In 1995, the previous South African National Council for the Deaf (SANCD) was transformed into the Deaf Federation of South Africa (DeafSA),[6] which resulted in a radical policy change in matters for Deaf people in South Africa, such as the development and adoption of a single sign language and the promotion of sign language over oralism.

In South Africa, newscasts on television employ the sign language known as SASL.

In May 2022, the 18th Constitutional Amendment Bill to make SASL an official language, was published for public comment.

In 2008 the SASL Policy Implementation Conference gathered many key role players including scholars, researchers and teachers, policy makers, advocates and governmental bodies to promote South African Sign Language to become recognised as South Africa's twelfth official language.

[26] A request was made to the Human Sciences Research Council (South Africa) to measure this as part of the 2011 census.

[needs update] Fingerspelling is a manual technique of signing used to spell letters and numbers (numerals, cardinals).

Some words which are often fingerspelled tend to become signs in their own right (becoming "frozen"), following linguistic transformation processes such as alphanumeric incorporation and abbreviation.

For instance: South Africa is one of a few countries to have legal recognition of sign language.

[27] There is presumably some regional variation, but signers from across the country can readily understand each other, as demonstrated for example at the annual Deaf Forum.

In 1884, Sister Stephanie Hanshuber from Germany introduced the oral method in South Africa.

[31] In 1888 "King William's Town Convent School for the Education of the Deaf" was formally opened.

)"[32] General information: Organisations: Learning: Research resources: ^b Denotes the number (if known) of languages within the family.