Kwesi Kwaa Prah.
The Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS).
Cape Town.
Keynote
Address presented to the Launch Workshop of Language of Instruction
in Tanzania and South Africa (LOITASA), Morogoro, Tanzania: 22nd
to 24th April 2002.
In, Birgit Brock-Utne, Zubeida Desai and Martha Qorro (eds).
Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa (LOITASA).
E & D Limited. Dar-es-Salaam. 2003
Introduction
Africa has had almost
50 years of post-colonialism. During this period, we have
seen both positive and negative features in the evolution and
transformation of African society. There is often a tendency
to dwell inordinately and a trifle masochistically on its trails
and tribulations. Indeed, much of this experience bears
little triumphant to write home about, and unfortunately much
to lament. The suffering of the masses in Africa is easily perceptible
by anybody who has eyes to see and ears to hear. Relentless
hunger, entrenched illiteracy, HIV/AIDS, and other epidemic
health conditions, undergirded by crushing poverty, tin-pot
dictatorships and political tyrannies define the realities of
contemporary African life. The existential trials, which face
the masses of Africans on a daily basis, dehumanises African
humanity. African governments are most of the time merely muddling
through the processes of government and service delivery. Hardly
ever do their rhetorical promises and pontifical extravagancies
match what is practically available to Africa’s teeming
millions.
However, the African experience over this past, almost, half-century,
has also some positive highlights. It is certainly not all
darkness and gloom. Some areas of African life have improved,
if only limitedly. Most post-colonial governments in Africa, at
least initially, created greater opportunities for people to go
to school. Indeed, almost all sub-Saharan governments, in
the immediate post-colonial period, expanded education to an unprecedented
degree. During the 23-year period of 1960 – 1983, the expansion
of education in many African countries was impressive.
Table 1 (Education
Enrolment for Primary and Secondary Schools Growth Percentages
in Selected African Countries; 1960-1983) (1)
Country Growth in Primary Enrolments (%) Growth
in Secondary enrolments (%)
Tanzania 781% 370%
Kenya 553% 1988%
Zambia 415% 230%
Lesotho 204% 96%
Zimbabwe 440% 148%
Swaziland 382% 145%
Botswana 550% 250%
Malawi 297% 80%
Nyerere provides illustrative figures for Tanzania during its
early years of independence. Writing in 1967 in his document
Education for Self-Reliance he informs us that:
There has been a very
big expansion of educational facilities available, especially
at the secondary levels. In 1961 there were 490,000 children
attending primary schools in Tanganyika, the majority of them
only going up to standard 4. In 1967, there were 825,000
children attending such schools and increasingly these will
be full seven-year primary schools. In 1961, too there
were 11,832 children in secondary schools, only 176 of whom
were in form 6. This year there are 25,000 and 830.(2)
African countries on the whole have not done badly on gross educational
expansion. In this respect, remarkably, South Africa, the last
and the richest of African countries has been possibly also the
poorest in education expansion record particularly at the tertiary
level, since the Apartheid regime was brought to a formal end
in 1994. Generally, in the early post-colonial period most African
states have also been able to improve the health status of their
citizenry. However, in one country after the other, as economic
conditions have deteriorated on this continent, both health and
educational facilities have rapidly and grievously deteriorated
and standards have gone into a tailspin. At the beginning
of the 21st century, we can say with little fear of controversy
that, in both areas of education and health, Africa is manifestly
retrogressing, a one step forward two backward record of neo-colonialism
prevails.
If in the sphere of education, facilities have considerably expanded
over this period, clearly, the quality of education provided and
the quality of the product is declining. A range of societal
afflictions is wearing down Africa’s capacity to sustain
its educational challenge. There is, for a start, the “book
famine”, which has scoured Africa over the past three decades. Books
are difficult to come by and where they are available, they are
at a price very few can afford. Where three square meals a day
are difficult to come by, the choice between bread and a book
is not a realistic one. People under such circumstances have little
consideration for books. Many spend their days chasing “essential
commodities” (rice, flour, cooking oil, soap etc) as they
are described in West Africa. Thus, poverty and the hunger
of the belly have affected the availability of books and other
materials needed in the education system.
Teachers in Africa today, generally, earn so little and enjoy
such increasingly diminishing prestige that, the teaching profession
has lost its allure and the status it enjoyed in the colonial
period. Few of the emerging generation want to be teachers. Indeed,
a Tanzanian academic friend of mine whose children reached university
age and were faced with, amongst others, the choice of becoming
professional academics, like their father and mother, announced
firmly and with conviction that they have no time for the academic
option. The material rewards for a teacher or academic are
not in the minds of many, commensurate with the requisite investment,
in time and money. It is arguable that, in today’s Africa,
the overwhelming majority of teachers do not exclusively survive
on the remunerations they receive, as teachers.
In too many African countries a good number of children still
go to school under trees, without proper teaching equipment and
with all too often poorly trained teachers. Excessive pupil/teacher
ratios make effective teaching impossible. Children continue,
daily, to walk endless miles in order to reach schools. Invariably,
children who have to walk long distances to school are those who
come from poverty-stricken homes and are likely to be doing this
on near empty stomachs.
Most observers would
agree that in recent years both academic institutions and the
product of these institutions are beginning rapidly to deteriorate
to near collapse in some cases. School and university graduates
have mounting difficulties in finding work. As I have elsewhere
indicated, in Nigeria there are cases of graduates who end up
as taxi/kabukabu drivers because they cannot find employment. Recently,
there was the publicised case of a graduate architect who became
a fruit seller on the streets of Lagos because he could find
no openings to practice his metier. Similar cases have
been reported in Kenya, where a young lady graduate had to accept
work as a bar-tender and a young male graduate became a security
guard in order to earn a living.(3) With the ethos of corruption
and graft affecting much of African society, both education
and the educated have declined in importance in the reckoning
of mass society in Africa.
