Enhance health service delivery through improved teaching of African languages: A call for policy reform

Background. The gap between South Africa (SA)'s progressive language policy and its practical application in education perpetuates negative language ideologies towards African languages. This systemic failure hinders economic participation, access to, and service delivery for most of the population. Despite all twelve languages having official status, the historical devaluation of African languages continues in post-Apartheid SA. Within the education system, these languages are often framed as a problem that needs fixing, rather than a valuable resource. Inequality persists in the status of African languages in comparison with English and Afrikaans, especially within the education of health professions students. Objectives. To advocate for improved teaching of African languages to enhance health service delivery. This article calls for African languages education to be prioritised from basic through to tertiary education, as both a political and service delivery necessity that is transformative. Methods. This article reports on secondary analysis of data that were originally gathered for a study on strategies used to navigate language discordance by occupational therapists (OTs) working in the public health sector in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data on policy recommendations. Results. Two themes were generated, namely, ‘educational reform as key: basic to tertiary education’ and ‘institutional reform: resources, supported development, and advocacy’. Conclusion. The education system across all levels from basic to tertiary is a key instrument that could shift language ideologies and support efficient implementation of the language policy in SA across sectors. This could improve economic participation.