Ideologies of language
and linguistic conflict in
colonial and postcolonial
South Africa
{
orman.jon@gmail.com
Language in Africa: some
‘facts’

Africa is a continent of high linguistic diversity with more than 2,000
recorded language names (and more than 500 in Nigeria alone)

6 major language families, many languages remain unclassified

High levels of individual oral multilingualism, no linguistically
homogenous states

Sixteen of Africa’s shared cross-border languages have > 150 million
speakers.

most African languages remain unwritten

Low levels of literacy, (highest Seychelles 91%, Zimbabwe 85%,
lowest Burkina Faso 12.8%). Often significant differences in literacy
rates between men and women

Around 60% primary school attendance rates on continent as a whole
(UNICEF). South Africa = 87% (2009).
Linguistic diversity in Africa
Official languages in
Africa
Some key themes:
-
Linguistic history of South Africa characterised by contact, conflict,
complexity & inequality
-
Social identities have generally emerged through contact between
groups within a framework of highly unequal power relations
-
SA has witnessed the ‘invention’ of languages based on
Eurocentric ideologies of separate languages
- Throughout South Africa’s colonial and postcolonial history,
language policy & planning has been a central feature of
successive governments’ attempts to construct and manipulate
social identities - although rarely very successfully
4 distinct historical eras

Initial period of Dutch colonisation of the Cape (1652-1806)

British colonial period (1806-1910) & Union of South Africa (19101948)

Apartheid (1948-1994)

The post-apartheid era (1994 - )
Dutch colonial period

Dutch East India Company (VOC) arrived at Cape in 1652 to set
up supply station, small early population speaking
predominantly coastal varieties of Dutch

Various language contact situations:
- European settlers and Khoikhoi, slaves from Indian
subcontinent, Dutch East Indies, West Africa, later Madagascar
and East Africa
- traces of these contact situations in present-day Afrikaans, e.g.
Baie, pisang, gogga, dagga, blatjang, sjambok etc.
- between European settlers (Dutch, French, German etc.),
-
Dutch establishes itself as dominant language in various forms, dialect
levelling, including learner (L2), pidgin & creole varieties,
vernacularisation > Cape Dutch/Afrikaans
-
However, never any question of shared identity across racial boundaries
– resistance to gelykstelling
- language shift from other European languages,
the VOC demanded that French speakers ‘be taught our language and
morals, and be integrated within the Dutch nation’
- integration of French speakers into Dutch identity community possible
because they were European & Christian
- large scale destruction of KhoiKhoi social order due to small pox
epidemics
- linguistic assimilation of slaves
- little in the way of official policy regarding language
British colonial language
policy

British seize Cape of Good Hope from Dutch in 1806

Aim of establishing that was ‘British in character as well as name’ =
imposition of British cultural practices on the Dutch-speaking population – a
policy of Anglicisation
“they were only a little over thirty thousand in number, and it seemed
absurd that such a small body of people should be permitted to perpetuate
ideas and customs that were not English in a country that had become part
of the British Empire.” (Malherbe, 1925:57)

denigration of Dutch/Afrikaans as a kombuistaal etc. – ‘a jargon
without literature, without scientific basis and without practical value
outside local confines’ (The Star, 1911)

‘The Afrikaans language is laughable because it lives in the kitchen, on the
street, in the canteens, in the houses of the uneducated’ (De Waal,
1939:268)

1822 – English made sole official language of Cape colony
‘Dutch should only be used to teach English and English to teach
everything else’

1828 – all court proceedings to be in English only

resistance to policy from Dutch/Afrikaans speakers, Afrikaners
set up private Dutch-medium schools, Doppers fought against
Anglicisation of religious life

origin of the taalstryd and the emergence of Afrikaner national
consciousness, belief in one-to-one link between language and
ethnic/national identity

