Teach children to be proud of their language

“A language is a means of communication and carrier of culture” – Ngugi Wa Thiongo articulated this in his book Decolonising the Mind.

The politics of language in this postliberation era must be used as a weapon to fight against the processes of recolonising Africa.

Promotion of our indigenous languages will promote selflove among indigenous people in South Africa and further elevate its status and advance the use of these languages.

We must appreciate multilingualism because that is an identity for all Africans – we enjoy speaking each other’s languages.

In 1884, the Berlin project was very clear in that, to conquer and exploit Africa, they had to impose their languages on us.

However, irrespective of the Makerere University conference of 1962, which was meant to position African languages in the global society, we are still trapped in using European languages as a people in Africa. We still suppress our languages. As a result, they can’t become the languages of use in economics and politics.

If we don’t promote radical consciousness, we will end up abandoning our languages and cultures in favour of foreign ones. We are becoming what the white man wanted us to become – a nation without its languages and culture.

We even speak English among ourselves.

The Gauteng Department of Education is also playing its part in destroying our indigenous languages.

They have been having workshops for teachers of all subjects, except indigenous languages, to discuss strategic ways to improve teaching and learning of those subjects.

They don’t invite indigenous languages educators because they don’t see anything important about indigenous languages.

Recently, I had a debate with my colleagues at school where I work as an indigenous language teacher.

It made me realised that if our thinking is poisonous, our children are more likely to be worse.

I discovered that the way my colleagues perceive indigenous languages reflects how they perceive themselves in relation to their identities.

They ha ve been successfully taught to proudly hate themselves.

To be patriotic is supposed to mean to love your language first as it equals loving your country.

Children should be taught in their own languages if they have to excel in other subjects.

African children must learn English as their second language at school and that has been proven to be a success by researchers.

It is important for our children to learn, not only to speak our indigenous languages, but also to read and write in them which, in the long run, will bear fruit as a form of preservation of those languages.

Failure to do that and, a few years down the line, most of our languages will only be spoken but not written, and that will gradually lead them into extinction.

The only way to preserve a language is through writing. When we learn and write we develop the love and discover the beauty in the language.

If we keep on elevating English, and the English culture, we are destroying what is left of us since apartheid and colonialism ended.

‘ ‘ If we keep on elevating English, we are destroying what is left of us