By Theo Mapheto
Just why leaders in South Africa insist on communicating with their followers in a foreign language beggars belief.
Take Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe’s address at Ntwampe in Limpopo Province on the occasion of the National Heritage Day celebrations for example. Look, Motlanthe’s first language is Sepedi and the masses who descended to the Ntwampe grounds to listen to him are invariably Sepedi-speaking.
Now, after a third or fourth cry of “amandla” to the people, Motlanthe just lost the plot, and in that disturbingly aristocratic manner, started delivering his talk in English. I could just see the masses switching off. It all went blank, and the interaction between the speaker and audience dulled, reminiscent of the disconnectedness of teacher and pupil depicted eloquently by DH Lawrence in his poem Afternoon in School — The last Lesson.
Granted, his was not an impromptu address and the poor man was just following the script. But for crying out loud, doesn’t the presidency have a single speechwriter who knows the people of South Africa? One could be forgiven for thinking that Motlanthe wished that he was addressing one of those soporific United Nations talkshops about wars and terrorism (read, George Bush).
Perhaps what the people want — apart from service delivery — is leaders who talk with them. Talking to them is downright paternalistic and hinders lively interaction between the governor and the governed.
One of the most ironic failures of our new order is our disrespect for African languages. No self-respecting people treat their languages as shabbily as we do in this part of the world. At the rate we are going, there is no guessing why our education system is such a shambolic state. We have internalised self-pity and victimhood in our very being. How will an angry protestor help not trashing a library and other community facilities if he has no respect for something as sacred as his language; the definition of his very being?
We — and I mean everyone who sees themselves as African — have to shake things up, I tell you. Starting with our homes, let us give African languages a place of prominence. We need not go far for some inspiration. Let us learn from the Afrikaner (and, in case you are wondering, I am not a coconut/Model C type).
The truth is that Afrikaans is one of our most colourful and powerful languages because the Afrikaner insisted on it. It is a strange twist of irony that the Afrikaner has decolonised his mind a la Ngugi wa Thiong’o long before some of us woke up and smelled the coffee.
Theo Mapheto is a lawyer, youth activist and legal commentator
“We have internalised self-pity and victimhood in our very being.”
yes, yes this country has. so much so that i’ve decided to bail. i see the potential, but the people who wallow in self-pity and wear it as a badge of honor is just so… mindnumbing.
good luck with your country and everything. you’re going to need it.
Good argument. In Herman Giliomee’s letter about Stellenbosch staying Afrikaans the response was mostly negative except from non-Afrikaans speakers. Instead they argued that Afrikaans should be kicked out of our universities in favour of…English? Huh? South Africa has 11 official languages and English ranks only 4th on that list. Yet the whole country speaks English, including the media and the universities. Yes, we need to be able to communicate with each other (I for one do not speak Sepedi), but the fact that we are all forced to use English seems awefully colonialist to me.
I have to agree with you. I have the basics of isiZulu and isiXhosa, but battle to learn more sePedi and seSotho, and would really like to hear more of these languages. Even with subtitles, it would give all of us more access to our African heritage, and help all SA citizens to improve our skills and knowledge.
Excellent! Now, I just have one request: Could proper grammars and dictionaries (including tonal information, and where the script is ambiguous, pronunciation or phonemic information, and prosodic information) please be published for the other nine official languages? When I was in primary school (early 90s), I took isiXhosa three years in a row, and each year we were taught EXACTLY the same material, without any introduction to the grammar or prosody, and NO hint was given that the language is tonal. Most of the vocabulary taught to us was English and Afrikaans borrowings! It didn’t help that the teacher was a white anglo…
Afrikaans progressed from a simple kitchen vernacular to a fully-fledged acedemic and technical language in the space of one man’s lifetime. They put their political will behind their political power and voila, the job was done. There are many millions of Zulus, but not one Zulu-medium university in Zululand. Three universities in the Xhosa heartland — all of them English-medium; none of them isiXhosa.
