QUESTIONS FOR . . . Questions for Theodorus du Plessis Dafna Yitzhaki Received: 3 April 2012 / Accepted: 16 April 2012 / Published online: 6 July 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012 Prof. Du Plessis is one of the key South African applied linguists, having published widely on language policy and societal multilingualism. His writings, both in English and Afrikaans, touch on a range of policy issues including education—mainly the medium of instruction question in schools and universities (Du Plessis 2006, 2008), policy regulation and its role in changing language practices (Du Plessis 2010a) and the changes in the post-Apartheid South African linguistic landscape (Du Plessis 2009b, 2010b). He is currently a professor at the University of the Free State, South Africa. In the past three decades, Prof. Du Plessis has been involved in the state’s dramatic changes surrounding the end of the Apartheid regime and the formulation of a democratic constitution and a unique multilingual policy. In this interview he talks about his role in these processes, critically reviews state language policies and their implementation, and provides explanation for the struggle of South Africa to bring to life the multilingual vision. The interview took place at the linguistic conference ‘Interactions and Interfaces’at Rhodes University Grahamstown, South Africa, on June 2011—an annual event bringing together the different South African linguistic societies and associations. DY: In 1996, following the first democratic elections of South Africa, a multilingual policy was established, recognizing eleven official languages. As an applied linguist, you were involved in many of the happenings and events leading to the creation of the policy. Can you tell us about those events, as you see them? TD: I believe that the process leading to the multilingual policy started actually in 1961 when South Africa (SA) became a republic. We started recognizing the African languages albeit in a limited regional context. The philosophy behind that, which was the philosophy of the apartheid system in D. Yitzhaki (&) Bar Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel e-mail: dafna.yitzhaki@gmail.com 123 Lang Policy (2012) 11:273–281 DOI 10.1007/s10993-012-9244-9