W. Postma, Dutch Reformed Church Minister, 1910:
“Take away our language and we will become Englishmen”
Afrikaans emerges as a ‘core value’ of Afrikaner identity –
the failure of Anglicisation policy
Core values can be regarded as forming one of the most fundamental
components of a group’s culture. They generally represent the
heartland of the ideological system and act as identifying values which
are symbolic of the group and its membership. Rejection of core values
carries with it the threat of exclusion from the group. (Smolicz,
1981:75)
British colonial language policy
and the African population
-
sections of African population also target of linguistic/cultural
assimilation - Britain’s ‘civilising mission’

role of missionary schools and Anglicisation of the ‘mission elite’ - “the
tiny layer of black teachers, preachers, interpreters, clerks and other
professionals which the colonial system had necessarily given rise to”
“The scholarly missionaries educated a group of men and women with high
competence in English, a deep insight into the world of ideas and values and a
strong language loyalty to English”
-
English acquires prestige, as a key to black upward socio-economic
mobility, African languages not seen as appropriate for higher functions

In 1910, the African People’s Organisation (APO) encouraged
its members to:
“endeavour to perfect themselves in English - the
language which inspires the noblest thoughts of
freedom and liberty, the language that has the
finest literature on earth and is the most
universally useful of all languages. Let
everyone...drop the habit as far as possible, of
expressing themselves in the barbarous Cape
Dutch that is too often heard”

“The pursuit of Anglicisation was probably one of the greatest political
errors of South African history because it set in motion a chain of events
which continues to haunt education and language policy a hundred
years later.” (Kathleen Heugh, South African sociolinguist)

‘Black Englishmen’ also seen as an affront to the Afrikaner ideal
of racial and ethnocultural authenticity and a potential political
threat – to have a great influence on language ideology and
policy in the apartheid years
The invention of African
languages

British (and other European) colonial missionary linguists responsible
for identifying and naming many current South African ‘languages’, e.g.
isiXhosa, isiZulu

Wrote grammars, developed alphabets etc. with primary aim of
translating the bible in order to christianize the African population – not
unproblematic exercises

However, notion of discrete, countable, named ‘languages’ is a product
of 18th/19th century European nationalism, literate cultures

The idea of separate, object-like entities called languages was unknown
in African culture. ‘Languages’ not timeless, universal entities. Product
of ‘colonial imaginings’ and transplantation of Eurocentric ideologies

The naming of languages produced puzzling
questions such as ‘What languages do you
speak?’, as opposed to the typical African
question ‘Do you speak?’, which on its own
suggests that names of languages are not part of
the lexicon of speakers of these languages. This
indicates that language among lowly literate
African is conceptualised without positing the
existence of languages as spatially and ethnically
bounded entities, or without cutting up
language into different languages or different
parts such as verbs, nouns etc. (Makoni,
2011:683)

Does the hubristic colonial enterprise of naming and
inventing ‘languages’ where previously there were none
persist in modern-day linguistics?

Another problem in deciding how many languages there are in the
world arises from the fact that many have no special names. The
Sare people of the Sepik region of Papua New Guinea for example
call their language Sare, but this means simply ‘to speak or talk’.
The Gitksan people of British Columbia have no conventional
native name for their language which sets it apart from other
varieties such as Nisgha and Tsimshian. The Gitksan generally
refer to their own language as Sim’algax, “the real or true
language,” but the Nigsha and Tsimshian people do the same.
(Nettle and Romaine, 2000:27-28)

Notion of individual, separate languages often irrelevant to
a people’s self-conceptualisation of their linguistic
experience

Can the linguist tell people what language they speak?
The modern South African state





THE UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA (1910-1948)
Boer states of OFS & Transvaal join British Cape Colony & Natal
Dutch acquires co-official status, Afrikaans becomes official
language in 1925 alongside English, bilingual state
British persist with policy of Anglicisation, still an English-only
ideology
“English-speaking South Africa never took the matter seriously.
Bilingualism was regarded as nothing more than a polite gesture
towards the other section – neither more nor less. The average Englishspeaking South African was inclined to regard every political
recognition of the Dutch language as a menace to the interests of his
own race.’ (from the editor of Volksstem, 1929)
Apartheid language
policy
-
Official policy of ‘separate development’ began 1948, marks the start of the
high period of ethno-racial, white Afrikaner, linguistic nationalism
-
Strict division of society along racial and linguistic lines. Population divided
into 4 racial groups: White, Black, Coloured and Asian.
-
Afrikaner linguistic nationalism: language seen as essence of divinely
ordained nationhood
-
God willed separate nations and peoples, and He gave to each separate nation and
people its special vocation, task and gifts.
We will have nothing to do with a mixture of languages, of culture, of religion or of
race’ (Institute for Christian National Education, 1948).
Semiotic landscape of Apartheid
Apartheid education

