promoting our cultures in our country. [Applause.]