This paper explores how bilingual learners and teachers challenge the monolingual discourses prescribed in language education policy and models in pursuit of voice and agency in classroom interaction. Through an examination of observation, interview and classroom interaction data in selected coloured primary and secondary schools in Cape Town, the paper investigates the tension between bilingual discourses of learners and prescribed models of education that value monolingual discourses. This entails an evaluation of the suitability of dominant Western models and notions of multilingualism, which it is argued do not fit the multilingual contexts in Africa. The paper concludes that in the multilingual education contexts of Cape Town learning often takes place outside the official models and languages of education; hence the argument for multilingual education models in Cape Town and Africa, generally, that take into the account local linguistic diversity and community repertoires.