Youth Day: The Fight for Language Justice Continues

GOOD Statement by Brett Herron, GOOD Secretary-General:

On this Youth Day, we remember the fearless students of 1976 who took to the streets of Soweto to demand dignity in education. Their protest was not simply about textbooks or classrooms, it was a protest for voice, identity, and the right to learn in a language that empowered them, not one imposed upon them by a regime of oppression.

Afrikaans was not just a language, it was the language of the Apartheid oppressor, enforced as a tool of domination in black schools. Young people refused to be silenced. They understood that language is not neutral. It shapes how we learn, how we see ourselves, and how we are seen by society.

Nearly 50 years later, the struggle for language justice in our schools is far from over.
Today, as we implement the Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Act, we take an important step forward. The Act does not erase any language. Rather, it seeks to open the doors of learning to more children, in more languages, by shifting the final say on school language policies from exclusive School Governing Bodies to provincial education departments, with necessary safeguards.

The BELA Act is about ensuring that no child is excluded from a quality education because of the language they speak at home. It is about confronting the stubborn spatial and social legacies of apartheid that still determine who gets to learn, and in what language.

Predictably, BELA’s detractors, like Solidarity and AfriForum, have twisted this effort to build a more inclusive education system into an imagined attack on Afrikaans. In truth, the Act protects all indigenous languages and ensures language policy serves learners and communities, not historical privilege.

Youth Day calls us to honour the courage of the past with courage in the present.
The BELA Act is not the end of the road, but it is a step toward fulfilling the promise of 1976 – a South Africa where education liberates rather than excludes. A South Africa where every child, regardless of race or language, has the right to learn and thrive.

We owe that to the youth of 1976.
We owe it to every child today.

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