Multilingualism in South African universities is a fallacy : a critical realist perspective

Abstract

This paper explores the empirical, real, and actual trajectories in South African universities regarding multilingualism and decolonisation. It employs the critical realist approach to uncover these trajectories through reviewed literature. It investigates whether the policy is followed in implementing African indigenous languages (AILs) against the hegemony of English and Afrikaans in South African universities. The paper found that multilingualism is still an area that requires attention, even though ample legislation and policies were drafted to necessitate decolonised practices that foster it. This paper argues that the notion of decolonisation and the use of multilingualism can be placed at the centre of curriculum transformation. However, the paper again argues that actual events like a disconnect between basic and higher education systems, digitalisation, intellectualisation of African languages and confidence of the African language users in the academia can hinder multilingualism. African learners come to universities with unique African language repertoires, but English is still mostly used as a medium of instruction in most South African universities. This paper makes recommendations that can rescue the situation, some of them which are funding African languages digitalisation, awarding African languages research outputs, and widely conducting studies on the African students and academics’ perceptions on multilingual education.