In a move to empower people with disabilities, sign language becomes 12th official language of South Africa

In a bid to empower people with disabilities in South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday signed a draft amendment to an Act to make South African Sign Language the country's 12th official language.

By making sign language as an official language, South Africa has become the fourth nation in the African continent to do so after Kenya, Zimbabwe and Uganda.

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“South African Sign Language (SASL) has served as an essential communication tool for our citizens living with disabilities and this step will further empower that community,” Ramaphosa said at a ceremony at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, the seat of government.

Ramaphosa said: "By making Sign Language official, we will be joining three other countries on our continent (of Africa) who have preceded us. We are very proud to join that group of countries that have advanced to the level of recognising Sign Language as an official language,” the president added.

A number of learners with hearing impairments attended the signing ceremony and shared their joy in using SASL.

“To empower people to use their language is to affirm their humanity and their existence,” Ramaphosa said.

Ramaphosa said that SASL has been accorded official language status, and many barriers between abled South Africans and the deaf community would be addressed.

"This will also resolve issues of access to education, economic and other social services. People with hearing impairments will be able to have public information,” he said.

Earlier in a separate statement, the Presidency said that SASL is an indigenous language that constitutes an important element of South African linguistic and cultural heritage.

"It has its own distinct grammatical structures and lexicon and it is independent of any other language,” the statement said.

The new legislation seeks to advance the cultural acceptance of SASL; ensure the realisation of the rights of persons who are deaf and hard of hearing to equal protection and benefit of the law and human dignity; and promote inclusive and substantive equality and prevent or eliminate unfair discrimination on the grounds of disability, as guaranteed by Section 9 of the Constitution.

Until the advent of the first democratic government under Nelson Mandela in 1994, only English and Afrikaans were recognised as official languages.

Even the most-spoken language in the country, Zulu, was ignored. The new Constitution recognised these three languages as well as eight other indigenous languages, a few of them shared by neighbouring states. They are Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, isiNdebele and isiXhosa.