Aug-Sept 2014 K.indd

57

www.cosatu.org.za • AUG/SEPT 2014

sharing with other languages including the dominant Colonial Languages of European Origin

respectively. Africans like all other nations know and understand the relationship of the power of the written and the spoken word.We know that from the shared written and spoken word we draw from the clinical observations and rich experiences of others, extending ourselves well beyond the range of personal encounter. We know that the shared written and spoken word makes the most remarkable contribution to the quality of one’s life. From the shared written and spoken word comes that perceptual vocabulary , the words, metaphors , symbols, allusions and other verbal associations with which one grasp and shape life. We know that through a shared written and spoken word we transcend the limitations imposed by time and space and all the other circumstances of one’s private existence. We even know that beyond the spoken word but the printed page remains one of the greatest technological achievements of history, perhaps the single most significant in terms of its cultural impact. It is for this reason that we contest the language with which the printed and spoken word gets communicated. We want the printed word and spoken word to be equally communicated in our own African Languages so that in it we can translate and assert our cultural values and our identity with maxim accuracy without any equivocation. Africans are never blinded in the description of the world by their limitations of their vocabulary, never limited in their vision by not having words, scientific or poetic with which to conceptualise and describe what is in front them. Attend any African funeral or any African wedding or a thanks giving function and listen to the mastery of an African language in action from the middle aged to the elders speaking.

You will stand there hypnotically or remain glued in your seat being mesmerised by the coherent use of African idioms and proverbs which produce the rhythm that feeds to the eloquence of the use of language that gets delivered as a speech in musical style and unquestionable historical and scientific authority. But these never get recognised as great. To borrow from Chinua Achebe in things Fall Apart, in Africa “the art of conversation is regarded very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil with which words are eaten”. The writings of Ngugi Wathiong’o, Rubisana, Mqhayi, Dhlomo, Vilakazi, Mofolo and Mazisi Kunene bear testimony to this uncontested fact. It is disturbing to note that with all the wealth of African languages how the ability to speak and read the English language continues to be a determinant of a person’s intellectual capabilities in South Africa. In many occasions, views which win the day are from those who are considered to have good command and mastery of the English Language. Those who receive an audience in high offices are those who can present their ideas in English Language. Those whose levels of using the English Language is comparatively less, they get mocked, laughed at and even labelled as being of low IQ levels. This applies to both the reading and speaking of the English Language. I have seen how the teaching and learning process in schools continues to be based on the use of English. Even in the analysis of Matric results, language is never mentioned as a fundamental contributory factor in the performance of learners. Learning areas continue to be taught in English and those for whom English is not a mother tongue are judged on the same

standards as those learners for whom English is their mother tongue and yet research continues to shout alarm bells on the use of foreign language in learning institutions as being a central barrier to the success of our learners. African parents who can afford, have even taken their children to the former Model C schools, or private schools where English is a language of instruction not only on the basis of the learning programmes which are being offered by these schools or the pass rate achieved by these schools but also because they want their children to learn better English Language than themselves or like themselves. These are parents who at some point of their lives may have suffered the humiliation of having not mastered the English languageorhavelostbusiness,employment and other life opportunities on the basis that they could not express themselves in English Language. Or when they look back they realise that they could not have secured their levels of achievements without the mastery of English language. The 1976 generation who took to the streets in protest against the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction must have been propelled by their imagination of the humiliation which could have come with being taught and to learn Mathematics and Science or Business studies in Afrikaans. Instead of this humiliation they chose to face the barrel of the gun with stones. Little did they realise that English was also to have the same effect. Perhapsitwillhelptogiveabriefreflection on how English as a language entrenched itself throughout the world so that this may prepare us to understand the magnitude of the challenge we have to confront.

Our Heritage