“How will an angry protestor help not trashing a library … for something as sacred as his language; the definition of his very being?”
That statement scares me spitless for two reasons.
One: if there can be even the slightest modicum of justification for burning a library, I’m giving up hope. On a social level, burning books has all the subtlety of a murder-rape. It does not matter what the reasons – this is the last resort of utter, utter malicious and wilful stupidity. It tightens my buttocks to hear that people are even thinking of doing this! The dark ages happened because of exactly this type of spiteful maliciousness at Alexandria.
Two: yes, language is sacred, absolutely, but it is not the very definition of being! In “Africa” we’ve got this culture of identifying with language as a hook to hang identity on. This is rubbish and half of the problem. Its not about language, its about consciousness and being. My “very essence” is being human. “Cognito ergo sum” – I think because I am. Not “I am because I speak”. I think when we identify language as self, we are on a slippery slope to polarisation and alienation. Only when we have reconciled ourselves as people first, and build a society through “peoplehood” can we indulge in the luxuries of language.
Thereby the point: Motlanthe reached the greatest number of people by speaking in English! Good job!
We need to slaughter the sacred cow of language and start communicating!
Maybe it should have startede with you writing this post in SePedi.
However,I agree and was scared for him when he, Motlanthe, tried speaking SePedi
Yet you write this in English. Why is that?
One of the symptoms of African loathing is continued use of non-African names. Whilst the Deputy President might have erred in not delivering his speech in the language of his audiance, his preferred of use of his name Kgalema tells that he is awre of his african origin, something we can not say of Theo Mapheto. For an added measure I will expect Mr Mapheto to lead the demand for judicial processes to acknowledge and use the language of the accused persons. Continued use of Afrikaans in the legal profession might seem good to the language users, but this has been at the forefront of thwarting the development of African languages.
Our society today has elevated the use of English to the African household – the reason being that this give children a head start in life. What is being ignored is that it deprives these very children of a sense of belonging, culture and all matters African. It tells them that IsiXhoza, Sepedi XiTsonga are not important, for they are languages used by the non-sophisticated people of our country. If u are smart you speak English.
Theo, English is not a foreign language. It is one of the national languages.
But your overall point is really important. It is always better to engage with people in their home language.
Hee mfokabawo , Xa uyibona lengxaki yokusilela kwenkokheli zethu ekuphuhliseni ulwimi lwakwantu.
Kutheni wena ubhala ngalwimi lemboleko nje! in case u didnt get it
“dude, since you seem to understand these lingo challenges that face our so called leaders, why don’t u lead by example”
wait a minute I HAVE AN ANSWER !
you might exclude people that don’t speak yo lingo,
maybe the deputy pres was considering the poor Zulu dude who is deployed in Limpopo, who happened to be bored listening to Pedi around him all the time!
I Agree. if you are addressing Boere community in Ventersdorp and you can also speak Afrikaans, why address them in English? the same goes
to other groupings. if you are in vhenda and you can speak vhenda, one is supposed to speak in Vhenda. how do you expect your audience to engage with you and what you are saying if it cant understand what you are saying? Other African countries are so proud of their languages. Go to East Africa for instances, many politicians there speak kiSwahili when addressing their followers/constituencies
I don’t think our elite identify at all with “the people on the ground”, so I’m quite glad they speak English to the Pedis, the Zulus, etc. Hopefully these people whose feet actually touch earth will suddenly wake up one election and say “Why should I vote for the guy in the black Merc and BMW in the Armani suit with his kids in private schools and his holidays in Europe?”. And FINALLY we’ll have a real election.
It is a matter of opinion, Mr Mapheto, whether “Afrikaans is one of our most colourful languages” but it is a fact that its power (to which you refer) is confined to the Republic whilst English is understood and employed virtually worldwide.
For the information of Mr Thembani Mbaslanyana, Kiswahili is not an African language. There are many tribal languages there that qualify as such. Kiswahili is the lingua franca of East Africa, concocted after the arrival of British colonialists.
