GOING NATIVE: LANGUAGE OF INSTRUCTION FOR EDUCATION, DEVELOPMENT AND AFRICAN EMANCIPATION KWESI KWAA PRAH. THE CENTRE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES OF AFRICAN SOCIETY (CASAS). CAPE TOWN. Keynote Address presented to the Launch Workshop of Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa (LOITASA), Morogoro, Tanzania: 22nd to 24th April 2002. In, Birgit Brock-Utne, Zubeida Desai and Martha Qorro (eds). Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa (LOITASA). E & D Limited. Dar-es-Salaam. 2003 Introduction Africa has had almost 50 years of post-colonialism. During this period, we have seen both positive and negative features in the evolution and transformation of African society. There is often a tendency to dwell inordinately and a trifle masochistically on its trails and tribulations. Indeed, much of this experience bears little triumphant to write home about, and unfortunately much to lament. The suffering of the masses in Africa is easily perceptible by anybody who has eyes to see and ears to hear. Relentless hunger, entrenched illiteracy, HIV/AIDS, and other epidemic health conditions, undergirded by crushing poverty, tin-pot dictatorships and political tyrannies define the realities of contemporary African life. The existential trials, which face the masses of Africans on a daily basis, dehumanises African humanity. African governments are most of the time merely muddling through the processes of government and service delivery. Hardly ever do their rhetorical promises and pontifical extravagancies match what is practically available to Africa’s teeming millions. However, the African experience over this past, almost, half-century, has also some positive highlights. It is certainly not all darkness and gloom. Some areas of African life have improved, if only limitedly. Most post-colonial governments in Africa, at least initially, created greater opportunities for people to go to school. Indeed, almost all sub-Saharan governments, in the immediate post-colonial period, expanded education to an unprecedented degree. During the 23-year period of 1960 – 1983, the expansion of education in many African countries was impressive. Table 1 (Education Enrolment for Primary and Secondary Schools Growth Percentages in Selected African Countries; 1960-1983) (1) Country Growth in Primary Enrolments (%) Growth in Secondary enrolments (%) Tanzania 781% 370% Kenya 553% 1988% Zambia 415% 230% Lesotho 204% 96% Zimbabwe 440% 148% Swaziland 382% 145% Botswana 550% 250% Malawi 297% 80% Nyerere provides illustrative figures for Tanzania during its early years of independence. Writing in 1967 in his document Education for Self-Reliance he informs us that: There has been a very big expansion of educational facilities available, especially at the secondary levels. In 1961 there were 490,000 children attending primary schools in Tanganyika, the majority of them only going up to standard 4. In 1967, there were 825,000 children attending such schools and increasingly these will be full seven-year primary schools. In 1961, too there were 11,832 children in secondary schools, only 176 of whom were in form 6. This year there are 25,000 and 830.(2) African countries on the whole have not done badly on gross educational expansion. In this respect, remarkably, South Africa, the last and the richest of African countries has been possibly also the poorest in education expansion record particularly at the tertiary level, since the Apartheid regime was brought to a formal end in 1994. Generally, in the early post-colonial period most African states have also been able to improve the health status of their citizenry. However, in one country after the other, as economic conditions have deteriorated on this continent, both health and educational facilities have rapidly and grievously deteriorated and standards have gone into a tailspin. At the beginning of the 21st century, we can say with little fear of controversy that, in both areas of education and health, Africa is manifestly retrogressing, a one step forward two backward record of neo-colonialism prevails. If in the sphere of education, facilities have considerably expanded over this period, clearly, the quality of education provided and the quality of the product is declining. A range of societal afflictions is wearing down Africa’s capacity to sustain its educational challenge. There is, for a start, the “book famine”, which has scoured Africa over the past three decades. Books are difficult to come by and where they are available, they are at a price very few can afford. Where three square meals a day are difficult to come by, the choice between bread and a book is not a realistic one. People under such circumstances have little consideration for books. Many spend their days chasing “essential commodities” (rice, flour, cooking oil, soap etc) as they are described in West Africa. Thus, poverty and the hunger of the belly have affected the availability of books and other materials needed in the education system. Teachers in Africa today, generally, earn so little and enjoy such increasingly diminishing prestige that, the teaching profession has lost its allure and the status it enjoyed in the colonial period. Few of the emerging generation want to be teachers. Indeed, a Tanzanian academic friend of mine whose children reached university age and were faced with, amongst others, the choice of becoming professional academics, like their father and mother, announced firmly and with conviction that they have no time for the academic option. The material rewards for a teacher or academic are not in the minds of many, commensurate with the requisite investment, in time and money. It is arguable that, in today’s Africa, the overwhelming majority of teachers do not exclusively survive on the remunerations they receive, as teachers. In too many African countries a good number of children still go to school under trees, without proper teaching equipment and with all too often poorly trained teachers. Excessive pupil/teacher ratios make effective teaching