The issues I have so far raised relate to questions of resource-allocation;
inputs and outputs, which follow from this. They are largely,
more quantitative than qualitative in meaning and expression.
However, there are other issues relating more to policy and philosophy;
issues which guide and underpin the principles on which the practice
of education is constructed. One of the most important of these
is the thinking behind the selection of one or the other language
of instruction.
LOI; from Yesterday to Tomorrow
Language of instruction
(LOI), or the language in which education is principally conducted
is one of the most far-reaching and significant features of
any education system. The language of instruction, the language
of educational formation, in any society is also the language
of hegemony and power. It is the language in which basic skills
and knowledge are imparted to the population, and the medium
in which the production and reproduction of knowledge is taught.
Implicit in this is the acknowledgement that, it is in this
medium that knowledge is accumulated and deposited.
Where, LOI is the same as the mother tongue/home language, it
not only affirms the developmental capacity of the mother tongue
to grow as a language of culture, science and technology, it also
gives confidence to a people, with respect to their historical
and cultural baggage. LOI in the home language or mother
tongue is an instrument for the cultural and scientific empowerment
of people. Its denial signifies the social and cultural inferiority
of the culture and people whose mother-tongue-use is denied. Therefore,
in free societies knowledge transfer takes place in the language
or languages of the masses; the languages in which the masses
are most creative and innovative; languages which speak to them
in their hearts and minds most primordially. Cultural freedom
and African emancipation therefore cannot be cultivated, expanded
or developed where the LOI is different from the languages or
language the people normally in their everyday lives speak. Where
the language of instruction is different from the languages of
mass society, those who work in the language of instruction, foreign
from the languages of the masses, become culturally removed and
alienated from the masses. Indeed, where the language of instruction
is different from the mother tongue of the people there is almost
always a history and persistence of patterns of dominance, over-lordship
or colonialism.
Liliana Mammino makes the point as follows; “the use of
a second language as a medium of instruction is a heritage of
colonisation. In all those countries where such a heritage
is not present, students use their mother tongue throughout the
whole instruction career.
From a pedagogical
point of view, the use of a second language is an objective
disadvantage affecting both the easiness and, one might say,
the comfort with which knowledge is acquired by students, and
the extent and depth of the acquisition”.(4) Where a colonial
language becomes the language of instruction, with all knowledge
and education fed into the people in the language of the former
colonial overlord, this removes and negates the development
of confidence in home or original cultures. The removal
from cultural and linguistic primordial moorings assumes the
form of denial of the home culture, a creeping amnesia of the
collective memory. This memory is rejected or regarded with
a mixture of comic relief and derision. In South Africa, many
people of Khoisan historical descent who have been culturally
and linguistically Afrikanerized and who were in the past classified
as Coloured under the Apartheid scheme, publicly, only acknowledge
European roots. “My grandfather was Greek/ My grandfather
was Irish” would be announced. The ostensibly acknowledged
grandfather is invariably unknown and there is silence about
grandmother; total silence about African cultural and linguistic
antecedents. As John Mutorwa, Minister of Basic Education in
Namibia said in 1995, the “ …. San people received
so little attention that no education was available for them
in any language except Afrikaans”.(5) I have seen and heard
in both Angola and in South Africa young people and migrants
say without any sense of loss or shame, the fact that they cannot
speak their native languages. Brock-Utne notes the view of an
informer, about Khoekhoegowab speakers in Namibia that, “the
young ones don’t want to speak their own language, they
all want to be Americans. They watch TV and get all this American
stuff. They want to be like Michael Jackson and look down on
their own culture”.(6)
Such effective cultural
and linguistic denationalisation is a mark of the success of
the colonial project seen from the viewpoint of the colonialist.
Bgoya has made the point that, “constant bombardment of
societies in the South with European languages, and the aggressively
marketed notion of the superiority of things and ways western,
can only lead to pressures on the societies in the south to
accept to abandon their cultures and to adopt the American way.”(7)
As Obiechina put it,
“the supreme sin of colonialism” was the crass devaluation
of African culture and the alienation of the educated elite
from their native traditions and historical belongings.(8) But,
at least formally, in its classical form, colonialism is buried,
so its persistence reflects the entrenched nature of neo-colonialism
in Africa. In our generation few have exposed the cultural legacy
of colonialism on the African mind, as eloquently as Ngugi Wa
Thiongo.(9) Brock-Utne’s view is that, “Some
may ask if Africa was ever intellectually decolonized. No,
probably not. However, attempts were made at independence
in one country after the other of building education in Africa
on African roots. I claim that these attempts have been
stifled over the past ten to fifteen years.”(10) In my
understanding, this view is too charitable. African countries
never seriously got started culturally decolonizing. Many
of the elites who inherited the post-colonial state displayed
a schizophrenic attitude to the question of culture. Invariably,
they rhetorically rejected indiscriminate westernism and extolled
“Negritude” and the “African personality”,
but at the same time they in practice succumbed to the dalliance
and overkill of western culture in a neo-colonial setting.
