ABSTRACT
From decolonization to the demise of apartheid, regime change and succession politics on the African continent have provoked concomitant changes in offi cial language policy from northern to southern Africa, from the east to the west. Although African countries share a number of factors that inform this issue, for example, the negative impact of colonialism and the challenges created by multiethnic, multilingual populations, as the epigraph regarding apartheid indicates, the circumstances surrounding regime change and the language question in any given country are, nonetheless, unique.
