ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on access to the languages and literacies of power, it is important to remember that these cannot be separated from access to the kinds of resources that make education possible for children: clean water, food, clothing, care, housing, health services, and transport. It aims to develop the arguments in the access rows of the interdependent model for critical literacy in order to understand the relationship between access and the other dimensions of the model: power, diversity and design. Access is not just about getting access to powerful forms of language; it is also about access to audiences, to platforms, to modes of distribution such as publication, to influential networks. The access paradox recognises that domination without access excludes students from the language or the language variety that would afford them the most linguistic capital, thereby limiting their life chances. Many white South Africans desire access to at least one African language.
