LANGUAGE BIAS PERPETUATES COLONIALISM
THE aptitude of Cheryl Zondi has uncovered the importance of proficiency in a language for ensuring meaningful participation in court proceedings.
If the language proficiency of Cheryl and that of advocate Peter Daubermann were not equivalent she would have succumbed to the cross-examination.
This is because she was not only a woman, but also very young at the time of the incident.
The confidence that she acquired through her skill in English enabled her to resist advocate Daubermann’s cross-examination.
By incorporating and entrenching the 11 languages within the Bill of Rights in the Constitution, the drafters sought to prevent the use of certain languages for domination of the non-speakers of such languages.
If one still remembers, in order to control the indigenous people at servant level, Dutch and subsequently English and Afrikaans were used in court.
Perpetual use of only these languages in defiance of the Constitution perpetuates white supremacy.
The advantage of conducting court proceedings in any of the languages that were used for colonial or apartheid purposes continues to give advantage to whites above blacks.
The meaning and the context of the evidence provided in court is not guaranteed when a certain group use their mother tongue and the others are relying solely on the translated or interpreted version of a witness’ evidence.