Official Languages of the Union Act, 1925
The Official Languages of the Union Act, 1925, was an Act of the Parliament of South Africa which declared that references to the Dutch language in the South Africa Act 1909 included the Afrikaans language, effectively granting the latter official language status. The act came into force on 27 May 1925, but was deemed to have had effect since the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910.
Although in theory recognising both Dutch and Afrikaans as equal varieties of the same pluricentric language, the Act served to largely displace standard Dutch as a language of government in favour of standard Afrikaans.
Background
Ambiguity
The South Africa Act of 1909—the constitution of the Union—declared the English and Dutch languages to be the state's official languages.Part 8, section 137, of the South Africa Act read:
Doubts soon arose about the recognition of the Afrikaans language and whether its status as a Dutch daughter language meant it was implicitly included. Many Afrikaans-speakers still considered themselves to be speakers of Dutch — albeit a substandard variety of it — and standard Dutch remained commonly used in writing and formal settings. Meanwhile, the movement to recognise Afrikaans as unique language was growing, especially after the British conquest, with many Afrikaner intellectuals believing that a state of diglossia would cause younger Afrikaners to switch to English instead. Recognising Afrikaans as a valid variety of Dutch was thus somewhat of a compromise between these two views.
Provision
The single substantive provision of the Official Languages Act reads:Repeal
The South Africa Act and the Official Languages Act were repealed by the Constitution of 1961, which reversed the position of Afrikaans and Dutch. Subsequently, English and Afrikaans were the official languages, and Afrikaans was deemed to include Dutch.The Constitution of 1983 removed any mention of Dutch altogether.