Following sharp difference between the ANC and NC, the Constitutional Assembly, on February 20, 1995, set up a special multiparty committee to work on the language issue.1
The first government document in all official 11 languages – draft legislation on the Pan-South African Language Board, the country’s new language watchdog – was released on 29th June, 1995.
The chief negotiators from the ANC and the NP government were tasked with resolving the flag issue in February, 1994. “A final design was adopted on May 15, 1994- derived from a design developed by South Africa’s former state Herald, Fred Brownell. The new South African national flag first flew on 10 May 1994 — the day Nelson Mandela became president, two weeks after the country’s first democratic elections of 27 April 1994.”2
In 1994, the language issue resurfaced again as “the national unity government tried to include a clause in the constitution by giving an equal status to the country’s 11 languages. But instead of creating harmony, the legislation has drawn fresh lines in the ethnic battleground. Most of the current controversy swirls around Afrikaans and English, which were the languages of record for many years under white minority rule. This meant the country’s nine indigenous African languages, spoken by most of the population as first languages, were ignored”. South Africa’s indigenous languages are Ndebele, South Sotho, North Sotho, siSwati, Xitsonga, Setswana, Tshivenda, Xhosa and Zulu.3
Choosing a new flag was part of the negotiation process set into motion when Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990.1 Nothing happened in terms of its design in 1991/1992.
The language debate continued with ANC in favor of abolishing a single official language. The ANC’s position was that the ” practical functioning of state administration requires the existence of English and Afrikaans as national official languages.”4
The National Symbole Commission received more than 7,000 different designs when a national completion was held in 1993. Six designs were chosen but none draw enthusiastic support.5
On November 18, 1993, a consensus was rapidly reached that South Africa will have 11 different languages. The importance of the decision was that South Africans will not be forced, if they so choose, to speak any language other than the one that they learned at home.6
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The provisions of the 1995 legislation were further institutionalized in the constitution of 1996.
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