I don’t really see this as a valid national debate.
My language is English. It’s the one I feel most comfortable using. I chose to make sure my child was surrounded by literature in his mother tongue; could read and write it. For that reason, he was also sent to an ‘English’ school.
He has picked up more Zulu than I, from working with Zulu people. He is happy to speak to those people in their mother tongue, because he likes to show them the respect they value. He will probably never become a fluent Zulu speaker.
He’s not partial to Afrikaans and makes little effort in that respect, despite more opportunity.
Due to my own language fallibility, I cannot help anyone who speaks any language other than English to promote their language. The people who own those languages must do that. I thus must presume that the lack of promotion of several South African languages is due to a corresponding lack of interest in those languages by the people who were born to them.
I’d take a bet that there are people in South Africa who speak all the official languages and are capable and financially able to publish their own work. Get to it, Guys!
Now, were authority to make Pedi the only official South African language, I’d be at a huge loss. So would my son. But I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it!
Oh, i thought Kgalema Motlanthe was Tswana. So, I went to Wikipedia and they said the same thing. He’s Tswana, even the name tells it. Theo Mapheto, where did you get that fact that he’s Pedi?
I must say that it is a serious problem in our country. The issue only favours the oppressor as the Deputy was only interested in appeasing the masters and not the audience.
Communication 101. If you deliver a speech and your audience can barely understand you it does not serve any purpose.
Pula ga ene!!!
When I saw Mr Dep Pres addressing the people of Limpopo in the news during the recent heritage celebration, I asked myself why a sa bolele Sepedi? But then I took at glance at the audience, there were not only Sepedi speaking people in the audience, there were Venda and Tsonga and English/ Afrikaans speaking people….I am not in anyway diffending Mr Dep Pres…I agree with 101% that we need to uphold our African languages and actually get to learn some of the 11 official language we have in the country…that way, we will make life easier for all of us…learning to speak English is not enough…Mr Dep Pres could have had translator(s) for instance so that those who dont understand the English-man’s language…
Peace!!!!!
“Let us learn from the Afrikaner (and, in case you are wondering, I am not a coconut/Model C type)”.
Have South African blacks now reached the stage whereby if they believe or agree with something from a non black or westernised culture they must clarify and defend the possibility of being perceived as, and labelled a coconut.
Those who feel they must defend such ludicrous Uncle Tom labels have been betrayed by their own culture, and we know who is responsible for that.
In my view the term coconut is a racist attack designed to produce self censorship and personal diminishment.
Lets correct one thing before we move on. Kgalema is Tswana not Pedi.
Theo at it again. Nice one as always, but unfortunately English is the medium of exchange in SA. Imagine how non pedi speaking people would have felt if the deputy president spoke in Pedi?
It may be a surprise, but in Europe many people speak a dialect of their mother tongue, yet in school they learn teh official language. For example, if you learn German as a foreigner, you’d think that all Germans speak the German that you learned.Not so! In fact, in some areas you would think that the dialect they speak does not resemble German.The same is true about France,and even China. Brasilian Portuguese does not even sound as a Romanesque language. The solution lies in having an offcial langauge taht everyoen elarns and dialects (or vernacular tongues) are spoken at home or among the people who sepak teh same dialect. In SA English seems to be more universal, and it has a technical/scientific vocabulary. Afrikaans was also able to create one. Alas, a thia is requirement for technological communication with the outside world. No language is intrinsically superior, but pragmatism dictates that English has certain utilitarian advantages over vernacular which is only used in a limited area. Yet people who can speak both should insist upon cultivating it at home and in their own communities.In addition, I would welcome if every SA citizen could speak at least one African language. For now, unfortunately I have to say often: Ga ke bue lolime lwa gago sentle.
@Ian Shaw: you put it correctly.
Back in Holland, we learned three other languages at primary/high school: German, French and English. Why? Holland is 100km wide (EW) and 300 km long (NS). Immediate neighbours speak the other three languages.
