Dear Portfolio Committee on Justice and Correctional Services,

I hope this email finds you well.

As one of your constituents and community groups, I am the articulate speaker of LQZ (short for uLimi lomQhwebo lwesiZulu, also known as isiZulu Sign Language in English) concerned about the Constitution Eighteenth Amendment Bill, B1-2023 (the Bill).

As the native LQZ community, we oppose the designation and recognition of South African Sign Language (SASL) as the 12th official language under the Bill due to the ideology of monolingualism in contrast to the PanSALB with its mission.

If SASL is declared and recognised as the 12th official language under the Bill, it is monolingualism both in speech and in writing. Whether or not you are DHH, SASL is English as your first language that you are forced to use over the generations under the Bill and its allergy to LQZ that we speak.

We strongly urge you to learn more about the similarity between aurally-spoken and visually-spoken languages - two links as follow:
1) Phoneme - [https://www.frathwiki.com/Phoneme]; and
2) Linguistic research - [https://newscenter.sdsu.edu/sdsu_newscenter/news_story.aspx?sid=77167]

Despite different linguistic articulators, we speak LQZ fluently and coherently with confidence. Therefore, we strongly urge you to amend the Section 6 of the Constitution as follows: "Irrespective of the sign languages used, the official languages of the Republic are Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isiZulu." It will mean that LQZ is recognised as one of the eleven (11) official South African sign languages OR as one of the official (11) sign languages in South Africa. In the similar way, KSL is currently one of two official languages in South Korea along with Korean - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Sign_Language]

As the articulate speakers of LQZ, we strongly urge you to approach the PanSALB or the responsible party for urgent amendments to the Bill in its current form. If possible, we urge you to ask for new name from the DHH community whose members are fluent and proficient in English that they wish to use as their first language over the generations within the South African continent.

Make 2023 a special year for the native Zulu DHH community in KwaZulu-Natal. Let's see uLimi lomQhwebo lwesiZulu become one of the eleven (11) official sign languages in the Republic of South Africa, voted for and passed by our legislature. After more than 119 years of our campaigning for official recognition of uLimi lomQhwebo lwesiZulu, and 26 years since the new South Africa Government agreed that LQZ is a language in its own right, now is the time, with your support, to give LQZ legal status.

Thank you for taking the time to read this email. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely yours,
Mnu. Mlungisi Zwane
Founder and Director
The uLimi lomQhwebo lwesiZulu (LQZ)
Durban, 4000
Follow @LQZngelami on Twitter