Phillipson usefully
points to the fact that English in many post-colonial societies
has served to maintain western interests.(11) In his text Linguistic
Imperialism, Phillipson exposes the connection between
language and neocolonialism.(12) Advancing the concept Linguicism,
which means; the collection of ideas, rationale, structures
and practices which are employed to justify and legitimise the
production and reproduction of resources and power differentials
between groups defined on the bases of language and language-use;
Phillipson shows that English in the developing world is an
instrument of imperialism . Bgoya’s diagnosis of the tension
between globalisation and language-use is that, “English
is the language of globalisation and English serves fundamentally
the interests of those for whom it is both an export commodity
and a language of conquest and domination”(13)
Struggles and processes
for the revision of LOI policies mirror larger political and
social struggles. Changes in the status planning for languages
are not infrequently a parallel cultural response to political
and socio-economic transformation. A good example of this
is provided by the South African case. Nkonko Kamwangamalu
has explained that, the pre-apartheid years were culturally
and linguistically defined by the struggle of the Afrikaners
against the British policy of Anglicisation.(14) The dominance
of the English in all areas of social life was contested with
slow but steady erosion of this dominance until 1948, when with
the ascendancy of the Afrikaner political elite, the doors to
Afrikaner supremacy were opened. The apartheid years saw the
formulation and institutionalisation of the policy of Bantu
education, which, among other things, sought to bring Afrikaans
to equality with English by using both of these languages as
a media of instruction in all black schools. This was resoundingly
challenged in full view of the whole world in Soweto, June 1976
when African school kids in Soweto rejected Afrikaans and took
to the streets to register their protest. This protest
against LOI under Apartheid marked a watershed in the history
of Apartheid fascism in South Africa. It announced the
coming demise of Apartheid. The rest is history. The
post-apartheid years have seen the limited but principled dismantling
of the administrative structure of apartheid-based education
and the adoption of a new education system, which reflects better,
at least on paper, the cultural and linguistic interests of
African language speakers. In the Sudan, when in the late 1920s
the British decided to ensure that the South should maintain
its African identity unchallenged by Arabic cultural influences
from the North (Southern Policy), one of the first moves made
to consolidate this policy position was to adopt at Rejaf, in
1928, six African languages to be used as languages of instruction
in schools.
What this illustrates
is that each junction in the evolution of society which registers
in the partial or larger transfer of rights and resources to
broader sections of the population, at the cultural level, registers
in an changing language policy which raises the status and power
of equally broader sections of the society. Frequently, this
translates as a LOI, which draws on the languages of masses
who had hitherto been unempowered. The lessons of the Afrikaner
linguistic and cultural struggle against Anglicisation should
usefully inform present-day African efforts at cultural self-assertion
and renaissance in South Africa. In 1908, the Afrikaner far-right
politician Dr. D.F. Malan is reported to have exhorted his audience
that, “raise the Afrikaans language to a written language,
make it the bearer of our culture, our history, our national
ideals, and you will raise the People to a feeling of self-respect
and to the calling to take a worthier place in world civilisation
… A healthy national feeling can only be rooted in ethnic
[volks] art and science, ethnic customs and character, ethnic
language and ethnic religion and, not least, in ethnic literature”.(15) He
understood what was needed to rescue Afrikaners from the inferiorities
of second class whites in an English dominated society. Later
Malan’s party, the National Party, tried to use language
to ultimately bring Africans culturally under their thraldom. They
have been unsuccessful.
It is remarkable that
during the first decade of independence there was a considerable
amount of literature put out by various observers and educationists,
which argued for the use of western languages as LOI. Much
of this would appear today as apologetics for a neo-colonial
cause. Adejeji Awoniyi lists a sample of such literature,
which for one reason or the other suggested that it was better
to use non-African languages as LOI.(16)
A LOI policy, which favours the use of colonial languages, entrenches
the schism between the elite and masses. It implicitly defines
the culture and language of the masses as inferior and irredeemable
and seeks to, in effect, replace it lock stock and barrel with
a new advancing language and culture which is seen as best articulated
“in his master’s voice” and diction. In this respect,
Andreski made cogent observations:
Instead of drawing
the population together, the employment of French or English
as an official language cuts off the elite from the commonality
just as the use of French in eighteenth –century central
and eastern Europe did. Having English or French as the
official language prevents a crystallisation of a national consciousness
because the graduates have no vested interest in anything that
could be called national culture. It is probably because
in fact they do not know where they belong that the African
writers insist so much on their Negritude. Furthermore,
not understanding the official language, the ordinary people
can neither identify themselves with the state nor acquire even
the most rudimentary information about public affairs. Another
important consequence of the linguistic situation is that when
one is compelled to use a language which one does not command
perfectly one cannot say anything involved or subtle; and (what
might have even more serious political consequences) one incurs
the risk of cutting a comic figure in the eyes of those whose
mother tongue it is. This often aggravates the inferiority
complex, the feeling of insecurity and the need for individual
or collective self-glorification, which often prompt political
or economic follies.(17)
Andreski’s views here echo and resonate with the language
and opinion of Frantz Fanon in his Peau Noir , Masques Blancs
(Black Skin, White Masks). Fanon in inimitable language draws
the picture in graphic and telling terms:
Every colonised people
– every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has
been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality,
finds itself face to face with the language of the civilised
nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country.(18)
A non-mother tongue
LOI is the socio-linguistic basis for creating neo-colonial
elites in Africa. Elites which reproduce themselves in increasing
numbers and accept this slow extinction of their own languages
in favour of the colonially bequeathed tongues. We do well
to remember that, “of the 6,000 or so languages presumed
to exist on Earth, 95% seem destined to disappear within the
next 100 years.”(19) Most of Africa’s languages
are included in this estimate. The surest way of ensuring
the destiny of extinction for African languages is to avoid
using them as LOIs. The writing is on the wall.
What needs to be said here is that societies with colonial pasts
which have been able to make a break with the use of colonial
languages as media of education and instruction are those which
make progress and development not only in the educational field,
but also in other areas of social life. This point is particularly
borne out in the experience of post-colonial Asia. Our attention
has been drawn to the observations of the Sri-Lankan researcher
A. Mahinda Ranaweera who writes that:
The transition from
English to the national languages as the medium of instruction
in science helped to destroy the great barrier that existed
between the privileged English educated classes; between the
science educated elite and the non-science educated masses;
between science itself and the people. It gave confidence
to the common man that science is within his reach and to the
teachers and pupils, that knowledge of English need not necessarily
be a prerequisite for learning science.(20)
Such observations prove the validity of the argument. If
a post-colonial Asian society can register such records, the doubting
Thomas’ among Africans can hardly justify their intellectual
turpitude.