impossible. Children continue, daily, to walk endless miles in order to reach schools. Invariably, children who have to walk long distances to school are those who come from povertystricken homes and are likely to be doing this on near empty stomachs. Most observers would agree that in recent years both academic institutions and the product of these institutions are beginning rapidly to deteriorate to near collapse in some cases. School and university graduates have mounting difficulties in finding work. As I have elsewhere indicated, in Nigeria there are cases of graduates who end up as taxi/kabukabu drivers because they cannot find employment. Recently, there was the publicised case of a graduate architect who became a fruit seller on the streets of Lagos because he could find no openings to practice his metier. Similar cases have been reported in Kenya, where a young lady graduate had to accept work as a bar-tender and a young male graduate became a security guard in order to earn a living.(3) With the ethos of corruption and graft affecting much of African society, both education and the educated have declined in importance in the reckoning of mass society in Africa. The issues I have so far raised relate to questions of resource-allocation; inputs and outputs, which follow from this. They are largely, more quantitative than qualitative in meaning and expression. However, there are other issues relating more to policy and philosophy; issues which guide and underpin the principles on which the practice of education is constructed. One of the most important of these is the thinking behind the selection of one or the other language of instruction. LOI; from Yesterday to Tomorrow Language of instruction (LOI), or the language in which education is principally conducted is one of the most far-reaching and significant features of any education system. The language of instruction, the language of educational formation, in any society is also the language of hegemony and power. It is the language in which basic skills and knowledge are imparted to the population, and the medium in which the production and reproduction of knowledge is taught. Implicit in this is the acknowledgement that, it is in this medium that knowledge is accumulated and deposited. Where, LOI is the same as the mother tongue/home language, it not only affirms the developmental capacity of the mother tongue to grow as a language of culture, science and technology, it also gives confidence to a people, with respect to their historical and cultural baggage. LOI in the home language or mother tongue is an instrument for the cultural and scientific empowerment of people. Its denial signifies the social and cultural inferiority of the culture and people whose mother-tongue-use is denied. Therefore, in free societies knowledge transfer takes place in the language or languages of the masses; the languages in which the masses are most creative and innovative; languages which speak to them in their hearts and minds most primordially. Cultural freedom and African emancipation therefore cannot be cultivated, expanded or developed where the LOI is different from the languages or language the people normally in their everyday lives speak. Where the language of instruction is different from the languages of mass society, those who work in the language of instruction, foreign from the languages of the masses, become culturally removed and alienated from the masses. Indeed, where the language of instruction is different from the mother tongue of the people there is almost always a history and persistence of patterns of dominance, over-lordship or colonialism. Liliana Mammino makes the point as follows; “the use of a second language as a medium of instruction is a heritage of colonisation. In all those countries where such a heritage is not present, students use their mother tongue throughout the whole instruction career. From a pedagogical point of view, the use of a second language is an objective disadvantage affecting both the easiness and, one might say, the comfort with which knowledge is acquired by students, and the extent and depth of the acquisition”.(4) Where a colonial language becomes the language of instruction, with all knowledge and education fed into the people in the language of the former colonial overlord, this removes and negates the development of confidence in home or original cultures. The removal from cultural and linguistic primordial moorings assumes the form of denial of the home culture, a creeping amnesia of the collective memory. This memory is rejected or regarded with a mixture of comic relief and derision. In South Africa, many people of Khoisan historical descent who have been culturally and linguistically Afrikanerized and who were in the past classified as Coloured under the Apartheid scheme, publicly, only acknowledge European roots. “My grandfather was Greek/ My grandfather was Irish” would be announced. The ostensibly acknowledged grandfather is invariably unknown and there is silence about grandmother; total silence about African cultural and linguistic antecedents. As John Mutorwa, Minister of Basic Education in Namibia said in 1995, the “ …. San people received so little attention that no education was available for them in any language except Afrikaans”.(5) I have seen and heard in both Angola and in South Africa young people and migrants say without any sense of loss or shame, the fact that they cannot speak their native languages. Brock-Utne notes the view of an informer, about Khoekhoegowab speakers in Namibia that, “the young ones don’t want to speak their own language, they all want to be Americans. They watch TV and get all this American stuff. They want to be like Michael Jackson and look down on their own culture”.(6) Such effective cultural and linguistic denationalisation is a mark of the success of the colonial project seen from the viewpoint of the colonialist. Bgoya has made the point that, “constant bombardment of societies in the South with European languages, and the aggressively marketed notion of the superiority of things and ways western, can only lead to pressures on the societies in the south to accept to abandon their cultures and to adopt the American way.”