And when it's about language, it's not even off topic, which is also okay.

True! So I did some courses on linguistics and second language acquisition. I am no expert, it is more from a psychology perspective as well where my interest is. But from the courses I did, the current data points to parents from previously disadvantaged wants their children to go to school in English. The reason for this, in apartheid South Africa, home language schooling for those doing Xhosa, Zulu, etc., was inferior quality. Today, I think that across languages, the education is better. But loads of parents from that era, plus the children who went through what was then called "Bantu education" want to send their children to English schools. A lot of these children are not proficient in English, as they do not hear it at home that much, so they fall behind. The one stat was something like, children who get home language schooling (Afrikaans, English, Xhosa, Zulu, etc.) are two grades ahead of children who get education in their second language as their main schooling language.

Plus, very few Afrikaans and English speakers go through the trouble to acquire a language like Xhosa or Zulu. And the one reason, I would guess, is that my generation (1990's baby) did not get exposure to those languages when we were young. You might have heard about it, but the critical acquisition period or critical period hypothesis for gaining home or first language proficiency. I think that you need to be exposed to a language before puberty. Long story short, in South Africa language is very political, but things are changing, I think, or hope.

Good thing that you made me think about what I think about my mother tongue.

Oh, I am glad I could do this! And yes, one rarely thinks about these things if one is not reminded of them. I think that few people really care about the history of things if it doesn't help them gain something. If you cannot "use" the fact that Finnish is one of the oldest languages to your advantage (think, like in politics and national identity) then people will easily forget about it. For example, people in South Africa easily boast about our 11 official languages, but if you look at the practical implementation, mostly we use English and sometimes, depending on region, we use English, Afrikaans, and Xhosa (Western and Eastern Cape) or Zulu (KwaZulu Natal).