Language Professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Langa Khumalo says African languages must be afforded the same opportunities in the fields of science and technology, teaching, learning, research and innovation, as other languages.
He was speaking at a language symposium in Cape Town.
Khumalo says UKZN not only supports multilingualism, but is also the perfect ground for demographics to implement such a plan.
He says 67% of students speak isiZulu as their mother tongue at the institution.
“The move away from bilingual or multilingual to monolingual is a tragedy in my understanding because all African institutions and African countries are inherently multilingual. That means we can, as Africans, carry two, three, four, five, even seven languages as an individual. In fact, we find ourselves as enriched people.”
