ABSTRACT
South Africa is known to the rest of the world mostly for its now defunct, divideand-rule apartheid system, on the basis of which the country was ruled from 1948 to 1994 and whose legacy is likely to haunt the country for years to come. In academic circles around the world, however, South Africa is also known for something else, namely its liberal language policy, a policy which Bamgbose (2003), perhaps writing too soon, says “will considerably reduce the problem of exclusion of the masses, since nine African languages will be available to different segments of the population for participation in the national system” (pp. 51-52).