The question is: do you want to be able to communicate or not?
However, Belgium – a bilingual country (French/Flamish=Dutch)- has had its fair share in warfare about the language. Comparable to the local battle between Afrikaans and English, which is more between cultures behind the language than the actual language itself.
Easy? never.
Are you people all mindless and muddled with this senseless debate. English is no longer just a colonial language. Its a world-wide language, universally understood. Why it was used instead of Sepedi was because it would be heard by a wider and perhaps more international audience. If you want Africa to be heard by the world, speak English, Spanish or Mandarin.
If you wish your speeches to remain parochial, by all means deliver them in isiZulu, isiXhosa or Sepedi.
It comes down to money and power. The Afrikaans people used the tax payers’ money to fund the development of Afrikaans, and their political power to force everyone else in the country to learn to speak it.I certainly do not want to return to that time of political force. And, are the Sepedi-speaking people willing to pay extra taxes to be used for Sepedi medium schools, or do they expect someone else to produce the money to pay for their ‘rights.’ Jewish people teach their children Hebrew in their own time with their own money. It is easy to make demands and say this or that is my right, if you don’t have to pay for it.
@ chiilipeppa and Jaffaty
Firstly, the idea that English is universally understood is a myth, popularly held by those of us who have the money to have internet access. There are many regions in this country where people do not understand English, and those people are marginalised by this discourse of ‘everybody understands it so what’s the issue’. In this regard, overemphasis on English’s international status over local languages is inappropriate disrespectful, and respresents an unwillingness to learn each other’s language.
Secondly, a language needs public spaces and promotion through public institutions to stay alive. A language that is only taught at home soon dies, or becomes the object of study, like Latin. Languages that are sidelined by English, like Gaelic and Welsh, have suffered heavily. If we are serious about language rights, we should promote other languages. And yes, we can use tax payers money for it, because the people of this country have a right to it. Yes, Afrikaans was unfairly promoted against other languages. This will not be remedied by dragging all languages into the private sphere. We will restore equality when we actively promote, in the public sphere, all languages and establish a culture of learning each other’s languages.
Technology could come to the rescue.
Many people have FM radios on their cell phones or have access to a small portable radio with earphones. Simultaneous translations into ten or twenty languages which are then locally broadcast on separate frequencies could be arranged at any important events. This would allow people to tune in to their language of choice. So the ten remaining official languages would be the most obvious targets of translation but these could be supplemented by the official UN and the official AU languages together with any other appropriate local languages or dialects. Even if the cost is two thousand rand per language for a two hour event, this amounts to some 40 000 rand for twenty languages. This is small money compared to the government budgets for important events. Was R70 million not used for Jacob Zuma’s inauguration as Presidents in 2009.
“Where there is a will, there is a way”
An example of the use of technology for linguistic and other purposes in India:
http://wiki.africasource2.tacticaltech.org/post/main/02mBCs6gSdVwkv2C
I would like to see graduate black engineers and scientiets and a linguist (in a black language) to sit down and try to compile a technical dictionary correlated with the equivalent English term. Thsi was done in Afrikaans and also in some Central and Eastern European langauges that had been dominated by German technical terms. This is the only way that can lead to technical education of black students at secondary and tertiary levels. Rgw governemnt should commission and finance such a group of experts. There will be some mistakes, some terms created will not be accepted, some might even be ridiculed but it is a necessity.
(I stand to be corrected)
I think it is a very immature arguement to say “Yet you wrote in English” Kenda.
Ga nka simolola go kwala ka Setswana sa gaetsho fa, lo tla bo lore ga lo nkutlwe etswa e ntse e le lona lo reng go buiwe ka maleme a rona.
I think Theo wrote in English so that we can all understand kgang ya gagwe. But for Deputy Motlanthe’s speech writer’s, they should have known that he was going to address Pedi speaking people. It’s only fair that they do their due diligence.
Ke raya fela.
Pula ma-Aforika, pula.