Official sign language makes no difference to the deaf

WHAT was the process leading to sign language becoming official?

Numerous attempts have been made since the adoption of the interim post-apartheid Constitution in 1993 to make it official.

These included a formal request by the South African National Deaf Association (DeafSA) to the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) in 1996.

The board can’t give languages official status, so nothing came of the request. Eventually another submission was made to the Constitutional Review Committee in February 2007. Two further submissions in 2013 and 2015 were made to Parliament.

In February 2020, the president announced the pending official recognition.

Two years earlier, the UN had expressed concern about the slow pace of amending the Constitution to recognise South African Sign Language. Only on May 25, 2022 did the Cabinet approve the Constitutional Eighteenth Amendment Bill for public comment.

The National Assembly gave its approval to make South African Sign Language official on May 2, 2023.

In what ways will this benefit users of sign language?

To be honest, not in any meaningful way. The Constitution obligates the government to use at least two official languages for the purposes of government administration.

The Use of Official Languages Act, 2012, later made this at least three languages. So, there is no legal requirement that all 11 languages must be used.

The official languages therefore have only symbolic value at most.

What constitutional rights do sign language users currently enjoy?

First language users of South African Sign Language already enjoy all the same individual language rights that hearing South Africans enjoy – in fact, even more – without sign language being an official language.

So, making their language official is not giving them access to any new right.

How did the country decide which sign language to use?

There’s a lot of lexical variation in South African Sign Language. One of the earliest publications on the subject, from 1998, poses a similar question: South African Sign Language – one language or many?

The authors, Debra Aaron and Philemon Akach, argue that the variation found in sign language is at most geographical and that these “dialects” all contain the same grammatical structure.

It signifies the existence of one national sign language. The Schools Act partly answers the question. It stipulates that the sign language to be used for education purposes will be the one approved by PanSALB.

Usually, the language variety used in education is considered the standard variety of the official language.

The board is also working towards the further standardisation of the sign language. In collaboration with DeafSA, the first comprehensive electronic dictionary for South African Sign Language was made available last year.

The justice minister, in his motivation for making South African Sign Language official, echoes the claim made by DeafSA way back in 2007.

It is that for the deaf (and hard of hearing persons) an official sign language will help this community to realise and enjoy their rights and human dignity, make them an integral part of South Africa and promote inclusivity.

However, the same people who have failed to realise existing rights will be responsible for trying to do so now, in the context of a largely dysfunctional and even more complex official language dispensation.

I don’t envisage any significant changes in the lives of a marginalised community who are being misled into expecting a better life for all.

Sign language is on its way to become the 12th official language in South Africa after Parliament recently agreed to amend the Constitution to this end. Theo du Plessis, an emeritus professor of South African Sign Language and Deaf Studies, shares his insights