Language a thorny question

THE politics of language is proving to be the crucible of social change in South Africa. The immediate trigger of the 1976 uprisings was the attempt by the National Party government to enforce Afrikaans as a medium on instruction in black schools.

Some 39 years later, one of South Africa’s leading universities – Stellenbosch University – finds itself in political turmoil over the use of Afrikaans as a medium of lecturing. A wholesome approach to the problem must take into account the multifaceted nature of the issue at hand.

I did a post-graduate diploma at what was then the Rand Afrikaans University and a master’s degree at Stellenbosch University. In both courses the participant students were a linguistic cocktail.

Although both universities were, so to speak, Afrikaans-medium institutions, the lecturers showed sensitivity to the politics of language. The students did too.

The offerings were primarily in English, but every now and then a student would ask the lecturer to explain this or that concept in Afrikaans. The whole thing would wind down to a humorous situation because most of the time we found that the Afrikaans word expressing the concept was essentially the same as the English word, only with a different inflection.

When I was at the University of the North (Turfloop) Afrikaans en Nederlands was a compulsory course for law students. We (the students) thought we were smart and so persistently pointed out the English origins of several Afrikaans words the lecturer was using.

Our lecturer, bless him, would respond by pointing out the Latin origins of the words we thought were pure English. We had lecturers who had learnt everything they knew in the medium of Afrikaans, but who were required to lecture us in English.

They did not know how, but some of them made unremitting efforts to do so. Despite their efforts, sometimes the English words simply did not come out of their mouths.

Seeing how they struggled, we would occasionally invite them to say the words in Afrikaans. There was a human interaction, and both the students and the lecturers benefitted from it.

The lecturer, appreciating the accommodation, overcame his linguistic demons and became better at teaching through a “foreign” medium. The point I make is that with a little sensitivity to what we like to boast of as the cultural diversity which defines our ethos, it seems possible to coexist.

It seems possible to be in the same lecture hall and learn the same things.

So what is the difficulty? Speaking for myself, I have no axe to grind with Afrikaans as such.

But when an Afrikaans-speaking person develops an expectation that, in engaging with him, I shall, as of his right, speak Afrikaans then, as Frantz Fanon might say, I “pull on [my] moorings”. Then the whole thing becomes an imposition and my own stability requires that I should resist it.

But this is not a personal matter and therefore one expects that the authorities, mindful of its explosive nature as well as our history, will regulate it through appropriate legislation. Our legal framework does not, in my view, enable us to deal with the problem in ways which allow for a harmonious resolution.

It creates, rather, opposed expectations in guaranteeing to every pupil the right to receive education in the official language of his/her choice. Beyond the rider that such education must be “reasonably practicable”, the constitution offers no guidance as to how the competing expectations, which must arise from this stipulation, are to be managed.

Experience on the ground suggests that the authorities have left these competing expectations for institutions of learning to manage. Many universities have simply decided that English will be the primary language of instruction.

Stellenbosch, on the other hand, has decided to follow a dual-language approach where English and Afrikaans are used, but with the possibility of developing Xhosa. Neither of these approaches, however, answers the expectation created by the constitution that students are entitled to be instructed in the official language of their choice.

If the university decides either to use English or any combination of languages as a medium of instruction, that decision belongs to the university. The university makes it, moreover, without reference to any request by any student to be instructed in the official language of his choice.

It is even possible to argue that the university makes that decision in order to pre-empt the students from demanding to be instructed in an official language of their choice. Partly it is possible to understand the “hands-off” approach adopted by the authorities on this matter – Soweto might have panned out very differently if the National Party government had left it to learning institutions to decide what language they would use for teaching.

But if the authorities were going to adopt a “hands-off” approach on this issue, then they should have done so consistently. To legislate a constitution which says pupils shall have certain rights regarding the language in which they will be taught is not to adopt a “hands-off” approach to the question.

Prof Pierre de Vos thinks the Constitutional Court has given some guidance on how the right to be taught in an official language of one’s choice is to be managed. Reference here is to Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke’s ruling in Head of Department: Mpumalanga Department of Education and Another v Ermelo High School and Another.

The specific guidance he cites is that the right is limited. But if that is the case, one needs only to point out that such is already clear from the constitution where it says the right is available only if it is reasonably possible.

I do not think that this is a matter which should be left to universities only to manage.