Languages, Part 10
Once more on the Politics of Language
This course was not to teach language. It was to examine and
to problematise the politics of language in South Africa.
We have seen that whereas the Constitution enshrines 11
official languages and instructs governments to take care of any others that
may be used by South Africans; and whereas institutions have been created for
that purpose; yet the 11 languages are not getting equal attention. The weaker
ones are getting less attention and the stronger ones are getting more
resources.
The net result is that the indigenous South African
languages are not being preserved. Instead, the former colonial languages are
being preserved.
When we look at the whole continent of Africa, we see that
the same tendency for the strengthening of the former colonial or exogenous
languages (French, Portuguese, Arabic and English) and the relative decline of
African languages, with the exception of Kiswahili, is continuing.
For the purpose of constructing a Pan-African political
culture, we are obliged to use these few languages, but South Africans are not
learning them - as a rule - with the exception of English.
South Africans will be obliged to develop the learning of
French, Portuguese and Arabic, in the first place, and then move to the
learning other African countries’ indigenous languages, starting with
Kiswahili, if our country is going to play its full part in the
anti-Imperialist unity-in-action of the Continent of Africa, as envisaged by
the late Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah.
Consequences
Consequences of the neglect of languages, internally and
externally will be that politics are limited. The ideas of politics will be
expressed in few languages, most likely the exogenous ones, and hence any
migration to politics will have to mean migration away from indigenous
language.
Such a migration will set up a contradiction between the
politics of liberation on the one hand, and our South African characteristics
on the other. Whereas we already known that liberation must embrace South
African characteristics if it is to be a real liberation.
Please see the attached document.
·
The above is to introduce the
original reading-text: The Writer in a
Neo-colonial State, 1993, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, extract.
