Home News Letters Our Indigenous Languages not Important?

Our Indigenous Languages not Important?

by Joshua Tibone Gachala Indigenous languages in southern Africa face extinction if urgent and serious efforts are not made to develop them and raise their status. A report, tabled recently at an international conference in Kenya cautioned that thousands of indigenous languages in the world might fade away in the next century. Many are in immediate danger of extinction and many more are already losing their natural connection, 32% of these being African, while 234 have already suffered this fate, among which are the Khoi-San languages that were spoken in southern Africa in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. In addition to the Khoi-San languages, Chikunda and Dema in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Zambia are also in danger of extinction. Globalization has been singled out as the major catalyst in their disappearance.   Language is an unbelievable oral symbol by which a social group network, commune and self-expresses. It preserves the culture, traditions and secrets of the people. It’s said that the world's languages could die this century, with the valuable knowledge, culture and customs embedded in them gone eternally. The traditional knowledge at threat includes secrets of how to manage habitats and the land in environmentally sustainable ways, passed down by word of mouth over many generations. Essential indigenous knowledge’s survival is threatened. The process of turning the world into a village is promoting the use of English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and other European languages at the expense of indigenous languages. “Nature’s secrets, locked away in the different indigenous languages may be lost forever as a result of growing globalization”, language experts have observed. Foreign languages like English, French and Portuguese are proverbial to Africa as they are of the former colonial masters. They have been used far and wide as languages for social mobility and economic relations, while they are spoken by less than 20% of the indigenous populace. Furthermore, on the colonial basis, African countries have opted to hold on to the use of these languages as a unifying force among their sundry language groups. My point is; we do have a situation here, the looming disappearance of our African indigenous languages, and this calls for strong policies by our respective governments that ensure the advancement and invariable use of our local, so- called minority languages. The same has been suggested by the language connoisseurs of this world. We need to ensure survival of dipuo tsa rona, thus be intolerant of big and significant occasions being limited to English, French and Portuguese only.  Most African countries are multilingual with many minority languages and dialects spoken; the DRC has more than 200 languages. Botswana has about 20 languages. Most of the southern African countries have not put in place deliberate policies that promote and elevate minority languages to protect them from their imminent extinction. However, Botswana’s revised national policy on Education requires that children be instigated to primary education with their mother tongue, where a particular language is predominant, e.g. kids in the north-east and significant part of the central district would be taught in Kalanga. Although this is a welcome initiative, a rather multilingual approach, would have been much better. South Africa is one SADC country that adopted in 1996 a multilingual policy, which elevated nine African languages to official languages namely Ndebele, Xhosa, Zulu, Southern and northern Sotho, Siswati, Setswana, Xitsonga and Tshivenda. Other countries have through their education acts attempted to elevate indigenous languages to a status recognizable for their development. Zimbabwe adopted an education policy that requires that the first three years of education should use indigenous languages as a medium of instruction, while English is being introduced to the student. Seven languages - Shona, Ndebele, Kalanga, Tonga, Venda, Shangani and Nambya enjoy this provision. As things stand at the moment, my beloved Botswana seems to have taken a more sweeping approach that only recognizes one African language, Setswana. Article 60 (d) of the Constitution and the constitutional articles 77, 78 and 79 effectively declare Botswana as a country with one African language. It’s also ‘interesting’ to note that the University of Botswana’s African languages department continues to promote learning of other foreign languages at the expense of the local languages. How about this conversation ka dipuo tsa mo Botswana oa bona! NB: “Dumelang bagaetsho…..le kae? Naswi ti ipapa….mu ngayi bo, imi ndo dwa ka Gulubane, iwe ke? Koree vakueto …ovanatje mavependukavi? Rhumela bagaetsho le kcae, Ki mokgalagari, go monatje he na rghothe, u zwa go wene? Aowa…le nna kea thaba ebile kea le Botsa banna, ke Mmirwa go gwa mola Gombojango!” etc… The writer wishes he knew many other local languages! Yes, something like this. How wonderful would it be to make out such an occurrence someday in Botswana? It would be nice go bona Mokgatla a ntse le Mokalaka, Moyeyi, Mokgalagadi, Moherero, Mosarwa, Mmirwa, Morolong, etc, chatting and laughing, say; taking the weight off their feet, just about that braai stand some place in a social gathering, or something, ba tlotla, each expressing his/her own views in their mother tongue and all getting to understand each other… “Oh how wonderful it is for God’s people to live together in Harmony….” Wow, judicious words from the book of Psalms! It would be great to see it on TV, hear it on radio and read it in newspapers. The writer of this article is not in any way trying to craft in tensions. He is only being objective and simultaneously envisioning a more united and proud Botswana by the year 2016, consequent to a set-up indicated above. Expressions by our first president that “a nation without a past is lost nation…...” will certainly elude us, because any Motswana from any part of the country would valiantly stand out and recount to the whole world, the diversity of our culture, what we stand for and how proud we are to be Batswana. Very soon we could be having our own little ‘paradise’ on planet earth, as we are already a blessed nation. Our current president has also hinted out that we cannot continue to bask in the glory of our past achievements, thus we need to develop further. It would be prudent to even see our artists composing songs in our languages, rather than singing in Zulu or some other foreign language as some artists do here in Bots, don’t you think? Ehe…..it’s funny because some workers’ unions even chant in Zulu like; (phansi ne ‘something……phansi’) whenever they advance their complaints to the respective authorities…come on now people let’s be proud of our indigenous languages!

 

< Prev		Next >