- Cornerstone of Apartheid language policy: mother-tongue education
(moedertaalonderwys)

- For whites, education in one of the two official state languages: English
or Standard Afrikaans – Algemeen Beskaafd Afrikaans

For the African population, mother-tongue education had far more
negative implications

Apartheid philosophy views black population as consisting of many
different separate (potential) nations , each supposedly defined by
language

Bantu Education Act 1953 – compulsory mother-tongue schooling for
first 8 years of primary education, most black students did not continue
into secondary school

Closure of many English-medium mission schools

Aim to prevent black people from acquiring competence in
English, achieving social mobility uniting against apartheid
system

Mother-tongue schooling for blacks was employed
[. . .] to support the social and educational goals of
apartheid. The apartheid regime used such
programs to reinforce ethnic and tribal identity
among black schoolchildren, seeking to ‘divide and
conquer’ by encouraging ethnolinguistic divisions
within the black community. (Reagan, 2001:55)
Apartheid invention of languages

E.g. Northern Sotho language artificially distinguished from
Setswana for administrative and political purposes

Mother-tongue is a highly problematic concept in the South
African context. Relations between language and identity are far
more complex.
My father’s home language was Swazi, and my mother’s home language
was Tswana. But as I grew up in a Zulu-speaking area we used mainly
Zulu and Swazi at home. But from my mother’s side I also learnt Tswana
well. In my high school I also came into contact with lots of Sotho and
Tsonga students so I can speak these two languages well. And of course I
know English and Afrikaans. With my friends I also use Tsotsitaal. (cited
in Orman, 2008:88)

Mother-tongue education as a policy of social control and
division
‘The language policy of the apartheid regime explicitly fomented
fragmentation based on parochial ethnolinguistic identity. However,
instead of provoking linguistic tribalism, the apartheid policy merely
incited Blacks to rally around global English as the language of
resistance and protest [. . . ]Blacks saw English as the tool to combat
divisive Bantu education and the imposition of Afrikaans.
- English increasingly becomes a symbol of resistance to
apartheid, especially following Soweto uprising 1976.
Afrikaans seen as the ‘language of the oppressor.’
- Failure of apartheid language/identity planning
\
Language protests Soweto 1976
Post-apartheid language
policy (post 1994)
Change 2 to 11 official languages – ideology or pragmatism?

Official policy of ‘equitable multilingualism’, pluralism

Large increase in language planning bodies and activities,
e.g. PANSALB.

Promotion of nation-building based on multilingualism and
linguistic diversity, philosophy of unity in diversity – no
single national language, individual multilingualism

rejection of Eurocentric models of language and nation,
ideology of ‘one language, one nation’
But, the reality?

A large language policy-practice ‘gap’

‘The more languages, the more English’

Increasing English monolingualism in public life, dominance of elite
language practices > linguistic inequality

Declining position of Afrikaans as a public language, Anglicisation of
historic Afrikaans-medium universities, changing of Afrikaans place
names. E.g Pretroria-Tshwane, Bloemfontein-Mangaung

Language still a source of conflict, especially in relation to Afrikaans,
many protests

African languages remain highly marginalised, rising inequality
In summary

Throughout its colonial and postcolonial history, SA has been
a site of linguistic contact  linguistic conflict

Linguistic divisions often correlated with racial divisions and
social inequality

Attempts to plan identities through language
policy/planning have generally been failures and generated
identities of resistance

The linguistic complexity of diverse societies such as SA
cannot be captured adequately through a Eurocentric notion
of individual, separate languages and easily identifiable
‘native’ speakers – these are highly problematic concepts
Any questions?