while the northern cape education department has expressed its commitment to designing a curriculum and materials that incorporate san languages and culture the persisting lack of funding and logistic difficulties have slowed this process as a result of decades of linguistic persecution during the apartheid era in south africa most san and khoe currently speak afrikaans as a first language with only a few elders still speaking their mother tongue thus for these groups mothertongue education is more an issue of language restoration than one of effective pedagogy although it is still a crucial aspect of community development at the same time performance in primary and secondarylevel education is declining dramatically