Invitation to attend a Community Engagement Forum 28th November 2017

On Radical Language Transformation in South Africa

Language transformation, empowerment, intellectualization, policy, have been subject of much discourse, rhetoric and narratives - now more than ever - since the days of the Anglo-Boer war (1902),  and the writings of Dr. J. M. Nhlapo (1940s). Languages are part of societies cultures and heritage. In this regard, societies make and adapt their cultures with time, in as much as cultures mold societies and persons in them. Languages are a means of communication, hence there can be no talk of true transformation and empowerment of societies without embracing their native languages.

A historical and political perspective

https://za.pinterest.com/hyunji950314/
cave-painting/

Written and verbal languages are reported to have become a formal means of communications around 5000 years ago, as a natural progression from symbolic and sign (gesture) based communications seen in may ancient paintings in caves. As a result of societal movements and groupings different languages and dialects of the same languages developed. Within the South African space, the two dominant language groups were the "Nguni", which broke into isiXhosa, isiZulu, siSwati and isiNdebele,  and "Sotho", which covers Setswana, Sepedi and Sesotho. Apart from these larger classes are Xitshonga, Tshivenda, Shona, Shangaan, Khoisan, Nama, South African Sign Language(s) and others. Only a subset of these languages gained official languages status in 1996.

Most of the political rhetoric suggests that the evolution of the different dialects and languages was a result of deliberate divide-and-conquer tactics of the apartheid regime. This viewpoint however, ignores the tribal groupings that already existed before the colonial settlers arrived in Africa, and their contribution to languages/dialects evolution. Nonetheless, the Anglo-Boer war marked a critical point in time where the battle for English vs Afrikaans supremacy climaxed. In the period from 1902 till 1948, when the National Party took rule in South Africa, English dominated. This would change, with Afrikaans being declared the language of Government in 1948, followed by rapid development of Afrikaans over a period approximating 40+ years to become a language of science and technology as well as other professional spheres.

Daniel Francois Malan
National Party leader (1948 -1954)
ref: Wikipedia

The period from 1948 marked the dark era of apartheid, lead by D.F Malan, which saw segregation and marginalization of black people, reduction of university enrollment of of black students at universities by factors of 0.3 at the University of Cape Town, University of Witwatersrand and others in 1966 - the height of apartheid. Afrikaans came to be dubbed the language of the oppressor during this period, leading to the 1976 Soweto uprising against Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in schools. The backlash of imposing Afrikaans, masked the fact that English is also the language of the colonial conquerors at this time, hence English became the de facto  instruction language of choice for the blacks. It is worth noting the words of  Steyn in 1913 "... the language of the conqueror in the mouth of the conquered is the language of the slaves." This was a half victory in the sense that it did not elevate any of the native languages. After much debate, around which language was to be the official language in the newly liberated South Africa, post 1994, 1996 saw the recognition of eleven (11) languages: isiZulu, isiXhosa, siSwati, isiNdebele, Southern Sotho (Sesotho), Northern Sotho (Sepedi), Setswana, Xitsonga, Tshivenda, English and Afrikaans. However, English continued to dominate both in schools and in Government to the present day despite the fact that less than 10% of the population of South Africa are native English speakers, 13 Afrikaans and almost 70% are Nguni and Sotho speakers.
 

Dr. Jacob Mfaniselwa Nhlapo
(1903 - 1957). http://www.sahistory.org.za
/people/dr-jacob-mfaniselwa-nhlapo 

Proposals from the 1940s, by Dr J. M. Nhlapo and other language enthusiasts, have been brought forward and still dominate the language discourse to date, that Nguni and Sotho languages be amalgamated, due to their evident morphological and intelligibility similarities. This would result in a reduction of seven (7) languages to two. Your guess is better than mine, on whether this will ever see the light of day. This is the blessing and the curse of a multi lingual rainbow nation with a rich diversity of beautiful cultures, and in which the majority cultures are rapidly dying and giving way to a culture with 10% representation, despite an abundance of well-intended and futile Government policies, initiatives, investments. This is a sad reality, that needs radical action from all corners of society - not to alienate and marginalize English and Afrikaans - but to develop and empower the other official languages in order for a more equitable representation in this 'rainbow nation'.

