What emerges repeatedly in research regarding language choice in South Africa is that people negotiate culture, face and identity through more than one language, and balance the need for modernity and the value of tradition, together with awareness that multiculturalism is normative in South Africa. South African scholarship focusing on bilingualism is also informed by the experiences of other countries in which multilingualism has become a feature of language planning. In South Africa, parents are not blind consumers of hegemonic languages, and learners are not insensitive to the dangers of language attrition or subtractive bilingualism. This paper argues, based on its focus on the gaps between policy intentions, research and practices, for closer collaboration between education sectors (the tertiary, and the primary and secondary) in South Africa to better support the development of multilingualism as envisaged by national and higher education language policy documentation.