Call to African academics
“CALL for East London name change” (DD, March 6) refers. The rational approach to “decolonising universities” is to make knowledge more readily available. This challenge faced the European nations after the fall of the Roman Empire and the onset of Europe’s Dark Ages.
Universities such as Oxford (England) and Notre Dame (France) were established to address this. Latin, the language of the “colonial oppressor,” remained the language of education and learning for centuries after the fall of Rome. Latin was considered superior to the vernacular.
That situation now exists between English and African languages.
Change came when scholars began to translate the Bible and then academic material into the languages of the common people.
The invention of the printing press accelerated the process and “decolonised” education.
While Latin and Greek expressions are still used in academic disciplines, only the Greeks speak Greek and even Italian scholars no longer study in Latin. So where are the black academics transcribing knowledge into black languages?
With the exponential growth of ICT (information and communications technology), scholars are freed from the restriction of having a large enough market to make printing economically viable.
Until all South Africans are able to study and learn in their mother tongue, education and learning in South Africa will be dominated by the English language.
Afrikaans was elevated to a language of learning because Afrikaans scholars made the effort to transcribe knowledge into that language.
The precedent has been established in Europe and in South Africa. If you want to “decolonise” anything, you have to make knowledge and education easily accessible in the languages of the people. — Dave Rankin, Cambridge
I WAS dismayed to read that a Kenyan, Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o from California, was telling us to rename our city and streets. This is an old story which has been discussed before.
Our locals must decide, not people from other countries. Emonti was one of the names suggested but a change would affect the tourist industry as this is not a well-known name.
What concerns me about the name S E K Mqhayi city is how many people would recognise the name. Surely East London needs tourists. — Michael Cowley, via
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