The panel comprised Neville Alexander, director of the UCT-based Project for the Study of Alternative Education in SA; Professor Theo du Plessis, head of the Unit for Language Management at the University of the Free State; Nomboniso Gasa, a political and gender policy analyst; Kathleen Heugh, a chief research specialist with the HSRC; Professor Peter Mtuze, retired head of the African Languages Department and former deputy registrar at Rhodes University; Professor Sizwe Satyo, head of African Languages and Literatures at UCT; and Mantoa Rose Smouse, a Sotho specialist, UCT researcher and a PhD candidate with the University of Florida in the US.

The following is an edited version of the debate. See the full version on the Sunday Times website (www.sundaytimes.co.za).

Alexander: "We need to understand that, unless African languages are given market value, unless their status is enhanced, and unless African languages are learned in a multilingual context by all South African citizens, we are not going to make the progress that we are potentially capable of making in the country. And I mean progress in all dimensions of our society: economic, political, cultural and educational."

"We are told that English is the language of business. We are told that that is the main reason why people who speak African languages as their first language wish to learn English - so that they can obtain jobs of higher remunerative value. And that is the reason why many, possibly even most, people who have African languages as a first language, believe that there is no need to develop African languages . The state and big business in particular need to make it, if not compulsory, at least preferable that in order to get a job, you need to be able to speak an African language."

Satyo: "The missionaries made people believe that African languages were languages of barbarians. It's very sad that black people, African people, feel that they are beggars in the economy of the country."

Du Plessis: "There is this link between power and what happens to language. Professor Jaap Steyn, who wrote a book about the rise of Afrikaans, found for every political or economic gain there was a language gain. Now, that seems to be one of our problems. Do we see BEE being correlated to language gains? No."

Gasa: "Language has got to be preserved but also seen as dynamic in and for itself, as a part of self-identification, as part of heritage, as part of liberation. Certainly it's important to look at how people get into the mainstream economy, how people's lives improve. But I think it's also important that language is important as a way of understanding oneself. So it goes way beyond economic value."

"Secondly, I think we can't - with all due respect - sit comfortably with the statement that says for every economic gain, Afrikaans as a language also developed. Because I want to know: whose economic gain, at whose expense?"

Nkosi: "Research done by PanSALB indicates that the majority of parents would like their children to learn African languages."

Heugh: "It would be important to identify how far down the road have we come and are we on the right track. We have, as a country, made significant gains in terms of prioritising linguistic diversity in our Constitution, establishing a structure like the Pan South African Language Board and a section of the Department of Arts and Culture responsible for language development and diversity."

"However, what we haven't done very well is manage the provisions which the Constitution and the legislation have put at our disposal. When we looked at the need to accommodate our linguistic diversity, we somehow felt that we needed to replicate what had been done with Afrikaans, 11 times over. And we then felt we had to establish a whole series of substructures to deal with the development of the indigenous languages in order to try to rearrange the deck chairs to catch up with Afrikaans. Now, the danger in having a catch-up 11 times over is that you have to expend vast financial resources in the establishment of duplicate substructures which require office equipment, administrative systems, etcetera . By the time you've paid for all of those things, there is no money left for playing catch-up any longer."

"We've moved a long way towards identifying a language policy, but when it came to actually having it enacted by Parliament, we shied away from that and came out with simply a national language framework, which is not a piece of legislation. And while it is not a piece of legislation, you cannot have a set of regulations which establish who is going to do what, when, why and how.

"If we are thinking in terms of short-term development and the empowerment of a small group of people, then we go with English.

"If we are saying we're concerned about development in South Africa and the sub-continent in the medium to long term, then we need to look at the way in which language facilitates access to services in rural areas and to education which children can actually understand."

Alexander: "Language is a class issue. When we speak about language in constitutional and legislative terms, we are talking about so-called standard languages. To teach the child the standard you have to use the variety that the child knows. Individual multilingualism is one of the solutions to the kind of issues that we're talking about. People need to know at least three languages. In order to promote literacy levels, you obviously have to start at the bottom. And you have to start in the mother tongue. Otherwise all the talk about a learner-centred system of education is just rubbish.

"Government has suddenly become aware of the fact that our children can't read and that part of the problem is the fact that it's not mother tongue-based, and that even when it is mother tongue-based, teachers don't have the capacity to teach reading and writing. Without literacy, without reading and writing, your economy is dependent on fewer and fewer elite-level people."

