The African National Congress (ANC) has assured South Africans that the Afrikaans language will not disappear following President Cyril Ramaphosa’s pronouncement that the BELA Act must be implemented in its entirety. Two clauses in the BELA Act have been opposed by various political parties and civil organisation groups, which have stated that the full implementation of the Act would pose a threat to the Afrikaans language.
ANC NEC member Febe Potgieter says that all languages must be protected as enshrined in the constitution. “Afrikaans is not going to disappear, it’s one of the official languages, it’s spoken by a broader community than just the Afrikaner community. For them to isolate themselves, we think that is a problem rather than to see themselves as part of the community of twelve South African languages.”