In a text published by the International Development Research
Centre (IDRC) under the direction of Kabiru Kiyanjui; Languages
of Instruction: Policy Implications for Education in Africa, we
are informed that:
In the wake of the
Jomtien Conference in 1990, African governments have, with the
help of the international community, engaged in unprecedented
efforts to resolve the educational problems their countries
face. The goal of good-quality education for all has taken
centre stage in political and educational debates. One
issue that has not been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction
concerns the medium of instruction, also known as the language
of instruction (LOI). What is the “best LOI policy
in Africa?(21)
The report, based on studies and experiences in six African countries
(Botswana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania) suggests
that LOI approaches that are based on mother tongue instruction
in the early years of basic education result in faster and improved
capacity for the acquisition of knowledge by pupils. Also,
mother tongue based LOI facilitates the acquisition of second
and third languages. Contrary to popular opinion that LOI
approaches are ethnically divisive, the report found that LOI
policies, which use African lingua-francas, provide pupils and
students with an integrative attitude across ethnic borders. Other
important findings of the report include the points that,
The most commonly
identified technical problems arising from inadequate language
planning include the inappropriateness of technical terms in
LOI, the complexity of syntactic patterns in textbooks, the
poor quality and irrelevance of textbooks, and outdated teaching
methodologies. Recent research indicates that the long-term
benefits of producing learning materials in a mother tongue
outweigh their high initial publishing costs. Progress
in computer technology has considerably reduced the cost of
offset printing. Desktop publishing, for instance, is resulting
in the growth of national publishing industries, which will
ultimately reduce African countries’ dependency on foreign
publishers. African researchers are uniting across the
continent to draw the attention of policymakers to the political,
economic, and, above all, educational benefits of shifting toward
LOI policies that take these research findings into account. By
and large, these researchers recommend that African countries
implement bilingual or multilingual LOI policies whereby mother
tongues and the languages of wider communication (English, French,
and Portuguese) are used systematically to suit both the educational
needs and the political realities of African countries. Also,
to provide reliable guidance for policymakers, researchers are
recommending more empirical studies, especially in countries
where such research is lacking.(22)
Most experts in the field generally share the above findings. The
value of mother tongue instruction is literally incontestable. The
point which most make is that mother tongue LOI should be mandatory
for the first two/three years of education. Practically,
after the early primary stage, pupils should move, into English,
French, Portuguese, etc. This is the position espoused by
all the major donor agencies, the World Bank, the IMF, and which
is accepted by most African governments, at least on paper. This
position is not new. It is an argument, which has been with
us from the early colonial period. It is my view that even
this position falls far short of what should be the case. My
argument is that the whole of African education, from primary
to the tertiary level, should be conducted in local languages,
the home language, the mother tongues. This is the way that
all societies in the world which have managed to develop, or achieved
a sustained developmental momentum, have or are doing it. Turkish
students study to the university level in Turkish. Greeks,
Albanians, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Danish, Germans,
Chinese, Indonesians/Malaysians, Japanese, and others all manage
their education from the beginning to the end in their own languages. Somehow
when it comes to Africa the logic breaks down and all sorts of
reasons are found why in the case of Africa this should be different.
Tanzania should be one of the countries in the forefront of African
efforts towards the use of an African language as language of
instruction at all levels of the education system. KiSwahili
is understood by about 90% of the population, and is spoken by
about 50 million Africans in East, Central and the northern reaches
of Southern Africa. Tanzania is the creative heartland of
KiSwahili. In this area if there is anyone language which
can pioneer the use of African languages as LOI, it is KiSwahili.
I am not suggesting
that, exclusively only African languages should be taught. The
suggestion is that education should be conducted in the home
languages of the people. In addition, other languages can
be learnt as subjects geared towards the cultivation of multilingual
cultural environments. Some of these could be other African
languages. Such additional languages can include both the
old colonial languages and some local or African languages. The
ability to learn languages is more dependent on exposure to
these languages at the right age than spectacular ability. The
argument that I have elsewhere made is that development in Africa
will not be forthcoming until we start using our languages as
LOI from the beginning to the end of the education process.(23)
Harmonising African Language Orthographies
For agents and advocates
of the principle of mother tongue education in Africa, it is
not enough to argue the case. The legitimacy of the argument
is for any analytical mind and on the strength of available
evidence clear. In Roy-Campbell and Qorro’s Language
Crisis in Tanzania, the authors draw our attention to Barrett’s
contention in response to his question: Why is English still
the Medium of Education in Tanzanian Secondary Schools? The
reason Barrett provides, for this situation is that maybe the
arguments for KiSwahili have simply not been sufficiently strongly
put.(24) This argument does not appear plausible, in view
of the wealth of arguments that are available generally to back-up
mother tongue LOI world-wide and KiSwahili in particular. In
the case of Tanzania and also Swaziland, Lesotho, Somalia and
the Central African Republic where overwhelming majorities speak
one language, which is indigenous, one can hardly say that the
argument has not been sufficiently made, or is not patently
clear. Francois Lim has discussed the case of Sango in
the Central African Republic to good effect.(25) In Lesotho
where I spent some years during the late nineteen-eighties,
although the overwhelming majority of the people speak the same
language and are able to hold meetings of the highest governmental
order in SeSotho, no attempt was made to go beyond this stage
and introduce SeSotho more comprehensively into the education
system. In Somalia, although when the country attained
independence in 1960 it took English, Italian and Arabic as
its official languages, it was the military regime of General
Siad Barre who came to power in 1969, who in October 1972 settled
for the use of the Latin script for the Somali language and
whose administration proceeded rapidly to produce materials
in the Somali language. Over a short period, a huge volume
of literature was produced in the country. Warsame has
explained how this was achieved.(26)
One of the most important lessons about the Tanzanian experience,
which is well brought out in Roy-Campbell and Qorro’s text
is the confusion and complications created by a half-hearted attempt
to use KiSwahili as an LOI. Starting children off in primary
school in KiSwahili and then expecting them at secondary and university
levels to work in English is like casting them into two worlds,
with one leg in either and belonging no-where. If we want
in a country where 90% of the people speak KiSwahili, to work
in KiSwahili as LOI, then it is important to be consequent and
go the whole hog. This is the appropriate response to the following
problem:
The primary uses of
English are in post-secondary school classrooms and among non-KiSwahili
speaking foreigners. KiSwahili, or in some cases another
mother tongue, is used in most aspects of life in Tanzania. Consequently,
secondary school students have very little opportunity to practise
the English they learn as a subject in schools. It is no
wonder, then, that when such students enter Form One, they are
at a linguistic disadvantage. This follows them throughout
their secondary school career, with some students becoming marginally
better with greater exposure to English.(27)
The problem that the authors describe is similar to observations
I made in the Southern Sudan (Juba) during the early-nineteen
eighties. A large number of the Northern Sudanese students
at Juba University, in the south, were instructed in Arabic for
their primary and secondary school education, with English as
a subject taught. At university they were lectured in English
and supposed to write their assignments in English. The result
was disastrous.