Word on the ground
In as much as myself and my passionate, and well meaning protagonist colleagues for language transformation have, and continue to advocate for empowerment of the languages of the black societies of South Africa, the realities in society are different. I have often spoken to some of my friends, needless to say, they think English is the future. Here are some of the reasons that I have picked up along the way on why we should all just abandon our languages for English:

1. English has become a global communication language, and a gateway to international participation.
2. The cost and resources required to fully develop and empower the nine (9) black languages are too much for it to be practicable.
3. English is very falsely associated with elitism and intellectual capability hence, black native language speakers gravitate to English.
4. Enforcing multi-language learning in schools results in - subtractive multilingualism - loss of one language competency while gaining another, resulting in poor competency in both.
5. The languages are too many and should be aggregated into two; 'Nguni' and 'Sotho', because of the large commonalities in the two sub-classes of languages.
6. Lack of will from leadership in implementing language policy which led to almost zero - or in fact negative - progress since 1994.
7. There are no good teachers to use black languages as a medium of instruction.
8. The black languages lack the vocabulary to be used as professional languages - they are 'kitchen languages'.

Recommendations on what to do next
Much of the reported discourse and narratives do not reflect a very strong component of public engagement/participation. At this point, at least to me, it is still unclear what the people of South Africa want, in terms of their heritage, languages, empowerment and transformation. From a purely theoretical and sensationalist point of view, it is quite sad to see a black child who cannot construct a simple sentence in Sotho or Xhosa for example to say: "kea u rata nkhono", "ndiakuthanda gogo" because they have been completely indoctrinated in English. It pains me that I am even writing this blog in English only. It also makes no sense that we constantly advocate for 'Transformation', 'Decolonization' etc. to benefit the people of South Africa and we are preaching in a 'colonial language' and implementing or disseminating the fruits of such transformation in 'colonial language'. It makes no sense that 70% of the population is governed and serviced in a language of only the 10%. It is even more saddening that the 70% have a defeatist mentality that they cannot prosper using their native languages. I am not convinced that English is the only way to success. If that was so; all English speaking people would be well-off, all the highly successful 'non-English speaking'; Asians, Indians, etc would have failed and yet the reality is different. I believe, we need to learn languages and adapt to needs - economic or otherwise - but, I do not believe this should come at the cost of who we are as a people. I certainly do not subscribe to the group of people who think English should be the lingua fraca of South Africa. This is what I think should happen:

1. Develop Government and institutional policies to promote multilingualism and implement them. Yes they require time, money and resources, but so did Afrikaans and English, why should we slack off when it comes to languages of the majority?

2. The sorry excuse that it is expensive and resource intensive to develop black languages, and that no one has quantified such expense should be dropped, as I believe we cannot put a price on our heritage. The Afrikanner people did not and they developed their language in 40+ years. In this day and age of technology this is a silly excuse.

3. Basic education should mandate 3 official languages (additive multilingualism). This will get the white minority population to learn some of the black South African languages and increase appreciation and social cohesion. All black students are already forced to learn English. I think this is certainly higher priority than the driving lessons that the basic education department is trying to roll out.

4. A requirement of all entrant first year students at our universities should be that they take one (new) of the South African Languages as a subject, except English which is already enjoying an educational monopoly. This will increase the level of multilingualism locally and it will transmit our languages worldwide and begin to give them status. Other countries are already doing this.

5. Large scale public engagement in the movement to preserve the rich and diverse heritage of South Africa should be initiated. This is critical because all the efforts are for the benefit of the people and have to be driven and directed by them. A large scale Education drive to raise awareness in the people that their languages are powerful and can be a vehicle for success and economic inclusion is needed. This of-course does not obviate the need for multilingualism.

6. Investment in developing highly skilled teachers, that can deliver quality education at basic education level using the diversity of native languages. This will remove the need for parents to send their children to 'model-C' English or Afrikaans medium schools.

