Unisa’s Directorate Language Services (DLS) celebrated International Mother Language Day under the theme Celebrating the Roots and the Multiplicity of Voices of the Exponentially Multilingual World: The Quest to Re-Centring Sense-Making in an All-Inclusive World. The jubilee took place on 20 February 2025, coupled with the launch of the DLS’s multilingual language style guides and an interactive web page in all the official South African languages.

DLS staff members showcasing the newly launched multilingual language style guides

The year 2025 marks the 25^th anniversary of International Mother Language Day, which is observed annually on 21 February. This year, the day was celebrated under the theme Silver Jubilee Celebration of International Mother Language Day. International Mother Language Day has been observed every year since February 2000 to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. In recognition of the Bengali people’s struggle for their language and culture, in November 1999, the General Conference of the United Nations (UN) Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) declared International Mother Language Day, which the UN General Assembly further recognised in a 2002 resolution.

Opening the celebration and welcoming everyone to the event, Prof Meahabo Magano, the Executive Director of the Department of Tuition Support and Facilitation of Learning (DTSFL), gave details on the background of mother tongue language. She related the phrase "mother tongue" to motherhood, and the birthing and nurturing of the child – whereby a child would gasp and grasp language first from the mother’s womb to the child cooing their first word by uttering "mommy".

Prof Meahabo Magano, Executive Director: DTSFL, welcoming attendees to the celebration

Magano further emphasised the important role that women, especially mothers, play in grooming and nurturing their children’s love for their mother tongue. She further acknowledged the work that is done by the Directorate Language Services as being most important for Unisa, as it does not only cater to students’ access to knowledge and success in their studies through the learning material edited and translated into their mother languages, but also allows academics and the institution as a whole to publish work that has been edited and translated by DLS.

Dr Rakwena Monareng, Director: DLS, gave a brief overview of the significance of International Mother Language Day. He highlighted that mothers and language are fundamental to humanity’s existence, with language serving as a tool for communication and expression. He further encouraged the shift in attitudes towards indigenous languages in education, business and research.  

Dr Rakwena Monareng, Director: DLS, giving a brief overview of the significance of International Mother Language Day

As the world celebrates the diversity of mother languages, Monareng cautioned against neglecting mother languages of the Global South and particularly the mother languages of the indigenous African community. He further added that it would be grossly irresponsible to ignore these languages and the value inherent in them, and just as irresponsible to fail to give them room to grow.

"We at Language Services see this day as an expression of our institutional intent," Monareng continued. "It is a reminder of our solemn responsibility to imbue the indigenous South African mother languages with sufficient cachet for us to be able to deliver our institutional Afrikanisation agenda, thereby falling in line with the Constitutional imperative of the Republic of South Africa."

The DLS jamboree was graced by the renowned son of the soil of Kenyan origin, Dr Munene Mwaniki, a lecturer at the Department of Linguistics, Languages and Literature of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Southeastern Kenya University. He is the founder and convenor of the Multilingual Education and Literacies Research Group [MEL-RG]. Mwaniki is remarkably cultivated in the field of Linguistics and is highly decorated with awards from the National Research Foundation (NRF).

Dr Munene Mwaniki, of Southeastern Kenya University, delivering the guest lecture

Mwaniki presented a guest lecture at the DLS event, unpacking the proposed theme by challenging the attendees to interrogate it with the why, how and what questions in mind. He further probed why it is important to keep focus on mother language in these opening decades of the 21^st century and, indeed, deep into the 21^st century (UNESCO 1953 Declaration, 72 years ago). Mwaniki referenced the why of the three questions to resilience of these languages, the socio-economic realities, and economic growth rates in Africa and much of the Global South as not enough to compel people to use English in their daily endeavours. This could also be true for the rest of the world. He also suggested optimisation discourse, which means making the best use of the resources we have towards the use, promotion and further development of mother languages. 

To respond to how we frame the discourse on the importance of mother language and in effect multilingualism/multilingual education in these times that are largely characterised by insidious convergence, Mwaniki called for the adaptation of complex adaptive systems (CAS). He explained that the basic idea is that a community of language users referred to as agents can be viewed as a complex adaptive system which collectively solves the problem of developing a shared communication system. To do so, Mwaniki argued that the community must reach an agreement on a repertoire of forms (a sound system in the case of spoken language), a repertoire of meanings (the conceptualisations of reality) and a repertoire of form-meaning pairs (the lexicon and grammar).

Concluding his guest lecture, Mwaniki posed the question of what epistemological, practical and pragmatic interventions, disruptions and innovations need to be developed and deployed to trigger, support and entrench mother languages in the expanse of societal endeavour. He further proposed the use of blockchain, a decentralised digital ledger that securely stores records across a network of computers in a way that is transparent, immutable and resistant to tampering, to make and store data of the indigenous languages in any industry immutable, meaning it cannot be altered.

The event was attended by esteemed guests and representatives from the South African Revenue Service (SARS), the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, and Unisa staff members from the DTSFL, the Department of African Languages, Unisa Radio, the Department of Study Material, Production and Delivery, and the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies.

* By Babalwa Resha, Language Practitioner, Directorate Language Services