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remember the structure of this circular, which consists of a statement of fact, a reminder, a ban
and a requirement:
- The statement of fact is that officials, in the course of their duties, continue to hold
their official telephone conversations and to write official letters in Afrikaans;
- The reminder refers to the fact that on 21 March 1992 Afrikaans ceased to be the
official language and that since then English has been the official language of
Namibia. As a result, Afrikaans has the same official status as the other tribal
languages, of which there are many;
- The ban is on the continuing use by State officials of Afrikaans in their replies, in the
exercise of their official duties, to telephone calls and letters;
- The requirement is that all telephone calls and official correspondence should be
carried out exclusively in English, the official language of Namibia.
In other words, State services must use English, and English only, and refrain from giving
privileged status to any unofficial language. From this point of view, Afrikaans is neither more
nor less important than the other tribal languages. This means that minority languages must be
treated without discrimination. Consequently, there is no justification, unless one wishes to
discriminate against the other minority languages and disregard article 3 of the Constitution of
Namibia, for continuing to deal with the linguistic problem in a selective manner by favouring
one particular language, Afrikaans, at the expense of the others. In that respect, the Regional
Commissioner’s circular does not reveal any violation of the principle of equality and certainly
not of the provisions of article 26 of the Covenant.
5.
All things considered, it is questionable whether there has been any violation of article 26
of the Covenant in the case in point, and the Committee has, in the belief that it was denouncing
discrimination, given the impression that it has, rather, granted a privilege - that it has, in short,
undermined the principle of equality as expressed in article 26 of the Covenant. That being the
case, the reasons for giving this individual opinion will be apparent.
(Signed) A. Amor
[Done in English, French and Spanish, the French text being the original version. Subsequently
issued also in Arabic, Chinese and Russian as part of the present report.]