7. Development of language diction to allow the use of black languages in professional, science and technology spheres.

8. Develop and pioneer language recognition, translation and learning technologies to allow seamless communication between persons of disparate language backgrounds to communicate and transact. Current technology already supports this initiative, the developments are just not being fully explored in South Africa.

I accept that I'm not a top expert in this subject matter and would very much like to hear the constructive view points of fellow intellectuals, South African people and Africans at large. The road to true societal transformation is for all and can only be successfully navigated through robust and constructive engagement among all involved. South Africa is for all who live in it, and it is through embracing our diversity, seeing the beauty in or differences, tolerance and human respect that the nation can thrive and be one of the best in the world. This is true for all nations.

References:
[1] Neville Alexander, Language Policy and National Unity in South Africa/Azania, Buchu Books, 1989.
[2] Kwesi Wwaa Prah, Challenges to the Promotion of Indigenous Languages in South Africa, The Center for Advanced Studies of African Society, Cape Town, 2007.

How will Automation affect your Job?

With rapid advances and adoption of robotics, artificial intelligent machines and automation technologies in our every day life, everyone is now talking about how 'robots and automation are going to take people's jobs'. On the other hand technology fanatics are trying their level best to allay fears of job loss with the promise of reskilling the labor force. In most parts of the world such as the UK, South Africa, such technology is said to be far off. Furthermore, labor movements tend to oppose any industrial revolution that threatens jobs of their membership. An article published by the Financial Time suggests that technology is the hampering factor to full Rail Transport automation, but I'm less convinced. With the roll out of Google car, and other fully automated transportation systems with much larger complexities, I am more inclined to agree with sentiment of Damon Lavrinc in Wired, that the labor movements have a lot to do with it. It South Africa, the manufacturing, mining, transport and production industries occupy a very large share of the labor force employers, with a very hing level of crippling industrial action against retrenchments of any form. This question of 'automation' vs 'jobs' is even more real in the South African context. The reality is that the mining industry is already shedding jobs and investing large sums of money on mining robots, driverless LHD vehicles as well as rail transportation. Production companies already employ very low numbers of personnel and large amounts of automation machines to run their day-to-day production tasks.

It is suggested in an article published by the IEEE, that mostly the manual labor; mining, transport, production etc, as well data processing and analytics and diagnostic jobs such as: accounting, para-legal, medicine etc. will be the worst affected by automation and that, the safest jobs are the the 'Science, Engineering and Technology' type of jobs, which is true. The article further suggests, that automation does not necessarily mean job losses. However, it will require reskilling people and re-deployment. This sounds like a grand idea, if we ignore the time, money, employee age and willingness of employers to practically implement this. My feeling is that, the practicalities are not that obvious. Either way, the wheels of automation are turning, and we have to find solutions to the looming era of 'man vs machine'. Institutions of higher learning also need to start thinking about, the future relevance and sustainability of their offerings given the automation threat. In this way we can gradually produce 'automation-ready' graduates as we slowly phase out the older generation. This will allow the current workforce to fully utilize their hard earned experience and avoiding a collision course with the labor movement.

It is undisputable that automation is the future, for better productivity, safety, cost efficiency, environmental friendliness and many other reasons. It is up to policy makers, to realize now, this inevitable shift and start to put together strategies that will ensure a smoother transition, that does not render millions in the labor force completely obsolete and jobless. Failure to do this, will leave us with no option but reactive governance, when the labor movement collides with automation. Questions are how will automation affect your job and those of your children in the future? do you need to start advising your children to make 'automation-savvy' career choices? I will leave it here!

Teaching and/or Learning, whose responsibility is it anyway?

#Eye2EyeOnEducation
Having taught/lectured/trained hundreds of quite good Electrical Engineering students over a period of 9 years, from extremely diverse social,economic,educational, religious and cultural backgrounds, I am still puzzled by the huge misalignment between students' and lecturers' perceived roles and responsibilities of themselves and each other within the 'teaching and learning' space. Most often than  never, both parties want to place most of the responsibility and blame on the other. How can we reconcile the two??

This has bred a culture of complaining and lack of sincere initiative on both parties, ending in a blame game, and scathing student evaluations come semester end. Overall, not a very conducive environment to grow future leaders.