While the Northern Cape Education Department has expressed its commitment to designing a curriculum and materials that incorporate San languages and culture, the persisting lack of funding and logistic difficulties have slowed this process. As a result of decades of linguistic persecution during the apartheid era in South Africa, most San and Khoe currently speak Afrikaans as a first language, with only a few elders still speaking their mother tongue. Thus, for these groups, mother-tongue education is more an issue of language restoration than one of effective pedagogy, although it is still a crucial aspect of community development. At the same time, performance in primary- and secondary-level education is declining dramatically.