Who’ll speak up for our languages?
WE HAVE entered a new school year on our calendar with many scars and bruises from our public education system.
These scars are caused by the lack of discipline, stability and increase of violent activities in public schools. We are at war with ourselves. We fight against our own indigenous languages. We fight against our culture. We are drifting far away from ourselves.
The release of the Independent Examination Board (IEB) and National Senior Certificate (NSC) results is celebrated at the beginning of January every year in South Africa by all those who worked hard throughout the previous year.
The IEB schools are being portrayed as “little educational heavens” for privileged South African children. These are the schools that have a manageable number of learners in classes and rich with resources, including human resource.
These type of schools mostly deny children their indigenous languages rights because they don’t teach them their African languages, and, if they teach, they only teach IsiZulu, in most cases as a second language.
The IEB schools’ assimilationist policies rob black children of their languages and culture while promoting that of the colonialist – English and Afrikaans.
This is a call for concern. Equal
Education, Pan South African Language Board and the Human Rights Commission should just open their eyes and watch while language rights are trampled on.
The former Model C schools segregate against the minority languages, especially Tshivenda, Xitsonga and other smaller groupings.
Irrespective of a high number of learners enrolled in schools such as Midrand Primary School – these languages are not taught – they are swallowed by English and Afrikaans.
We have to take kids to faraway schools for them to access our languages.
Parents of these trampled, smaller language groupings also play a detrimental role in depriving their children language rights. They are the ones who close their mouths instead of demanding their children be taught in their indigenous languages. They must be taught their indigenous language.
Another challenge is that the government is never building schools in all newly-developed residential areas. They give the Curros an upper
hand, and this destroys our languages because our languages are downtrodden in those independent schools.
Our languages should be taught as is provided in the Constitution. Let’s stop looking down upon ourselves. Let’s do away with the perpetuation of inferiority complex upon our children by forsaking our indigenous languages. We can change the state of our languages in both private and public institutions if we try to find a common purpose.