Northern Cape SAPS rescind decision to record statements in English only

Political parties and civic organizations have hailed a letter sent on March 20, 2025, to members of the South African Police Service (SAPS) in the Northern Cape as a significant triumph for language rights, just ahead of Human Rights Day. The letter instructs SAPS members to disregard an earlier directive from Northern Cape Deputy Provincial Commissioner, Major General L. Ngubelanga, which mandated that all official SAPS documents in the province be exclusively in English. This development marks a reversal of a policy that had sparked widespread concern among language rights advocates.

This situation echoes a similar controversy in the Western Cape in 2023, where AfriForum and the Democratic Alliance (DA) criticized a decision by the provincial police to record complainants’ statements solely in English. That decision was also overturned by public pressure.

In both the Western Cape, where 50% of the population speaks Afrikaans as their first language, and the Northern Cape, where the figure rises to 55%, Afrikaans is the majority language. A notable portion of the rural population in these regions is monolingual, and only 2.4% of the population speaks English at home, making the imposition of English-only documentation particularly problematic.

Alana Bailey, AfriForum’s Head of Cultural Affairs, expressed relief at the swift withdrawal of the instruction. She noted that after organizations such as AfriForum, Solidarity, and Cape Forum became aware of the language rights violation, they contemplated legal action and lodged a formal complaint with the Pan-South African Language Board (PanSALB). Bailey highlighted feedback from SAPS members who reported cases where crime victims’ rights were infringed upon due to statements being recorded in English by officers untrained as translators or interpreters, many of whom are not native English speakers themselves. She described the initial directive, issued on March 12, as evidence of senior SAPS officials’ apparent disregard for these practical challenges.

This is not the first time such a policy has been reversed in the Northern Cape. In 2016, a similar English-only instruction was issued, only to be withdrawn in 2017 following legal action by Solidarity. The DA has since called on Northern Cape Provincial Commissioner, Lieutenant General Koliswa Otola, to ensure that this outdated practice is immediately corrected.

The now-rescinded directive, which effectively prevented victims from reporting crimes in their mother tongue and forced police into the role of translators, has been widely condemned as impractical and unjust.

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