“When a person can understand a legal process in their own language, they are better placed to question power, exercise rights, and participate in public life,” Justice Molemela said.
The initiative is intended to support UFS law students who encounter complex legal concepts in their studies, particularly those whose home languages are not English. Equally, it speaks to the needs of ordinary South Africans who approach the courts every day and need to comprehend their rights, follow legal proceedings, and make informed decisions about matters affecting their lives.
Developing the language of law
The development of legal terminology is informed by both national and institutional language policy commitments. The Department of Higher Education and Training’s
Language Policy Framework for Public Higher Education Institutions (2020) requires universities to develop strategies and implementation plans for multilingualism, including mechanisms to advance indigenous African languages as languages of research and scholarship. Moreover, it recognises multilingualism as a resource for cognitive development, epistemic access, inclusivity, and transformation.
At institutional level, the
UFS Language Policy (2023) commits the University to developing and re-intellectualising Sesotho as a resource for conceptualisation and meaning-making across disciplines, while promoting equitable access to knowledge and academic success. The legal terminology initiative gives practical expression to these commitments within the discipline of law.
Prof
Nomalungelo Ngubane, Director of the Academy for Multilingualism, explained that the initiative responds to the challenges students experience when they encounter specialised legal concepts primarily in English. She emphasised that developing terminology in African languages is important to help students engage with specialised knowledge through languages they understand, while strengthening the place of those languages in academic discourse.
This need for greater linguistic access also informs the Faculty of Law’s contribution to the initiative.
Dr Jacques Matthee, Deputy Dean: Learning and Teaching and Innovation and Digitalisation, highlighted the connection between language development, legal education, and the responsibilities of future legal practitioners. The collaboration brings together the Academy’s language expertise and the Faculty’s legal knowledge to ensure that the terminology is both linguistically meaningful and legally accurate.
As Dr Matthee explained, students who understand legal concepts in a language they know well are better equipped to engage with those concepts and communicate them in English. This is particularly relevant to the preparation of graduates who will need to explain legal matters to clients and communities with different linguistic backgrounds.
Beyond its immediate value in legal education, the initiative also challenges the perception that African languages are not suited to communicating specialised or technical knowledge. Prof Ngubane emphasised that legal terminology is not exclusive to English and that African languages can be developed to express complex concepts and support academic engagement.
This distinction between translating existing legal information and developing terminology in other languages was also central to Justice Molemela’s address. While translation makes information available in another language, terminology development creates the vocabulary through which legal concepts can be taught, debated, interpreted, and refined. As she explained, this is essential to building languages that can participate fully in legal scholarship and professional practice.
The development of 477 legal terms in Sesotho, with corresponding English and Afrikaans terminology, is a significant milestone in the University’s work. The terms cover a wide range of legal concepts, including affidavits, court proceedings, customary law, jurisdiction, mediation, and legal procedures. Importantly, the terminology has been verified and authenticated by the
Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB), providing an important measure of linguistic and legal credibility. Work in isiZulu and Afrikaans forms part of the broader effort to expand the use of these languages in legal knowledge and practice.
For Justice Molemela, however, developing terminology is part of a much wider responsibility to ensure that indigenous languages are recognised across intellectual and public life. “Indigenous languages can carry sophisticated constitutional reasoning, jurisprudence, scientific knowledge, and academic debate,” she said. “The ambition should be to develop languages across the full spectrum of intellectual and public life, including the highest courts and universities.”
The implications of this work extend beyond academic settings. Drawing on the Constitutional Court’s judgment in the
Sustaining the Wild Coast matter, Justice Molemela highlighted the relationship between language and meaningful public participation. “If a process is intended to hear a community, it must speak in a way that the affected community can understand,” she said. Her point underscores how language can determine whether people are genuinely able to participate in decisions that affect their lives.
Similarly, she pointed to the experiences of people who navigate court processes without legal representation. The Supreme Court of Appeal continues to receive applications from indigent litigants, including people who are incarcerated and represent themselves. “We strive, as we should, to ensure that justice does not elude them just because they are unrepresented,” she said, emphasising the need for court platforms and public-facing information that are sufficiently multilingual and accessible.
Ultimately, Justice Molemela argued, the responsibility for advancing multilingualism cannot rest with the judiciary alone. Universities, language practitioners, government departments, professional bodies, and communities all have a role to play. “Multilingualism will only be achieved if the ordinary operations of institutions like the courts begin to reflect the Constitution’s extraordinary promise.”
Through the Academy for Multilingualism and its collaboration with the Faculty of Law, the UFS is contributing to this wider institutional responsibility. The initiative connects the University’s academic work with the linguistic realities of the region it serves, while contributing to national efforts to make knowledge, education, and public institutions more accessible. In doing so, the University is also contributing to a broader conversation about the place of African languages in knowledge production and the administration of justice.