The only caution one has, to my mind, to be wary of in the Tanzanian
case is that although KiSwahili is African and is spoken flawlessly
by 90% of the people, it is for most not the home language. What
this implies is that its adoption as LOI should not halt attempts
towards the harmonisation and development of other regional, equally
large languages. For example, the harmonisation of the languages
of the Great Lakes area, Runyakitara (Runyoro, Rutooro, Runyankore,
Rukiga, Kiruwanda, Kiyamulenge) touches on speakers in north-western
Tanzania, and covers a speech community including speakers from
Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania. Obviously
native speakers of this language would prefer the possibility
of also working in their language. The harmonisation of the
Luo varieties between north Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and
Ethiopia should empower culturally millions of people. The
Ngoni of southern Tanzania speak a language, which is spoken in
seven countries (South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Mozambique,
Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania), in various dialects in the southern
part of the continent. There is wisdom in providing the possibility
for the speakers who may well total 40 million to use their mother
tongue as a harmonised written form. In short the development
and use of KiSwahili at all levels of education should not necessarily
hinder the development of other mother tongues.
All education is best achieved in the home language. However,
what needs to be done to make this option economically viable? Make
the switch profitable for both the individual and society? Economically
the development of materials and the economies of scale are only
manageable when they are developed on the basis of large mutually
intelligible written forms. In practice, this means that
they need to be cleansed of missionary linguistic fragmentation
of the ethno-linguistic field. One inadvertent result of
missionary linguistic practices in Africa is that dialects have
been elevated to languages to the point that the myth of Babel
in Africa appears real, when in fact it is only ephemeral.
The truth is that the demographics of language and linguistic
diversity in Africa are not really different from what obtains
in other parts of the world. What is different is that the
identification of linguistic units in Africa tends to be loose. The
identification of language communities in Africa has been approached
in a way, which favours the recognition of practically all dialect,
and phonological variations as separated languages. This
is partly because such observers have never in most instances,
looked at African societies outside the framework of colonial
boundaries or the immediate areas of missionary settlement and
evangelical zeal. By this approach Cockney, Tyneside, broad
Yorkshire, etc. in Britain will be languages in themselves. This
fragmentation approach is still popular with the Summer Institute
of Linguistics (SIL), a leading group in the work of rendering
African languages into script, otherwise translating the Bible
into African languages. The rendition of African languages
into scripts for purposes of the development of Africa cannot
at the same time proceed with fragmentation of languages as is
being conducted by the SIL. In effect, the SIL is building
and destroying at the same time. When one asks why this is
the case, the reason that comes easily to the fore is that the
object of such endeavours at rendering African languages into
script is not in the first instance to help in the development
of Africa, but rather simply to translate the Bible into African
speech forms and to evangelise and convert Africans into Christians. Unless
one assumes that converting Africans to Christianity represents
development. All other considerations are for such purposes
insignificant.
The CASAS Experience
The work of the Centre
for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS), over the past
5 years studies has revealed that as first, second and third
language speakers about 85% of Africans speak no more than 12
– 15 core languages (by core languages I mean clusters
of mutually intelligible speech forms which in essence constitute
dialects of the same language). These include Nguni; SeSotho/SeTswana;
KiSwahili; Dholuo; Eastern Inter-Lacustrine; Runyakitara; Somali/Rendile/Oromo/Borana;
Fulful; Mandenkan; Hausa; Yoruba; Ibo and Amharic. These
would be the first order languages of prominence. Below
these, there may be about 6 which are not so large, in terms
of speakers, but which have significant numbers of users.
The work of the Centre has been to network African linguists
and other specialists who technically work towards the harmonisation
of orthography between mutually intelligible clusters. Generally
such clusters need to display a degree of + 85% mutual intelligibility. An
appropriate instrument for measuring mutual intelligibility has
been developed by CASAS and draft guidelines for the revision
African orthographic conventions has also been developed. Prof.
