Language rites: Writing ourselves into the academy
Africanisation and decolonisation have brought education into a new age, one which embraces multilingualism. African societies are transforming from knowledge consumers to active knowledge producers. However, the process is slow and the historical privileging of Afrikaans and English in South Africa requires restructuring, which is achievable through the development of indigenous languages in universities. If indigenous languages and knowledge are not used, not developed, not intellectualised, then how will we meaningfully Africanise and decolonise? Dr Alude Mahali, Jaqueline Harvey and Zibuyile Nene report on a panel discussion at the recent Language Rites symposium in Cape Town.
Language is never neutral, particularly the eleven official languages and their use in South Africa. Even with the multilingual aims of the new dispensation, Afrikaans and English remain the principal conduits of instruction, business, and knowledge production at South Africa’s universities. Language Rites, a symposium on language practices in South Africa’s higher education institutions held in September 2019, challenged the maintenance of these language practices that do not affirm indigenous language speakers as learners and knowers.
Despite policies supporting multilingualism, higher education institutions have been unsuccessful in formalising African languages as alternative languages of instruction, communication or examination. Reasons include insufficient buy-in from the government about the importance of developing, promoting, publishing and using African languages, particularly in education, or dwindling African languages student numbers and lack of adequately trained faculties to teach them.
The Writing Ourselves into the Academy panel confronted these reasons and discussed the intellectualisation of African languages in the academy. Four scholars with higher degrees in isiXhosa, isiZulu or Tshivenda were on the panel: Drs Phephani Gumbi and Gugulethu Mazibuko of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Dr Hleze Kunju of Rhodes University (RU) and Moffat Sebola of the University of Limpopo. The panel was chaired by Prof Nobuhle Hlongwa of UKZN who was the second person in South Africa to graduate with a PhD in isiZulu in 2001.
Enabling backgrounds recast as disabling?
At the symposium, Assoc Prof Carolyn McKinney asked how it was possible that “the most valuable resource a child brings to formal schooling, language, can be consistently recast as a problem?”
Most of the panel speakers described how they came from places where their language was a resource but how that same language was positioned as a problem once they entered the academy. The perceived elevated status of English continues to undermine development of other languages as they are seen as holding less value in comparison.
“The first thing is the language; as you know, language is identity, culture and it’s who you are. Now you get to a new place and your identity and culture is not there; you have to learn a new language, culture and identity. You are like a newborn. You are in a first-year class with people who already speak English as a first language and you still need to perform just like them.” – Dr Hleze Kunju
Another challenge was the lack of imagination about the outcomes of an indigenous language degree. Speakers reported instances where colleagues actively discouraged them by citing extended completion rates, struggles with translation, ‘lowered standards’ and the lack of job security. This too stems from viewing an indigenous language background as a problem rather than as a rich resource. We need only look to fellow African countries for examples of celebrating the richness of indigeneity with the ubiquity of Kiswahili in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Afan-Oromo in Ethiopia. There is no deficit perspective and instead a tremendous sense of national pride, identification and feelings of belonging that comes as a by-product of embracing indigenous language on a national level.
The lack of established historical precedence for the intellectualisation of African languages
Gumbi termed African languages being taught in English in the academy as the “biggest abuse on the African child and languages.” The prestige of English continues its ubiquitous impact here in multiple ways. Kunju and Mazibuko noted that they had to produce their work in English and in an African language – twice the amount of work as other students. Sebola decried postgraduate students needing to translate their submissions into English; a counter-intuitive measure to being empowered to write in your own language.
“I have always thought that language is a vehicle to knowledge and information; for when I think, I do it in my own language, and yet the whole education system excludes my language.” – Dr Phephani Gumbi
Other barriers speakers faced were: 1) a dearth of academic literature in indigenous languages; 2) the lack of adequate resources at universities, e.g. writing centres for those studying in indigenous languages; 3) the multiple dialects of indigenous languages making translation complex; and 4) a lack of terminology for academic concepts. The speakers also noted that the development of indigenous languages requires flexibility rather than a purist view of academic rules. Kunju spoke of how umthombo wolwazi (spring of knowledge), for instance, could be translated as the French-derived ‘bibliography’ and that purists might argue for use of the latter.
“We didn’t have spellcheckers or Corpus; you had to struggle on your own. That did not discourage me.” – Dr Gugulethu Mazibuko
Leading the charge in African language knowledge production
All the speakers associated their success with the increase in the number of indigenous language postgraduate students that they are enrolling and supervising. Triumph for the speakers means growing the field, and this requires those who have already moved through the system to improve upon it and pay it forward.
“I was also inspired by the fact that there is very little literature in isiZulu; I wanted to contribute to that. I had to pave the way for future isiZulu scholars.” – Dr Gugulethu Mazibuko
Mazibuko also spoke about tangible outcomes, including the growing pool of isiZulu research editors and collaborations across regions. Their work includes: using sister languages to isiZulu, like isiXhosa and siSwati, to verify terms; the development of the South African Centre for Digital Language Resources and the UKZN Language Planning and Development Office to digitise language spaces and digitise as a corpus; the imminent publishing of an academic book in isiZulu; the development of Facebook in Swahili and isiZulu; and a soon-to-be published isiZulu-Mandarin dictionary. The speakers have triumphed personally and are taking their knowledge back to their places of origin in their language without compromising their identity.
“When I went to Rhodes, I wanted something I could take back to Mqanduli where I come from and have people engaging with it.” – Dr Hleze Kunju
Changing the academy
The journeys and victories of the panel speakers have sparked change in the academy, directly and indirectly. UKZN, RU and the University of Cape Town have embarked on corpora (datasets of natural language) development in indigenous languages as well as other initiatives, including communication development, multilingual academic dictionaries for science and mathematics, textbook and learning material development, and creative writing.
Offering higher education in all languages builds on what has been previously learned, treats all languages as a resource, promotes bilingualism and multilingualism, and benefits all South Africans.
Authors: Dr Alude Mahali, a senior research specialist, Jaqueline Harvey, a doctoral trainee, and Zibuyile Nene, a master trainee from the HSRC’s Education, Skills and Development programme