South Africa was primarily a Dutch colony and later taken up by the British. The country was plagued by racial and cultural conflicts but has conquered over its troubles to a large extent in the recent past. It is now a multi-cultural and a multi-lingual country with 11 official languages and only 8% of its' population conversant in English. Economically, it has been doing very well and is striving to do better in the global world. Since communication is very important to further their development in world economy, the people in South Africa are educating themselves in today's lingua franca, English.