Discussions under way for more school subjects to be written in indigenous languages: Motshekga

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga says discussions are under way to have more school subjects to be written in indigenous languages. She believes that learners understand the education system far better when taught in their own home language.
Motshekga was delivering the keynote address on the second day of the International Mother Language Day seminar in East London in the Eastern Cape. She applauded the Eastern Cape for taking the lead in such an important development.
“It really has been very helpful that the Eastern Cape took the lead and you can see it took almost ten years to get to where we are so in a sector that is as big and as complicated as us, we need a very systematic long term transformation program for you to have the confidence to drive the change process. This is a major change process because it is at the heart of what we are doing. As we are saying it is a vehicle for learning and teaching for everything that we are supposed to do,” says Motshekga.
The Pan South African Language Board (PANSALB) organised the seminar in partnership with the Arts and Culture Department. Acting CEO for PANSALB Xolisa Tshongolo says they have committed to playing an active role in preserving indigenous languages.
“We as the Pan South African Language, it is the responsibility of each department to come up with subject-specific terminology, once that terminology is harvested language, it is brought to us so that we can standardise. When we are doing that process we are making use of our bodies that are responsible for that in consultation with the speakers of the language and specialists in the field. So once we get consensus and agreement then we authorise and agree on that terminology so we have gone through that process already for mathematics and science,”  says Tshongolo.