‘SAPS must serve public in their own languages’: AfriForum challenges Northern Cape police language policy

Lobby group AfriForum has reported the deputy police commissioner of the Northern Cape to the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB) for alleged discrimination and human rights violations.

The group alleges that the deputy police commissioner has instructed all police stations in the province to only take statements in English and not in any other language including Afrikaans.

The group’s head of cultural affairs, Alana Bailey, says they have also seen a letter that also stipulates that all police communication in the province will be done in English from now on.

However, Bailey says this instruction discriminates against other languages and infringes on the rights of those wishing to make police statements in their mother tongue.

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All South African languages are equal

““Major General Ngubelanga instructs that SAPS members themselves must perform translation and interpretation, thereby denying that these are specialised functions that should be done by professionally trained persons. Not only is this unfair to the person who has to take the statement or communicate with the public, but especially to the member of the public who may be traumatised, who deserves to be treated with dignity and to have access to a fair investigation. The first prize is for a SAPS member to serve the member of the public in his or her own language, but if there is no one at a station who can do this, to make use of a professional translator or interpreter,” Bailey explains,” Bailey said.

She said there was a similar attempt in 2017 to have all police communication in English. But Solidarity, a union affiliated to AfriForum had taken the matter to the Northern Cape High Court and won.

“The Deputy Provincial Commissioner is clearly unaware of the settlement reached in the Northern Cape High Court in 2017 and of the meaning of the section of the Constitution that is cited, which actually emphasises the right to use multiple languages,” she said.

The importance of mother tongue

According to Bailey, some of the concerns with taking statements in English include the possibility of a distortion of facts and misrepresentations.

She said AfriForum had also been part of a conference at Wits university where the problems with taking statements in a language which is not a mother tongue language were discussed.

AfriForum has been advocating for the preservation of the Afrikaans language and has even challenged the controversial Basic Education Amendment Laws Act (BELA).

They claimed this law poses a danger to the Afrikaans language and culture.

The Citizen had reached out to Northern Cape police for comment.

However, there was no comment at the time this article was published.

Comment will be added as soon as it is received.

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