It was in the same week that my daughter’s preschool teacher suggested that we speak English to her at home that I met Ntate Koneshe and asked him how he was.
He responded in Sesotho, as he always does, that “mathatha antse a lekane matsoho” — the problems are as big as our hands, to give it a rough English translation. I imagined that anyone unfamiliar with Sesotho would consider this a patently nonsensical response to a simple “how are you?”. And in keeping with the mores of some cultures, Ntate Koneshe would have been describing his state of health when the question was a polite pretence that the asker cared at all.
Now my beloved Momo would be excluded from the beauty of Ntate Koneshe’s language. Her school would have her forsake speaking an African language just so that she would be less shy when playing with Jessica and Zoe and others.
I was astounded when a white colleague who has a black son told me that her son’s school had recommended the same — as had schools of her other black friends who had themselves attended posh private schools in Southern Africa.
Asking black children to speak English at home has readily become a blanket prescription, something akin to the suggestion that children who do not live up to teachers’ expectations should be treated for attention deficit disorder.
Alas, the confluence of honest concern for the development of languages and commercial exploitation of the fear that your child may be left behind makes it difficult to decide who is genuine.
I was reminded of all this when a spam email landed on my desk announcing apocalyptically: “If you are a white South African who cannot speak a Black African Language you are an endangered species! Avoid Extinction Now.”
If it is true that extinction awaits those who don’t speak a “black” African language, why then should Momo’s chances of survival be reduced when she is hardly four years old? Especially when, unlike those on the endangered species list, she does not have to fork out R97 a month to ensure her future?
Black people for all sorts of reasons are complicit in this unfortunate scenario. Much has been said about how language is a vehicle of culture. Equally a lot has been said about how black parents are often themselves the obstacle to their children learning and speaking the language of their ancestors.
I would not be surprised if white people thought that because they sometimes say “Eish!” or “Fo sho!” that their chances of surviving the impending day of reckoning were slightly better.
The former Radio Bantu stations, now that they are no longer identified by tribal labels, have all but abandoned whatever trace they might have had of African languages.
Radio Motsweding, which was once Radio Tswana, has a billboard proclaiming “Re tla dula rethabile“, which is Sesotho for “we will stay happy”. Had it stuck to the language its listeners assume is the official one, the board would have read: “Re tla nna reitumetse” — which means the same thing in Setswana.
In the absence of other measures, the ability to speak English with a proper accent remains proof of IQ.
I am unhappy to admit that I was for a long time a believer in the nonsensical notion that “English being a universal language of business and commerce” meant that other languages would be reduced to slang.
It is a ridiculous notion: nations that have overcome poverty did so not because they could recite Shakespeare, but because they could build cars and computers and other useful stuff.
The fact that I am writing this in English should be proof enough that I have high regard for the language. I am one of the many who would become redundant if English lost its status as the official language of social discourse.
Fellow guests and I protested when a television station that had invited us for a debate on the relationship between politicians and the media told us, when we were already on set, that the lingua franca for the show was African languages and not English.
We think and sometimes dream in English. It is part of our heritage.
But it is not the only part. Ntate Koneshe, who I have known longer than I have known English, is also part of my heritage. Yet I have never heard anyone make it a matter of survival of the species to speak like him.
Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya is sports editor