Language matters in rural schools in South Africa: are educators making the implementation of the Language in Education Policy (1997) work?

In July 1997, the Language-in-Education Policy (LiEP) was introduced in South Africa. While the intention of this policy was to promote all 11 official languages and give individuals the right to choose the language of learning and teaching, the practical implementation has generally been fraught with challenges. However, language policy implementation cannot be understood apart from its social context or apart from the history which produced that context, as is apparent from our study of rural farm schools in Gauteng. Drawn from a larger study, this article examines the responses of teachers to the implementation of the LiEP in rural schools. It examines how teachers on rural commercial farm schools respond to the LiEP and its implementation and considers some of the concerns and challenges experienced. From the data it can be deduced that no fundamental change has taken place in the rural context to embrace the elements of the new language policy. However, in the rural context, Afrikaans has been dropped by the three schools in the study in favour of isiZulu. In School 4 Afrikaans continues to dominate as a Language of Teaching and Learning and no African languages are offered as subjects. It can be suggested that it is the isolation of rural schools that perpetuates the existence of pre-1994 language policies.