Hounkpati Capo of the University of Benin has harmonised the Gbe
languages of maritime West Africa. These include Aja in Nigeria;
Aja, Mina, Fon, Gun in Benin; Mina and Ewe in Togo; and Ewe
in Ghana. Prof. Capo has designated this cluster as the Gbe
languages. Recently, work on the south-central African languages
of Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique have been completed. This
has been done with Prof. Felix Banda of the University of the
Western Cape, as Co-ordinator. This work has produced a harmonised
orthography for languages such as ciNyanja/ ciCewa, ciNsenga/ciNgoni/ciNsenga,
eLomwe, eMakhuwa, ciYao, ciTumbuka/ciSenga, ciBemba, kiKaonde,
Lunda and ciLuvale, and related dialects. These will now
have a single spelling system, rather than three or more spelling
systems within the same language, or even more systems across
related Bantu languages. Given the basic unity of the consonant
and vowel structure of southern Bantu languages, technically,
the harmonisation activity should yield successful results fairly
easily. Work on Nguni (IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, IsiNdebele, IsiShangaan,
SeSwati, Ngoni) and Sotho/Tswana (SeSotho, SeTswana, SePedi, SiLozi),
spoken in 7 countries in each instance is due to start later this
year. In May 2002, technical meetings for the harmonisation
of the Mandenkan languages (Mande, Malinke, Dyula, Mandingo, Bambara)
spoken in 5 countries; Gur (Gurunshi, Frafra, Senufo, Moree, Kulanga,
etc.) spoken in 5 countries; and Akan (Twi, Fanti, Brong, Baule,
Agni) spoken in 3 countries; will be conducted in Abidjan. Hopefully,
by the end of this year (2002), these language clusters will have
harmonised orthographies, and work will have proceeded towards
harmonising the Fang dialects (Ati, Meke, Dzaman, Mtumu, Mveny
and Okak). An important lesson arising out of this work is
that we need to work in co-operation across borders because practically
all African languages are cross-border speech forms, which defy
the colonially inherited borders. Working within the framework
of African neo-colonial borders creates more problems. The
sentimental glories of neo-colonial flags and national anthems
maintain the fragmentation process of African languages. For
the sake of flag and so-called national identity, Kamuzu Banda
of Malawi refused to except the reality of the fact that ciNyanja
and ciCerwa are the same language. Sometimes these tensions
are perceptible in the same country and represent attempts to
own and control linguistic turf. In Ghana, for 25 years after
the harmonisation of Akan to produce a unified Akan orthography,
writers still persisted in using the pre-unification orthography
which separated mutually intelligible dialects like Akuapim, Asante,
Fanti, Akim, and Brong. In a report submitted to CASAS by
Felix Banda who has co-ordinated work on the languages of south-central
Africa, it was revealed that,
that the new iciLamba
orthography had adopted the graphemes [sy] instead of [sh] for
the voiceless palatal fricative, because they associated the
[sh] sound with iciBemba. This is clearly nonsense as the [sh]
sound has nothing to do with iciBemba. Even our own cross-border
orthography recommends [sh] rather than [sy] for the voiceless
palatal fricative.(28)
The approach of CASAS is that once the technical work on the
harmonisation of orthography and the development of common spelling
systems has been developed, the new system needs to be taught
to writers and teachers who then produce materials using the new
orthographies. These workshops have already been started
in a number of instances. The target of CASAS in the short
run is to complete work within the next few years on the 12 –
15 core languages. That will literally break the back of
the problem.
In all the instances of the harmonisation work what has been
realised is that invariably not all the mutually intelligible
languages equally and easily submit themselves to harmonisation. The
speech forms, which lie at the extreme ends of the phonological
spectrum of a given cluster, are often difficult to unite with
the middle range speech forms. For example, CASAS has found
that the Luo cluster consisting of languages such as Anyuak, Shilluk
Jur, Lafon, Acholi, Lango, Alur, Chopadhola and Lakeside Luo do
not easily collapse into one orthography. The same may be
true for the Somali, Rendile, Borana and Oromo cluster.
The logic of this
work is that once this approach runs its course, it should be
possible to produce materials for formal education, adult literacy,
and everyday media usage for large readerships which on the
economies of scale make it possible to produce and work in these
languages. It is the empowerment of Africans with the usage
of their native languages, which would make the difference between
whether Africa develops, or not.
Imperialism and Double Standards
It is interesting to
note the strong attachment, which some societies have towards
their languages and the need to protect and use these languages. The
French who are possibly one of the difficult interests Africans
face in the effort to develop and use African languages in Africa
are most sensitive about the need to protect French. In
a recent news item, which appeared through the Reuters Agency
in the Cape Times, we read that:
Irate readers have
accused the influential Parisian daily Le Monde of undermining
the French language and bowing to Americanisation by printing
a weekly supplement of New York Times articles in English. Many
readers wrote letters of protest, contradicting a marketing
survey Le Monde made last August in which 59% of those questioned
supported a supplement in English. “This is the wrong
way to be open to the world, it’s a self-enslavement, participation
in the Americanisation of France,” wrote Albert Salon,
president of the International Francophone Forum. Another
reader wrote: “You shouldn’t be surprised that
the Americans treat us with such condescension.” Several
letters accused Le Monde of insulting the majority of readers
who did not understand English. “They’ll be considered
fools who have no place in today’s society,” one wrote. “When
will you realise you’re sawing off the branch you’re
sitting on?” another reader asked. “When will
you understand that, by doing this, you contribute to isolating
and despising millions of people who do not speak English fluently?” The
paper has said it will decide after the trial period whether
to continue. It wanted to attract new readers and aimed
to create a Europe-wide advertising market with dailies in Germany,
Italy and Spain.(29)
It is for many, amazing
that the French who have such strong attachment to their language
can at the same time be such hard-headed imperialists when it
comes to the pushing of French into Africa at the expense of
the existence of the native languages of the denizens of the
continent. The Portuguese have been equally persistent
in their former colonies. Speaking about South Africa,
Antjie Krog draws attention to the fact that in the post-colonial
times that we live in, it is the African elites which have,
willy nilly, become the protectors of colonial languages. As
an Afrikaner poetess she suggests that, “Not only whites,
… but also blacks are too dismissive of local languages
as a medium in which nothing political has been said, or nothing
of relevance to the greater political emancipation of black
people”.(30) The dismissiveness which Krog speaks
about attains ridiculous proportions when as Komarek has suggested:
In some countries,
they count in their statistics as illiterate people, those who
do not read French or English. But they very often read
Arabic. They very often read in other languages, but they
count them as illiterates. This is a scandal. It is
a disaster. It is ridiculous to call them illiterate because
they cannot read one of the European or Western languages. Another
thing that I always wonder about is yes English, French, and
other languages are important for international communication,
but how many people in a country need this? How many Germans
are really mastering English? Perhaps 5 or 10 per cent?
