Ake nifunde isiZulu phela bovilavoco!
LAST week I drove down to the northern KwaZulu-Natal dorpie of Vryheid to participate in careers day at my alma mater, Inkamana High School.
Driving down Kerk Street, I saw a building that used to house a corner cafe which was the venue of an eye-opening experience for me back in 1985.
A few friends and I were loitering around the entrance, as one does when one has absconded from one’s dormitory. A 1.9m, 200kg farmer type in a khaki socks, shorts, and short-sleeved shirt combo walked in. He had that signature beetroot face, a belly the size of a bathtub, tree trunks for legs, short, fat fingers reminiscent of knackwurst sausages, and velskoene.
As he walked past us, one of my friends, Mantsontsoni, remarked, “Sukanini madoda, yangena ingangamela.” (Damn, a tub of lard is in the house.) The tub of lard walked in and bought his loaf of bread. As he walked out, he looked straight at Mantsontsoni and, in the most authentic Zulu accent, barked, “Ingangamela unyoko, ms**u kanyoko! ”( Jou ma se tub of lard.)
Cranes were required to lift our collective jaws off the floor.
In retrospect, we shouldn’t have been surprised that a farmer from Vryheid spoke Zulu. But we were just silly kids. We were blown away. We might even have composed a few Zulu war songs in the Ngangamela’s honour.
It is simultaneously tragic and unbelievable just how many people have never bothered to learn any indigenous languages. If I were to move to, say, Beijing, and I returned not speaking some basic Mandarin, I would be in trouble with my mom. I’m 42 and she’s turning 70 this year but I predict that she would grab umpetshisi (a peach tree branch) and flog me on the spot while calling me an impregnable fortress of stupidity. And I would take my flogging like a man — an embarrassed, shameful man, because I would have that beating coming.
One of my younger brothers lived in Rome for only three years and yet he speaks fluent Italian, complete with perpetual gesticulating.
It would seem logical that anyone liv- ing in Durban would have to be putting in an extraordinary effort to not learn the Zulu language. Ditto East London and Xhosa or Bloemfontein and Sotho. But we don’t live in a particularly rational country, do we?
Of course the problem around here is that the immense effort required not to learn the languages spoken by some 80% of the population is so endemic, and so acceptable that people will look you in the eye confidently while spewing ludicrous absurdities such as: “But Cosa is so hard to learn! Those clicks are just impossible to master.”
And yet 15-month-olds are having no such problems. Even my dog knows the difference between “xi” and “ci”.
No tannie, you’re not putting in enough effort to learn — and you’re putting in too much effort to conjure up excuses not to learn the language. You’re so engulfed in this immense effort of evasion you don’t even notice it. The goldfish is the same; it doesn’t even realise that it’s wet all the time.
Back in the days before Saki Macozoma the BEE mogul became an enemy of the national democratic revolution, he used to speak on behalf of the ANC.
Circa 1991, he was addressing a news conference when a reporter from one of the Afrikaans newspapers tried to ask his question in Afrikaans. After being rebuked, he remarked that he should be allowed to ask the question in his native tongue, seeing as Afrikaans was an official language.
Cool as a cucumber, Macozoma responded (and I paraphrase) “Hhayike, xa injalo mfondini nami ndizawuthetha isiXhosa sibone ke ubana siphelelaphi.” (In that case, I will also revert to Xhosa and see where that takes us.)
I found myself applauding because Macozoma had crystallised everything I had wanted to say whenever someone who spoke no Zulu had “corrected” my English. And my responses have varied from stunned, incredulous silence to: “Until you can string together two coherent Zulu sentences, bugger off.”
And I know the best way to learn any language in double-quick time; learn all the swearwords. I’m not kidding. When we landed in Rome to visit my brother, we were fetched from the airport by a fellow I choose to call Paolo. The driving in Rome would make our minibus taxis wet their pants. Road signs and rules are treated as gentle suggestions only.
All we heard from Paolo was “scroto ” this, “stronzo ” that and “porca miseria!”. When my brother told me that the terms meant “male seed sack”, “excrement” and “miserable swine” respectively, I spent the rest of my stay just looking for an excuse to yell “stronzo! ” at someone. Tragically, that opportunity never presented itself. I think those Italians behaved themselves just to annoy me.
Mind you, I never learned how to say, “May I have one bus ticket,” or anything remotely useful to a tourist.
When I worked for Unilever I met a guy of Indian descent called Kevan Moodley. We became friends after we had a swearing contest in Zulu. Enough said. If that doesn’t convince you, spare a thought for poor Sister Baptista, the girls’ boarding mistress when I was in high school at Inkamana. The girls called her Bhova. When she inquired what it meant, they told her “pretty one” and she fell in love with her name. The truth is they were calling her “basset hound” on account of her exaggerated snout and droopy eyes. Don’t be Bhova.