/ 11 July 2003

English trails far behind Zulu

Hambisana nezikhathi. Understand? According to the 2001 census most of you should. It means ”move with the times” in Zulu, still the most widely spoken home language in South Africa.

Despite fears in recent years that English is swamping and threatening to exterminate indigenous languages, experts say that these languages are flourishing. Immigration from other countries has seen an explosion in the number of languages spoken in South Africa.

”What has happened over the past few years is that people were saying that they wanted to learn in English rather than in their mother tongue. But the spin-off meant that they were shamed by their culture. The trend is now changing,” said Edward Sambo, senior legal adviser of the Pan South African Language Board.

According to the latest census 23,8% of the population regard Zulu as their mother tongue. Xhosa is second on the list with 17,6% first-language speakers. Afrikaans is third with a 13,3% stake in the population. Fourth on the list are the Sepedi with 9,4%. And English comes fifth with just 8,2% of speakers.

Zulu has increased about one percentage point compared to the 1996 census, while English has decreased by about half a percentage point.

”We are encouraged that English is not increasing in dominance,” said Duncan Hindle, Deputy Director General in the Department of Education. ”We can slowly see a change in mindset and a recognition that all 11 languages have a place.”

Hindle believes that the growing strength of the 11 official languages will not affect policy formulation. Rather it will force the government to look more closely at tweaking policy at a regional level.

The drastic increase in interprovincial migration is also major concern as it complicates the language policy, he said.

According to the census more than 400 000 people resettled in Gauteng and 185 000 in the Western Cape between 1996 and 2001. Most migrants are from the Eastern Cape and Limpopo with 300 000 and 160 000 people moving respectively.

”This complicates the language situation even more. Rather than having between one and three major languages in Gauteng, migration has introduced a myriad others,” said Hindle. ”This has important implications for training teachers and grouping pupils.”

He said migration is reinforcing a trend of ”one-language schools”, which the education department is trying to break away from.

”Although this is a pragmatic response to a complicated set of circumstances, it is placing pressure on the system as a whole,” he said. ”Simultaneously, multilingualism is the principle basis of our language policy and the census reveals that we’re promoting this.”