Why do we bother a hundred percent of six, seven and eight-year-olds
to learn a competence for which they will have no use later.(31)
In Madagascar, where in 1975 a left-wing coup brought in a nationalist
government which diminished the usage of French and excessive
reference to French culture, the educational system was nationalised,
and Malagasy, which is the only language of the country spoken
by everybody, was pushed to the fore as the only medium of instruction. For
seven years this situation obtained. Primary school books,
textbooks in Mathematics and other subjects were produced in Malagasy. Under
the influence of the French, in conditions of diminishing economic
well-being, and with promises of financial aid, the Madagascans
agreed to go back to French, and the teaching of Malagasy in schools
was cut down to only the first two years. Komarek is again
scathing:
The scandal is that
Malagasy is the only language of Madagascar. Everybody
… speaks one language. Of course, there are dialects,
but 150 years ago the Bible was translated into Malagasy. Everybody
reads the Bible. Everybody knows this higher standard Malagasy. Anyway,
France was waiting for the opportunity to bring them down again
and they succeeded. What is behind this?(32)
The simple point behind this is that, the French in pursuit of
a neo-colonial agenda inherent in the idea of a Francophonie (and
for the British, the Commonwealth - Anglophonie) must persist
in maintaining the supremacy of the French language in their former
colonies, in the same way as they persist in stationing military
garrisons in post-colonial Africa.
Tanzania’s endoglossic
LOI with respect to KiSwahili needs to be more than ever encouraged
and supported. Its success depends not only on the political
will of the ruling elite, but also and perhaps more importantly
the strength and tenacity of the masses to defend a LOI, which
is in their interest. Rubanza points out that, “While
Tanzania’s move (lip service) to come up with a policy
statement giving room for Kiswahili to be a medium of instruction
at all levels in future, is welcomed, there is also a need to
have concrete plans to bring the policy into effect.”(33) Rubagumya
has drawn attention to the boost in the value of English during
the 1980s.(34) It is important to guard against any attempt
to turn the clock back and go back to the hegemony of English.
That will represent a betrayal of the interests of not only
the Tanzanian people but also, Africans in general.
Concluding Remarks
We can say that by record
of what has transpired in Africa since the post-colonial era
was ushered in, little structural change in the political economy
of African society has registered. We are literally, where
we were, in this respect, at the close of the colonial era. We
still produce primary products with little added value in an
era of what, fashionably, is called “globalisation”. International
terms of trade are heavily weighed against us. Land in
the rural areas where the masses live remains under-capitalised,
mostly tied up to pre-capitalist tenurial systems or otherwise
étatiste arrangements, which do not help the processes
of accumulation. Warlordism, banditry and brigandage has
come into the daily lives of increasingly larger numbers of
Africans. The whole post-colonial period has been characterised
by military-bureaucratic rule or varieties of autocratic dictatorship
and pillage of state coffers by the new elites that have dominated
the post-colonial state. In most senses, it is possible
to say that the post-colonial elites have given scant consideration
to the needs of the teeming masses of Africa. The above
socio-economic realities have been reflected in the cultural
lives of Africans. Here, the language question, in general,
and the language of instruction issue, in particular, lies at
the heart of matter. The answer to the language question
provides the key to development challenge and the further emancipation
of African people. It is at the same time, what will determine
whether we remain a recognisable and distinct cultural component
of humanity or vanish into another existing cultural area; that
is, whether we cease to exist culturally as Africans.
The issue of the need to as soon as possible, start using our
languages on the basis of harmonised orthographies cannot be postponed. To
do this successfully we need to snap out of the habit of looking
for answers restrictedly within our state borders, the borders
of independence. Africans will need to work more together,
unite in this effort.
Notes
1. This table is
extrapolated from World Bank figures, which appear in F.J. Nieuwenhuis. The
Development of Education Systems in Postcolonial Africa. A
Study of Selected Number of African Countries. Human Science
Research Council. HSRC Publishers. Pretoria. 1996. Pp.
20 – 21.
2. Julius Nyerere. Education in Tanzania. Education
for Self-Reliance. In, A. Babs Fafunwa and J.U. Aisiku (Eds). Education
in Africa. A Comparative Study. George Allen & Unwin. London. 1982. P.238.
3. K. K. Prah. Leadership and Management of Higher Education
in Africa in the New Millennium; Opportunities and Challenges.
Keynote Address Presented to the Kenyatta University International
Conference on the Transformation of Higher Education Management
and Leadership for Efficacy in Africa. Kenyatta University, Nairobi,
12th November 2001.
4. Liliana Mammino. Studying the Details of the Transition
from the Mother Tongue to the Second Language. In, Sipho
Seepe & Dolina Dowling (Eds). The Language of Science. Vivlia. Florida
Hills. 2000. P.94.
5. Quoted here from, Birgit Brock-Utne and Halla B. Holmarsdotter.
The Choice of English as Medium of Instruction and its Effects
on the African Languages of Namibia. In, International Review
of Education. Special Issue on Globalisation, Language and Education.
Vol. 47. Nos. 3-4. July 2001. P.304.
6. Ibid. p.301
7. Walter Bgoya. The Effect of Globalisation in Africa
and the Choice of Language in Publishing. In, International
Review of Education. Ibid. P. 288.
8. Emmanuel N. Obiechina. Language and Theme. Howard University
Press. Washington D.C. 1990. P.81
9. See, Ngugi Wa Thiongo. Decolonizing the African Mind:
The Politics of Language in African Literature. Heinemann. Nairobi.
1986.
10. Birgit Brock-Utne. Whose Education for All? The
Recolonization of the African Mind. Falmer Press. New
York and London. 2000. P.289.
