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This paper reports on a study that examined the extent to which the development of academic literacy in isiZulu, an indigenous language spoken across all the nine provinces in South Africa, enhances opportunities for epistemological access. The focus is in relation to a pilot study of a Bachelor of Education Honours module that uses isiZulu as the Language of Learning and Teaching. New Literacy Studies is used to examine the extent to which an understanding of the nature of literacy as no longer so much on the acquisition of language skills, but as social practice, can develop academic literacy in isiZulu and enhance epistemological access. The paper confronts the questions about whose literacy counts?, and why, and engages in ‘a discursive politics of knowledge production, asking what counts as knowledge, who is allowed to author it, whose interests does it serve, how and by whom is it contested?’ (Baynham, M., & Prinsloo, M. [2001]. New directions in literacy research. Language and Education, 15, pp. 84–85). Case Study as a research design, Narrative Style interview technique and documentary evidence as research instruments, were used as a useful means to collect, conceptualise and organise data. Findings suggest that meaningful and successful engagement with the development of isiZulu, so that it becomes part of the academy, will depend entirely on implementing strategies to develop its academic discourse, the secondary discourse after the primary discourse of the home.
