SA urgently needs to discuss way forward

When Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande last week announced that all university students may in future be required to learn a South African language other than English or Afrikaans in order to be allowed to graduate, he unleashed a rather controversial cat among some pretty emotional pigeons.

As could have been expected, his remarks – not the first time he has raised the language issue – immediately led to a howl of both cheers and jeers. Which seems to suggest that perhaps a broader, more inclusive national debate on the matter is required than the ministerial task team Nzimande has appointed to adjudicate on it.

Reactions to Nzimande’s statement ranged from the Pan-South African Language Board CE Chris Swepu’s enthusiasm for such a plan. He wants to see Nzimande’s idea immediately extended to all levels of education and to all those who apply for jobs in the public service. Afriforum general secretary Kallie Kriel wants Afrikaans recognised as an African language and as such also be promoted at universities and saying that language choices cannot be forced upon people.

Some critics of Nzimande’s language plan say if he is really serious about promoting mother-tongue learning in the foundation phase at school – the justification he gave for his latest plan – he should rather compel all aspirant teachers to pass a proficiency test in the dominant regional language before being employed by the Education Department. This, they say, would far better address the problem than compelling all university students to learn one of the officially recognised African languages – other than Afrikaans – as a precondition for graduating.

Suspicions of political considerations underlying Nzimande’s statement were aroused when he excluded Afrikaans as an indigenous, African language. This, it is charged, could preclude a majority of Afrikaans-speaking, white, coloured or even Indian school-leavers from ever graduating at a South African university.

None of these groups are considered to be part of the ruling ANC’s political constituency.

Nzimande first raised the issue of developing SA’s African languages at a language conference in October last year. In an address to the conference he singled out only English as a so-called standard language in SA to be excluded from the efforts to promote indigenous languages. He in effect then acknowledged Afrikaans as an indigenous, African language and expressed a strong interest in how Afrikaans developed as a language of the academia that could serve as an example for other indigenous SA languages.

Last week Nzimande, however specifically excluded Afrikaans from the list of official African languages. The critical question of why Nzimande made such an about-turn, now lumping Afrikaans together with English and ostensibly not recognising it as an African language is one Nzimande himself would be best able to clarify.

However, Nzimande’s plan quite correctly does identify the availability of qualified and capable African language foundation phase teachers as being particularly problematic. He says this caused “severe implications” for the development of early numeracy and literacy and, consequently, for all further learning. Indigenous South African languages – other than Afrikaans – are also not well represented as academic languages in institutions of higher education.

Equally so Swepu makes a valid point when he says public servants are often unable to serve people in their own language. But that could be rectified easily by insisting that all future job applicants in the public sector – including teachers - be subjected to a minimum language requirement, as that will not affect the issue of “free choice”.

Why all students have to be forced to learn a second or third language and why Afrikaans is being “punished” is not clear. Afriforum’s Kriel says: “We believe that any effort to promote multilingualism should also include Afrikaans as it is also an African language. The best way to promote African languages, including Afrikaans, is for the Higher Education Department to ensure these languages are respected and used at higher education institutions.”

The truth of the matter is that the indigenous African languages in South Africa have been neglected for far too long. Afrikaans managed to rise above such challenges only because its speakers fought a bitter battle over almost a century to have it recognised, and they used the era of Afrikaner political dominance after 1948 to establish it firmly as a medium of learning at all levels, turning it successfully into a language of the academy.

That, however, also created enemies of Afrikaans. This hard-won recognition is arguably again being threatened politically and it may be in decline since 1994 as a language used in learning at all levels. Afrikaans is the home language of some 13.3% of South Africans, the third biggest language group in the country. But it is the language of which most South Africans have a basic speaking knowledge. isiZulu is the largest home language in South Africa, with isiXhosa second.

Meanwhile none of the other African languages recognised in South Africa – isiNdebele, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesotho sa Leboa, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda and Xitsonga – have ever been developed to their full academic potential. Usage as a medium of teaching at schools is varied but mostly poor and possibly declining; usage as a language of the academy in higher education institutions is very poor; usage in official government communication is very limited; and the body of literature in these languages is extremely small, even non-existent in some cases.

However, the oldest indigenous language in South Africa is not even officially recognised, being the collective remnants of the dialects spoken by the direct descendants of the Khoisan groups and is a rapidly dying language.

Kriel said to increase the appeal of language study, their use needs to be increased in economic and education spheres. “We support efforts to promote multilingualism, but this (Nzimande’s plan) is not going to work. You cannot force people. You have to create an environment where people want to learn languages.”

Kriel’s warning has a ring of ominous truth for anyone who remembers the 1976 Soweto student uprising, which was triggered by black school students revolting against the forced use of Afrikaans in schools.

That example of enforced language usage resulted in some 500 deaths and thousands being injured (undisputed, exact figures have never been released). The challenge for Nzimande in promoting the use of indigenous languages is not to repeat the mistakes of history.

But how to give equal prominence to and raise the standards of 11 official languages is highly problematic and potentially very costly. One possible solution – offered by the Freedom Front Plus in 2002 in respect of notice boards in Parliament – is that four major languages, namely a Nguni language, a Sotho language, Afrikaans and English, be used in official communications as these would be understood by 98% of all South Africans.

But that still would not solve the problems experienced in respect of mother-tongue learning and languages being used in academia. All of which just goes to show that an urgent national language debate is probably urgently needed.