11. Robert Phillipson. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford University
Press. Oxford. 1992. In his review of Phillipson’s book
Macdonald Daly writes that “Fallaciously identified with
modernity, progress, freedom, civilisation and reason, English
commands monumental financial, official and popular backing in
parts of the globe where its role is dubious. As a result,
indigenous languages ‘are not accorded enough resources to
develop so that the same functions could be performed in them.’ Macdonald
Daly. Linguistic Imperialism … being the book that all
English speakers should read. New Internationalist. September
1995. P.33.
12. Robert Phillipson. English for Globalisation or for
the Worlds People? In, International Review of Education. Ibid.
P.187. See also, Alastair Pennycook. English and the Discourses
of Colonialism. Routledge. London and New York. 1998. And,
Robert Phillipson. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford University
Press. Oxford. 1992.
13. Walter Bgoya. Op cit. P.286
14. Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu. The Language Planning Situation
in South Africa. Current Issues in Language Planning. Multilingual
Matters. Series 2 (3). 2001. Clevedon. P.37.
15. S.W. Pienaar (Ed.). Glo in U Volk: D.F. Malan
as Redenaar, 1908 – 1954. Tafelberg. Cape Town. 1964. Pp.
175-76. Quoted here from Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu. Ibid. P.12.
16. See, Adedeji Awoniyi. Determining Language in Education
Policy: The Dilemma in Africa. In, Kola Owolabi (Ed). Language
in Nigeria. Essays in Honour of Ayo Bamgbose. Group
Publishers. Ibadan. 1995. Pp. 446-447. The
list Adedeji Awoniyi provides includes:
- B.W. Tiffen. English Versus African Languages as
the Medium of Education in African Primary Schools. In, G.N.
Brown and M. Hiskert (Ed). Conflict and Harmony in Education
in Tropical Africa. George Allen and Unwin. London.
1975. P.324.
- R.M.F. Dalton. The Position of English as a Medium
of Instruction in Emergent Territories in Tropical Africa. Education
Review. Vol. 13, No. 2. 1961. Pp. 111-115.
- E.L. Makward. The Language Problem. West African
Journal of Education. Vol.7, No. 2. 1963. Pp. 87-93.
- N.C. Denny. Language and Education in Africa. 1971. In,
J. Spencer (Ed.). Language in Africa. Cambridge University
Press. Cambridge. 1963. Pp. 40-52.
- E.C. Rowlands. Yoruba and English: A Problem
of Co-Existence. African Language Studies. 1963. Vol.IV. Pp.
208-214.
- L.F. Brosnahan. Some Aspects of the Linguistic Situation
in Tropical Africa. Lingua. 1965. Vol.12, No.1. Pp.
54-65.
17. Stanislav Andreski. The African Predicament. A
Study in the Pathology of Modernisation. Michael Joseph. London. 1968. Pp.
72-73.
18. Frantz Fanon. Black Skin, White Masks. New
York. 1967. P.18.
19. George Monbiot. Global Villagers Speak with Forked
Tongues. Guardian Weekly. September 3. 1995.
20. A. Mahinda Ranaweera. Sri Lanka: Science Teaching
in the National Languages. Prospects. 6(3): 416-423. P.423. Quoted
here from, Birgit Brock-Utne. Whose Education for All? The
Recolonization of the African Mind. Falmer Press. New
York and London. 2000. Op cit. P.153.
21. Report of the Working Group of Educational Research
and Policy Analysis Association for the Development of Education
in Africa, on, Languages of Instruction: Policy Implications for
Education in Africa. International Development Research Centre
(IDRC). Ottawa. Executive Summary. 1997. P.xiii.
22. Ibid. P.xv.
23. K.K. Prah. Mother Tongue for Scientific and Technological
Development in Africa. Deutsche Stiftung fur internationale Entwicklung
(DSE). Germany. 1995. And, African Languages for the
Mass Education of Africans. Deutsche Stiftung fur internationale
Entwicklung (DSE). Germany. 1995.
24. Zaline M. Roy-Campbell & Martha A.S. Qorro. Language
Crisis in Tanzania. The Myth of English Versus Education. Mkuki
Na Nyota Publishers. Dar es Salaam. 1997. P. 5.
25. Francois Lim. The Harmonisation and Standardisation
of Sango, the Official National Language of Central Africa. In,
Kwesi Kwaa Prah (Ed). Rehabilitating African Languages. The
Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society. Cape Town. 2002.
26. Ali A. Warsame. How a Strong Government Backed
an African Language: The Lessons in Somalia. In, International
Review of Education. Special Issue on Globalisation, Language
and Education. UNESCO. Hamburg. Vol. 47. Nos. 3-4. July
2001. Pp. 341-360
27. Zaline M. Roy-Campbell & Martha A.S. Qorro. Ibid. P.
vi.
28. Report made to Prof. K.K. Prah by Prof. Felix Banda. Cape
Town. 17th April 2002.
29. Reuters Correspondent. Articles in English Start
French War of Words. The Cape Times (South Africa). 15th
April 2002. P.4
30. Hans Pienaar. Antjie Krog Gives Voice to South
Africa’s Mother Tongues. Poet challenges predominance
of English. The Sunday Independent (South Africa). April
14, 2002. P.11.
31. Kwesi Kwaa Prah and Yvonne King (Eds). In Tongues. African
Languages and the Challenges of Development. Monograph Series
No. 1. The Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society
(CASAS). Cape Town. 1998. P.41.
32. Ibid. P.39.
33. Y.I. Rubanza. Realistic
Revolutionary Strategies in Harmonisation and Standardisation
of African Languages. In, In, Kwesi Kwaa Prah (Ed). Rehabilitating
African Languages. The Centre for Advanced Studies of African
Society. Cape Town. 2002. P. 50.
34. Casmir Rubagumya. Language
Promotion for Educational Purposes: The Example of Tanzania. International
Review of Education. Vol. 37. No. 1. 1991. P.
75.
