Nature’s laws aren’t written in English
NO blows BARRED
Sipho Seepe
The bureaucratic, educational, criminal and justice systems in South Africa as well as commerce and industry use languages considered foreign by the majority of African people, bearing testimony to the unrelenting marginal status of African languages.
The Constitution, recognising the diminished use and status of nine indigenous languages, made them official. The state was directed to take “practical and positive measures to elevate the status and advance the use of these languages”.
It is precisely for this reason that a political, historical and moral case could and should be made for the use, promotion and development of indigenous languages. In a sense, the government’s multilingual framework in schools must be seen as a practical translation of this constitutional mandate.
The promotion and development of indigenous languages is linked to the Africanisation process. It is part of the overall objective of restoring human dignity to the African majority. In its crude or minimal form, Africanisation aims to ensure that the composition of the civil service reflects the racial pattern of the country. This translates into the systemic and preponderant deployment of Africans into positions of control.
This is not unique to South Africa. Post-colonial states throughout Africa pursued such policies as an antidote to the colonial legacy that relegated Africans to the lower ranks of business and civil administration.
However, wherever Africanisation has been pursued, it has proved to be nothing more than a policy that facilitates the ascendancy of the new elite. It has failed to ensure societal development, which requires mass participation. This cannot be achieved without placing African languages and culture at the heart of development.
Instead of affirming African languages, the new elite has tended to promote and perpetuate the dominance of colonial languages. This is despite paying lip service to promoting African languages as equals of the languages of colonial power. It is this syndrome that allows African politicians to address rural and urban African-language speakers in “foreign” languages; languages that are hardly understood by their audiences and which they themselves handle with difficulty and grammatical inhibition. The effect of this practice is to restrict development to the political elite, confined within the social conditions and interests of a few.
The use of African languages is also central to the reconstruction of an African cultural base. Since most parts of Africa have limited written traditions, it could be demonstrated that the historical and cultural continuity of Africans is preserved in their languages. It could be argued that in many parts of Africa, African languages were better protected, however fettered and limited this might have been, under colonialism than in the post-colonial era. These languages, in their current living forms, have become the last outposts for the preservation and development of African culture. If they are allowed to die, then Africans as cultural and historical entities die.
If one expects mass participation in development, the cultures of the majority should serve as the vehicle for engagement in all processes: production, distribution and exchange. This does not imply a return to outdated practices or anti-modern values. Neither does it suggest jettisoning all cultural and technological attributes from elsewhere. It suggests that whatever is borrowed should be tailored to blend with an African cultural base. It is a selective process of engagement with those cultural belongings that provide African people with confidence, enhance their creativity and exploit their indigenous knowledge systems.
African languages are a requisite matrix for this process. Experience suggests that no society can move forward in development if its majority is forced to speak and work in the language of a small minority.
In promoting the use of African languages in schools, government policy links language and education with development. Significantly, the reliance on a second/foreign language as a medium of instruction is a unique heritage of colonialism. In countries that were not colonised, students use their mother tongue throughout their schooling and learning career. Studies indicate that the use of a second language is an objective disadvantage affecting not only the ease and comfort with which knowledge is acquired by students but also its extent and depth.
Communication through discussion is seen as pivotal in the construction and reconstruction of concepts. To demand that children shift from first to second languages when their skills in using both languages are not fully developed can only be detrimental. The disadvantages are acute, especially in the appropriate utilisation of the language of science, which is different from ordinary language even for first language speakers.
Studies in Botswana, Nigeria, Swaziland and in this country indicate that the use of mother-tongue can help students voice and eliminate misconceptions, clarify concepts and formulate ideas.
Another study in South Africa showed that African pupils performed better when bilingual instruction was used. This is corroborated by a recent study at the University of the Western Cape, indicating that university students resort to their mother tongue in discussing science concepts outside their classroom.
Despite this evidence there is reluctance to promote the use of African languages. Arguments advanced have varied from “English is an international language” to suggestions that indigenous languages are deficient as they lack a scientific vocabulary. But scientific words can be, and are often, invented or adapted from other languages.
The invention of appropriate scientific words should be a national project. This would require close collaboration between scientists on the one hand and linguists on the other. Unless African languages are developed for use in science, mathematics, technology and commerce, they will be considered irrelevant in developmental terms and hence poor competitors against colonial languages. If South Africa is to join the march to economic prosperity and the social and economic empowerment of its people, the cultivation and development of its African languages is crucial. After all, nature does not write its laws in English.
For a fuller discussion of the issue read Kwesi Kwaa Prah’s Mother Tongue for Scientific and Technological Development in Africa (1995) published by the German Foundation for International Development