Warm greetings once more.
The word this past week was that South Africa’s schooling system would be revamped to accommodate indigenous languages. Then the talk was that it would be too difficult to implement and it would be scrapped altogether. The biggest problem in this country is that there are eleven official languages and by right every individual is entitled to be educated in their mother tongue. I have long been of the opinion that education and health has been where the African National Congress has failed as a government. In theory, education in one’s home parlance should have been available from January 1st 1995.
Understandably this was not necessarily practical. However there was no excuse for schools to offer a third language, by which of course I refer to an African phraseology. Teachers of isiZulu and others were readily available instead the majority of the country’s schools continued to educate in Afrikaans and English. You cannot tell me that by 2012 we have not been able to create a group of teachers who can teach mathematics, science and other subjects in African languages.
The problem extends to higher education. There are 23 public universities in South Africa: 11 traditional universities, 6 universities of technology and 6 comprehensive universities. Public institutions are usually English medium, although instruction may take place in Afrikaans as well. This means that a Zulu person, who represents the chief home language in South Africa, can conceivably earn a university degree without ever receiving any education in isiZulu.
For me the very least that can and indeed should have been done was to introduce a compulsory third language. Currently most schools still enforce English and Afrikaans upon learners. This makes no sense in a province like Limpopo where the two languages combined do not even account for 10% of home languages. But back to my third compulsory language idea. It would be relatively easy to designate these as per provinces. The government insists that Afrikaans is not an indigenous language and outside of the Western Cape it is not a significant home language anyway. Many languages are regional i.e. in Mpumalanga 30% speak siSwati however the language has no real presence elsewhere. Much like the Bapedi, Tsonga and Venda speakers in Limpopo.
A province by province analysis will reveal that there are one or two dominant languages and that is where you take your cue from. I accept that there might be a Sesotho community in the Western Cape. In that case there can be one or two schools in the province and if you want your children educated in their mother tongue they will have to go there. If necessary they would need to be sent to a hostel-like environment. Of course in Free State all schools would offer Sesotho instruction.
The potential conundrum comes in the form of English. While it is only the fifth-most used language at home in South Africa, it is the lingua franca of commerce, science and government. Not to mention its value abroad. For this reason it should be compulsory. However that does not mean that Zulu students should be instructed in English during maths, science and so forth.
There is also a curious case in the country where one finds communities speaking Portuguese, Tamil, Hindi, French and San. The fact that these are not official languages means that they are not eligible to be used at schools outside of a private school environment perhaps.
The only province where my proposal experiences a real challenge is in Gauteng where isiZulu speakers form the majority at 20.5% followed by Afrikaans (14.4%), Sesotho (13.1%), English (12.5%) and Sepedi (10.7%). The best here in my view would be to have specialist schools. So for example in one suburb there would be a school instructing in isiZulu while in a neighbouring suburb Afrikaans will be the language of instruction and so forth.
My pitch is a solid one in theory I feel. However while it is filled with the best intentions, the lack of teachers available to instruct key subjects in all languages is a problem that the South African government needed to address some two decades ago. It is unacceptable that a 16-year old white kid in KwaZulu-Natal cannot pronounce Ulwimi ululodwa alonelanga.
Stay blessed.






























