The Demise of Sesotho Language in the Democratic South Africa and its Impact on the Socio-cultural Development of the Speakers

Abstract

The Constitution of South Africa provides for eleven official languages, and all of them have equal status, but Afrikaans and English are unfairly privileged over Black languages. This state of affairs has therefore resulted in the possible death of Black languages. The aim of this paper is therefore; to examine factors that have led to possible demise of Black languages in the new democratic South Africa, and emphasis is placed on the Sesotho language spoken in the Free State and Southern Gauteng provinces. It has been observed that the speed at which Sesotho is dying out is currently having negative consequences in the lives of the speakers, as they struggle to organize their world around them. Further, the Sesotho language has been extremely stigmatized to the extent that the speakers between the ages of 15 – 30 cannot speak and write the language properly. It is for these reasons that the researcher examined factors that contributed to this state of affairs in the post-Apartheid South Africa.