Heugh: "I completely agree with Neville but I'd like to come back to this issue of the relationship between the economy and African languages. It's not so much about providing resources from Mr Manuel's pot towards the development of languages. It's about using the resources more smartly. We are not using the money smartly. There is no point any longer trying to pretend that the issue is around either providing access to English or keeping children in a backward state through the African languages. That is a red-herring debate.

"All children in South Africa require access to the international language we use. It might very well be Chinese towards the end of this century, but right now it's English that we need. But in addition to English, we have to ensure that our children are able to read and write really well.

"Assessments of our education system are showing not just that we are doing badly, but we are increasingly falling behind what will become the global targets.

"We now find that up to 80% of learners are not able to read and write at the required levels of Grade 3, Grade 6 and, in a recent study, by Grade 8. We will be having children leaving school at the end of Grade 9 who mostly cannot read or write at all - in any language!"

Nkosi: "That debate is not necessarily about African languages. It's about methodology."

Smouse: "If we are talking about resources, is the government giving us enough money, for example, at university level, to promote African languages? Are there bursaries, are there language policies at the university encouraging students to learn African languages?"

Du Plessis: "In a sense I am very encouraged by the whole name issue [changing place names], because it brings all kinds of interesting things to the fore, using languages Ñ although these are names of people, but they denote languages Ñ using them visibly in public."

Gasa: "We can have R30-billion and put it in development of African languages. Frankly, what you are likely to have is something that is so dead and so flat ... I don't know if you've seen the Sesotho that is taught at universities. It's dead, it doesn't speak, it infantilises adults."

Alexander: "We made a whole lot of points, for example, the fact that in both educational and cultural spheres, we need to be promoting the use and development of African languages. I think most of us, when we say that, almost automatically think that government should take the lead. I want to stress that in my view it's not correct. I think that government should create an enabling environment. I think government people should be role models.

"We need Ñ I mean, this is an old hackneyed example Ñ we need President Mbeki, we need people like that, to speak more often on the English channels in isiXhosa or isiZulu, or whatever it is, and have subtitles in English at the bottom.

"You need role modelling which will actually lift the status and the interest ... And the point Nomboniso made is very important, namely that the learning and the teaching of African languages needs to become modernised. It needs to become enjoyable, attractive and so on ... I am not saying that all the courses are bad; on the contrary, I know of very good courses.

"The fact that the banks are beginning to make their auto-banking available in different languages, those are very important developments. And I think those are the kinds of things that we want to see.

"We simply need more signs in African languages. You know, you drive into blooming Cape Town, you really think you are in Europe Ñ unless you go to Khayelitsha or Guguletu."

Du Plessis: "Exactly!"

Smouse: "I am glad you came back to the issue of signs. I did a project for linguistics. I was looking at signs posted around the Cape Town area. I was horrified. They are supposed to be promoting Xhosa, for example. There were so many spelling errors, mistranslations. So we really have to be careful Ñ the quality can make people actually shy away from the use of these languages."

Nkosi: "That is our concern as PanSALB, the quality of translated work. We were in Parliament and I was there, speaking my language, and I was warned that you cannot use your language because of this and this. Excuse me? In Parliament? And then they said, we have got poor translators. And then I said to them, give them over to PanSALB, we are going to train them for you if you do not."

Mtuze: "I want to add one classic example of negligence and carelessness in translation. One of our best Xhosa-speaking universities, where it says "private property" the Xhosa version means "this place has got an owner", implying therefore that public buildings are not owned by anybody."

Satyo: "As a socialist, I would agree."

Mtuze: "Before we close, there is an issue that we have been skirting around about our black students running away, not even shying away, from the language.

"Running away. And to be in their shoes and boots, saying that the languages, all of them, have no economic value and therefore what are you going to do with an African language? That starts from the parents who say, I am not going to send my child to do this language Ñ no economic value."

Heugh: "Can I just make a very short point? Sometimes if one selects a key strategy and creates a regulation or a policy out of that , there is a wash-back effect.

"And there is a very simple one that we need to make in this country if we are bold enough and that is to simply say, employment opportunities beyond school will be dependent on people who speak two South African languages, one of which must be a local, regional language.

The wash-back will be, university departments of African languages will suddenly have a lot of business. And there will be a lot of business in terms of need for translation and interpreting services and publishing services, the school system, etcetera ."

Nkosi: "And on that note, Kathleen, the issue that we do not have a language Act where we can actually build those regulations, is therefore the issue that we need to address urgently. And I would like to propose that that process needs to be resuscitated.

"I think people like Neville Alexander who actually were part of that process need to form a pressure group so that the process is finalised."