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<div class="gmail-header"><h1 class="gmail-title">Judicial system ‘must move away from using only English’</h1>
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<span id="gmail-lblByLine" class="gmail-byline">Juniour Khumalo </span>
<span id="gmail-lblTimestamp" class="gmail-timestamp">2018-05-17 14:43</span>
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Dr Corné Mulder. Picture: File
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<p>South Africa’s judicial system would serve its citizens more
efficiently if it moved away from the monolingual use of English and
incorporated all 11 official languages into the system on all levels. </p><p>This
was the argument by FF Plus chief whip and parliamentary spokesperson
on justice, Dr Corné Mulder, during a budget vote debate on Wednesday
for the office of the chief justice and judicial administration. </p><p>Mulder reiterated his party’s stance during an interview with City Press on Thursday.</p><p>He
was quick to explain that his argument was not particularly addressing
the issue of court interpreters or the lack thereof, which he said was a
solution which only cured the symptom and not the ailment.</p><p>The
ailment, Mulder said, was the judicial system’s embracing of the move
towards a monolingual system using the English language as its medium of
communication and instruction at the expense of indigenous languages. </p><p>“The
government admits that the courts must be accessible to everyone and
thus it is important to note that language plays a significant role in
making the judicial system accessible to all,” said Mulder.</p><p>If the
government is really serious about making the judicial system
accessible to all, it needs to address the obvious move towards a
monolingual system, he added. </p><p>“The reality is that in many cases, particularly in rural areas, English is not the lingua franca of the people. </p><p>“Our
Constitution, in particular section 6, recognises the historically
diminished use and status of the indigenous languages and places an
obligation on the state to elevate the status and advance the usage of
such languages,” said Mulder.</p><p>He said the question that the
government and the chief justice needed to answer was whether South
Africa was moving in the wrong direction with regards to language.</p><p>“Courts are becoming unilingual and English is the language that is mainly used.” </p><p>It
would send a good message if law faculties across South Africa were
told they must not only use English as a medium of instruction, but they
must also incorporate other African languages into their training
programmes, said Mulder. </p><p>When asked if what he was referring to
was not the same “decolonisation of the academic spaces” that university
students have been advocating for during the fees must fall protest,
Mulder chuckled. </p><p>“You make me laugh,” he said, without agreeing or disagreeing.</p><p><strong>FF+ stance not borrowed from students</strong></p><p>However
he explained that his party’s stance on the matter was not borrowed
from student ideology, but evolved from a report by the Parliament’s
portfolio committee for the office of the chief justice.</p><p>The
report only mentions language in a single sentence “where it states that
studying indigenous African law is an integral part of practicing law
in South Africa”. </p><p>The report states in section 5.5 that:</p><p>•
The committee notes the judiciary’s view that English should remain the
language of record to avoid unnecessary delays on appeal but parties
should be able to speak their own language(s) in court. The committee,
however, remains firmly of the view that more needs to be done to
support multilingualism in courts. It has suggested that the legal
professionals be required to speak an indigenous African language to
practice and that this be part of the legal curriculum at our tertiary
institutions. The committee agrees that interpretation as a vocation
should be properly elevated and will engage further with the ministry on
how this suggestion can be taken forward.</p><p>“Let me give you a
practical example,” said Mulder. “Imagine a scenario in KwaZulu-Natal
where the judge, the accused and the prosecutors are all Zulu, but
because of the current state of our judicial system they are all forced
to communicate in English resulting in the need for interpreters in a
case that could have been efficiently been conducted in isiZulu.”</p><p>In
his research on language policy and the use of court interpreters in
the Eastern Cape, Advocate Matthew Mpahlwa highlighted the problem of
unprofessional court interpreters, who were often inadequately trained.</p><p>Mpahlwa
found that a lack of understanding of regional dialects often resulted
in the wrong translation of local isiXhosa expressions.</p><p>He gave an example of someone who was convicted and who claimed there were inaccuracies in the interpretation of his case.</p><p>A
review of the full court transcript by the chief interpreter revealed
numerous shocking errors by the interpreter and concluded that the
interpreter’s performance “was alarmingly poor” and “resulted in the
infringement of the administration of justice”.</p><p>While Mulder saw
the restrictions still hindering the judicial system’s performance, the
EFF’s Thilivhali Mulaudzi at the budget vote debate on Wednesday argued
that the judiciary had often been the last line of defence for South
Africans and had prevented the state from “descending into a fully
kleptocracy republic”.</p><p>“Were it not for an independent judiciary
our country would still be under the leadership of that thieving
Casanova from Nkandla and his people [former president Jacob Zuma and
those aligned with him],” argued Mulaudzi.</p></div>
<br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+<br><br> Harold F. Schiffman<br><br>Professor Emeritus of <br> Dravidian Linguistics and Culture <br>Dept. of South Asia Studies <br>University of Pennsylvania<br>Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305<br><br>Phone: (215) 898-7475<br>Fax: (215) 573-2138 <br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:haroldfs@gmail.com" target="_blank">haroldfs@gmail.com</a><br><a href="http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/" target="_blank">http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/</a> <br><br>-------------------------------------------------</div>
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