On August 2 last year, the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) passed its language policy and plan through the university senate. The policy advocates additive bilingualism in English and isiZulu, and supports multilingualism more broadly with respect to Afrikaans, the Indian heritage languages, and languages of strategic importance in Africa and globally.
This is consistent with the government’s language policy for higher education (2002) and the ministerial task team’s Report for the Use of Indigenous Languages as Medium of Instruction in Higher Education (2004).
The UKZN policy describes mechanisms that will be used to realise the further development of isiZulu as medium of instruction, administration and communication. It allows for academics, administrators and students who do not have isiZulu to have access to conversational and other communicative courses (such as translation and interpreting services) in order to become conversant with the language.
The use of isiZulu will be particularly relevant in certain areas of the curriculum for anyone intending to study in the professions or the humanities, the policy suggests. As isiZulu is the language of many rural and urban communities, the university recognises its importance as a language through which to conduct and disseminate research.
The policy thus manifests the university’s commitment to international excellence, local relevance and community engagement. The policy does not advocate dual-medium instruction in isiZulu and English but rather envisages that certain disciplines and modules will make use of isiZulu in relation to the needs of students and academics as they engage in research and learning associated with professions in law, medicine, health, social work, commerce and education.
The university is not alone in making real its commitment to the development of indigenous languages. The University of Stellenbosch is perhaps the best-known contemporary institution to have safeguarded Afrikaans as the language associated with several regions in which it is used, the Western Cape being one such context in which Afrikaans is used widely.
Three perspectives are useful to understand why such policies are necessary in higher education at this time: transformation, education and intercultural communication.
The UKZN language policy is a key aspect of what transformation must mean to all participants in education in KwaZulu-Natal. This assertion can be supported on the following grounds. The policy provides long-overdue recognition of isiZulu as an important regional language and national lingua franca. It is unacceptable that a major language should remain excluded from higher education in every domain other than isiZulu studies. Its exclusion has meant that its ability to serve as a language of learning and teaching for the majority of learners and teachers in KwaZulu-Natal has been compromised.
The effect of this compromise has been nothing less than devastating for whole generations of learners and educators who have been constrained to learn and teach through a language removed both from their experience and location. True, that might have been a consequence of the language engineering associated with our recent colonial and apartheid past in which English and Afrikaans received exclusive support and were used and developed as the only languages associated with knowledge in South Africa.
Nowadays in South Africa there is no reason why either language should maintain that hegemonic status. The UKZN policy thus seeks to counter that damaging and hegemonic legacy by enabling, with respect to isiZulu, a provision in the Constitution of South African in which 11 official languages enjoy equal status.
From an education perspective too, access to isiZulu must become an asset as the language gains cultural capital as part of the requirements for employment, for example. Given that much research applies to the professions, the interaction of academics and students with communities will be further facilitated through isiZulu.
It is also well known in linguistics research that access to adequate education in the mother tongue makes learning a second language easier and more effective, and further that access to two languages improves academic achievement. Given that inadequate access to English has long been held to be the cause of a variety of social ills (low literacy rates, poor grade 12 results, the erosion of the cultural heritage associated with indigenous languages) there is now an opportunity to enable learning in a language that is the mother tongue of many educators and learners in South Africa.
For learners with isiZulu as a mother tongue, the further development of the language as a medium of instruction at school level will also mean that access to higher education will not be dependent only on English.
From a perspective on intercultural communication the UKZN language policy aims to develop isiZulu as a language of communication through its interaction with the public and its administration. This policy does not envisage that isiZulu will replace or even compete with the position English holds nationally as lingua franca. The policy recognises that English will continue to be the primary language of the institution.
The usefulness of isiZulu is not only limited to education and research since isiZulu enables access to contexts and people beyond KwaZulu-Natal and to other rural, industrial and commercial centres of South Africa. It is thus important to realise that isiZulu, like Afrikaans, is also an important lingua franca nationally, the preservation, enhancement and promotion of which is critical to intercultural communication and the development of a diverse, vibrant, artistic, literary and cultural life in South Africa.
The UKZN language policy informs a comprehensive language plan spanning a 20-year period. In phase one the development of learning materials, terminology and lexicon will be undertaken. The use of isiZulu will be encouraged to provide students access to the language for research purposes.
In phase two it is anticipated that isiZulu will be used as a medium of instruction in specified disciplines and modules. The development associated both with the policy and the plan depends on intensive research to ensure that implementation is careful and responsive to needs without becoming wasteful of scarce resources.
The period for development is long because there is recognition that the development of learning materials and the human resources to interpret and translate into English/isiZulu will take time. Time is required to also anticipate the increasing availability of isiZulu in schools such that by 2029, it will be natural that any learner graduating from a school in KwaZulu-Natal will have access to English and isiZulu. That said, the state, by widening access to indigenous languages, must not seek to repeat the hegemonic practices of the past.
What remains to be seen in 2007 is whether support, in terms of resources necessary to implement policies and plans developed at institutions of higher learning in South Africa, will be forthcoming from the state. It is well known that declining student numbers in language departments (indigenous and foreign languages) have seen departments shrink, sometimes even close, under pressure from budget-oriented academic planning. This is an international phenomenon and is symptomatic of an ever-increasing pressure on universities to address market needs.
In this climate humanities subjects, and languages in particular, are regarded as expendable luxuries rather than as a key feature of a university education. One irony is that while universities aspire towards internationally recognised profiles, indigenous, foreign and so-called “strategic” languages are not yet seen as part of these profiles and remain under threat.
Rather than focus on the parochial, universities need to become aware that the provision of languages, as part of a broader commitment to multilingualism and transformation, remain key to mobility whether within or beyond the state.
Ultimately there can be no transformation without planning and resources to offer students choices sufficient to enable them to become their best selves as global but also national citizens.
While a commitment to the development of indigenous languages has seen universities adopt particular languages for development and use, perhaps higher education institutions in South Africa need also to be thinking more comprehensively in similar terms about which foreign and strategic languages ought to be developed and nurtured.
Perhaps these institutions need a comprehensive languages plan that, taking the development of indigenous languages as a priority, also identifies those institutions where expertise in Swahili, German or Mandarin, for example, might be consolidated and nurtured.
Such a plan might also make provision for the reconsideration of the role of languages in professional and other types of degrees or diplomas, thereby making real the commitments enshrined not only in the Constitution, but also the broader need to safeguard multilingualism as a key feature of diversity in South Africa. While language policies and planning are at the heart of the transformation of South Africa, without real commitment from those touched by them and real support from the state, the further realisation of those ideals remains illusive and the critical expertise and resources undervalued.
Professor Robert Balfour is based in the faculty of education, UKZN. He writes in his capacity as chair of the senate committee for the university’s language policy