In line with the University of South Africa's status as a world-class open-distance teaching, learning and research institution, the Department of African Languages is committed to the promotion, development and use of the official African languages, in namely Sesotho sa Leboa, Sesotho, Setswana, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Siswati and isiNdebele.
Prof FS Madonsela
Chair of Department
Welcome to the Department of African Languages!
Our range of quality learning programmes lead to doctoral qualifications for students both within and beyond the borders of South Africa. In line with the status of the University of South Africa (Unisa) as a world-class open distance teaching, learning and research institution, the Department of African Languages commits itself to upholding excellence in the humanities, by making a continuous, positive contribution to shaping futures in the service of humanity through the promotion, development and use of the African languages it offers. Our drive is based on the premise that language is not solely a communication tool, but rather a tapestry of our identity, history and culture.
In our endeavours to respond to Unisa’s language policy, we strive to craft a curriculum that embraces the diversity of our languages and the unique cultural insights each of them offers. As we work to decolonise our curriculum, we need to engage unsympathetically in disassembling those persistent colonial efforts which seek to locate African languages on the periphery. This process will require a reimagination of our pedagogical approaches and course content, in the drive to place African methodologies firmly at the centre.
As part of our engaged scholarship and collaborative research with local communities, we in the department will continue to strive to ensure that our expertise makes an impactful contribution to empowering communities. We believe that mutual engagement will shape our offerings and advance knowledge, to benefit the members of the communities around us. In our endeavours we aim to preserve, promote and modernise our languages, and to assign them emerging roles in society, alongside traditional roles. In so doing, we believe we will be putting into action locally available agents to help advance the development of South Africa and the African continent as a whole.
Through research projects driven by our department, we seek to uplift languages and their use in different arenas. With these projects, we seek to position our department at the centre of linguistics research that will have a meaningful impact on society.
We hope you will find your academic journey with us productive and rewarding, and that you will come to see your languages as important resources that can contribute greatly to the realisation of your unique potential. We promise to support you throughout your academic journey in this language space.
