Albie Sachs — we must see language not as a battleground, but as a gift

When former Constitutional Court Judge Justice Albie Sachs speaks, South Africa listens. His voice, textured by decades of struggle, exile and jurisprudence, carries not only the weight of our constitutional order, but also the tenderness of lived experience.

The Inclusive Society Institute recently had the privilege of speaking with Justice Sachs on the subject of mother-tongue education, a theme that has followed him from the establishment of our country’s Constitution to the benches of the Constitutional Court and to his reflections in his current (very busy) retirement.

His words remind us that language is never simply about communication, it is about dignity, access, belonging and the delicate work of building towards a shared nation.

Justice Sachs recalled one of the most relevant cases to come before the Constitutional Court during his time on the Bench – the establishment of the Gauteng Education Bill. At its heart was a simple yet heated question: can language be used as the basis to exclude children from public schools?

Afrikaans-speaking groups argued for the preservation of single-medium Afrikaans schools, fearing the erosion of their culture and tongue.

On paper, the case was straightforward. The Constitution was clear: private schools could be single-medium if they wished, but public schools, as institutions of access, could not exclude children on the basis of language. Yet, as Sachs recounted, the issue was far from technical. He felt the anguish of counsel, who argued not simply as an advocate, but as a member of a community facing what they saw as an existential threat.

It was in this moment that Sachs demonstrated the essence of constitutionalism, namely the ability to hear anguish, to recognise history and to weigh it against the rights and needs of others.

He reached back into the painful past of forced Anglicisation under British rule, when Afrikaans and its speakers endured humiliation, land loss and cultural subjugation. He also remembered the Afrikaans literary renaissance of the Sestigers, the rebellious writers who imagined a freer South Africa. Afrikaans, he reminded us, had produced “treasure, literary treasure, cultural treasure”.

But while Afrikaans communities carried scars of cultural erasure, Sachs contrasted their history with the devastating exclusion faced by black children. These were children growing up in oversubscribed schools with empty desks (if any), underresourced libraries and patchy sports fields, yet turned away because they did not speak Afrikaans.

Here was the dilemma: one community striving to preserve its language and identity, another aching for access to opportunity after centuries of dispossession. Whose claim to dignity takes precedence? Sachs’s answer was rooted in the Constitution’s promise of equality and access.

The right to education, he argued, could not be subordinated to exclusivity.

And yet, he lamented what was lost in the process. What if Afrikaans schools had chosen inclusion instead of defensiveness? What if they had said to black children: “You are welcome here. You can learn alongside our children, kick a football together, share a playground and build friendships.”

For Sachs, such a move could have transformed Afrikaans from a language of exclusion into one of resilience.

Listening to Sachs, one could not help but think of the continuing debates surrounding the language policy at Stellenbosch University, once the heart of Afrikaans intellectual life. Today, it is a vibrant, multicultural campus where English is the main language of teaching, and students from across Africa converge.

There is a palpable energy, Sachs noted, but also a sense of something being lost.

This tension is not unique to Afrikaans. Across South Africa, language remains entangled with identity, power, struggle and belonging. Whether it is the fading presence of isiXhosa in Cape Town schools, the struggles of isiZulu pupils in Gauteng or the overwhelming dominance of English in universities, the question is the same: how do we protect the richness of our linguistic diversity without reproducing old exclusions? How do we hold onto our individual identities, while remaining inclusive?

Sachs also recalled the Ermelo case, where the battle over language pitted school governing bodies against provincial education authorities. It was here that his colleague, the late Justice Yvonne Mokgoro, broke into tears on the bench, remembering her own struggles growing up in Galeshewe. She recalled the barriers she faced, the humiliation her family endured under apartheid’s education system.

And yet, despite her personal pain, Mokgoro sided with principle. The provincial minister had acted too autocratically and she therefore ruled that due process had not been respected. Her judgment was a reminder that fairness requires discipline and the ability to separate personal anguish from constitutional principle.

For Sachs, these cases revealed not immovable absolutes, but tensions. The right of communities to preserve their languages and the right of children to equal education. The Constitution offers no simple answers, only a framework for “meaningful engagement”.

Perhaps Sachs’s most striking reflection was on what could have been. If Afrikaans schools had embraced multilingualism, creating spaces where Afrikaans thrived alongside English and African languages, then Afrikaans might not carry its current reputation as a language of exclusivity. Instead, it could have been a vehicle for inclusion, a bridge between histories rather than a barrier.

Sachs put it plainly: “An embrace of multilingualism would be the most powerful protection that the Afrikaans language could have. Protection does not lie in circling the wagons, but in moving them outward, away from the laager and inviting others in.”

This is not only true for the Afrikaans language. Our entire education system stands to benefit from a move towards multilingualism. Research continues to prove that children learn best in their mother tongue. Yet, English dominance across the country continues to widen inequality, privileging those whose families can afford early immersion in the language.

Meanwhile, African languages remain severely marginalised, their richness underused as tools of education and instruction.

Reflecting on Justice Sachs’s words, one is struck by the way language weaves together personal and shared identity, generations of history and justice. To fight for one’s mother tongue is deeply human. But when protection of language comes at the expense of another child’s future, we must pause.

The challenge before us is to create places of learning and teaching where multilingualism is not a threat, but a growing strength. Where children do not have to make the choice between access and identity.

Where Afrikaans thrives not in isolation, but in synergy with isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sesotho, English and more.

Justice Sachs’s reflections remind us that the Constitution is a living framework for negotiating these tensions.

The lesson Justice Sachs puts forward is clear. Languages survive not by building fences, but by building bridges. By choosing inclusion over exclusion, communities can preserve what is precious while contributing to the shared tapestry of a diverse South Africa.

As Sachs put it, Afrikaans does not need exclusivity to thrive, it has theatre, literature, journalism and cultural vibrancy that can flourish in dialogue with others. The same is true of all our languages.

If we are to build a South Africa where every child’s dignity is upheld, we must see language not as a battleground, but as a gift, a way of saying, in all our tongues: you belong here. DM

Nicola Bergsteedt is a research associate of the Inclusive Society Institute. This article draws on the Institute’s Constitutional Insights: A Series of Talks with Justice Albie Sachs. The series is being promoted in collaboration with Daily Maverick.