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Audiology in South Africa: Audiologı A en Suda Frica
Audiology in South Africa: Audiologı A en Suda Frica
Audiology in South Africa: Audiologı A en Suda Frica
History of audiology
Audiology in South Africa evolved over the course of the past
five decades from an adjunct to the profession of speech-
in South Africa
Professor P. de V Pienaar (1904 1978) Founder of the profession language pathology into an autonomous profession in its own
right. Both of these professions were introduced to South Africa
by the late Professor Pierre de Villiers Pienaar, who after
Audiology in South Africa is a growing profession facing the completing his doctoral studies at the University of Hamburg,
challenge of providing services to the hearing-impaired of a Germany, returned to South Africa to institute a professional
diverse country at the tip of the African continent. South Africa qualification for speech-language therapists. The first pro-
has been described as the ‘rainbow nation’, not only because the gramme was established in 1938, at the University of the
country has four or five relatively different climates and a vastly Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and trained therapists over two
contrasting geography, but primarily for its diverse collection of years for a diploma in logopaedics. Realising that the breadth of
peoples and cultures (Tuomi, 1994). The population is hetero- the field required more intensive training, the diploma quickly
geneous with mixed sections of developed and developing stretched to three years and subsequently changed to a four-year
contexts that are classified collectively as a developing nation. professional degree course in 1948. Professor Pienaar initiated
The estimated population size in 2002 was 45.1 million the second tertiary training programme at the University of
compared to 40.6 million for the 1996 census (Statistics South Pretoria in 1959, but it was not until 1962, that the field of
Africa, 2003). The population comprises various race groups audiology was formally introduced as a two-year major in the
presented in Figure 1. four-year curriculum at both universities (Aron, 1973).
The racial diversity of the country is further diversified by The emergence of speech-language therapists and audiologists
various cultures within races, each with its own language or qualified with a four-year university degree, along with the
dialect. This is evident in the recognition of eleven official relentless efforts by Professor Pienaar to establish positions
languages for South Africa of which English is only the fifth within the public education and healthcare sector for therapists
most commonly spoken language (8%) (Statistics South Africa, and audiologists, led to the foundational establishment of the