i think (a guess) he'll mean some language that has replaced C for your system programming endevours. not actually c++ or such a type of successor (if c++ can be called that)
Probably, but “language you can use instead of C” is a very open field, from APL to Zig at least, passing through D and COBOL and Erlang and Forth, and gets even wider if your definition of “system programming” isn’t particularly well-specified.
Replacing C as the lingua Franca of systems programming is a much bigger problem than what language you might consider writing a particular system in instead of C.