(7) As Obiechina put it, “the supreme sin of colonialism” was the crass devaluation of African culture and the alienation of the educated elite from their native traditions and historical belongings.(8) But, at least formally, in its classical form, colonialism is buried, so its persistence reflects the entrenched nature of neocolonialism in Africa. In our generation few have exposed the cultural legacy of colonialism on the African mind, as eloquently as Ngugi Wa Thiongo.(9) Brock-Utne’s view is that, “Some may ask if Africa was ever intellectually decolonized. No, probably not. However, attempts were made at independence in one country after the other of building education in Africa on African roots. I claim that these attempts have been stifled over the past ten to fifteen years.”(10) In my understanding, this view is too charitable. African countries never seriously got started culturally decolonizing. Many of the elites who inherited the postcolonial state displayed a schizophrenic attitude to the question of culture. Invariably, they rhetorically rejected indiscriminate westernism and extolled “Negritude” and the “African personality”, but at the same time they in practice succumbed to the dalliance and overkill of western culture in a neo-colonial setting. Phillipson usefully points to the fact that English in many post-colonial societies has served to maintain western interests.(11) In his text Linguistic Imperialism, Phillipson exposes the connection between language and neocolonialism.(12) Advancing the concept Linguicism, which means; the collection of ideas, rationale, structures and practices which are employed to justify and legitimise the production and reproduction of resources and power differentials between groups defined on the bases of language and language-use; Phillipson shows that English in the developing world is an instrument of imperialism . Bgoya’s diagnosis of the tension between globalisation and language-use is that, “English is the language of globalisation and English serves fundamentally the interests of those for whom it is both an export commodity and a language of conquest and domination”(13) Struggles and processes for the revision of LOI policies mirror larger political and social struggles. Changes in the status planning for languages are not infrequently a parallel cultural response to political and socio-economic transformation. A good example of this is provided by the South African case. Nkonko Kamwangamalu has explained that, the pre-apartheid years were culturally and linguistically defined by the struggle of the Afrikaners against the British policy of Anglicisation.(14) The dominance of the English in all areas of social life was contested with slow but steady erosion of this dominance until 1948, when with the ascendancy of the Afrikaner political elite, the doors to Afrikaner supremacy were opened. The apartheid years saw the formulation and institutionalisation of the policy of Bantu education, which, among other things, sought to bring Afrikaans to equality with English by using both of these languages as a media of instruction in all black schools. This was resoundingly challenged in full view of the whole world in Soweto, June 1976 when African school kids in Soweto rejected Afrikaans and took to the streets to register their protest. This protest against LOI under Apartheid marked a watershed in the history of Apartheid fascism in South Africa. It announced the coming demise of Apartheid. The rest is history. The post-apartheid years have seen the limited but principled dismantling of the administrative structure of apartheid-based education and the adoption of a new education system, which reflects better, at least on paper, the cultural and linguistic interests of African language speakers. In the Sudan, when in the late 1920s the British decided to ensure that the South should maintain its African identity unchallenged by Arabic cultural influences from the North (Southern Policy), one of the first moves made to consolidate this policy position was to adopt at Rejaf, in 1928, six African languages to be used as languages of instruction in schools. What this illustrates is that each junction in the evolution of society which registers in the partial or larger transfer of rights and resources to broader sections of the population, at the cultural level, registers in an changing language policy which raises the status and power of equally broader sections of the society. Frequently, this translates as a LOI, which draws on the languages of masses who had hitherto been unempowered. The lessons of the Afrikaner linguistic and cultural struggle against Anglicisation should usefully inform present-day African efforts at cultural self-assertion and renaissance in South Africa. In 1908, the Afrikaner far-right politician Dr. D.F. Malan is reported to have exhorted his audience that, “raise the Afrikaans language to a written language, make it the bearer of our culture, our history, our national ideals, and you will raise the People to a feeling of self-respect and to the calling to take a worthier place in world civilisation … A healthy national feeling can only be rooted in ethnic [volks] art and science, ethnic customs and character, ethnic language and ethnic religion and, not least, in ethnic literature”.(15) He understood what was needed to rescue Afrikaners from the inferiorities of second class whites in an English dominated society. Later Malan’s party, the National Party, tried to use language to ultimately bring Africans culturally under their thraldom. They have been unsuccessful. It is remarkable that during the first decade of independence there was a considerable amount of literature put out by various observers and educationists, which argued for the use of western languages as LOI. Much of this would appear today as apologetics for a neo-colonial cause. Adejeji Awoniyi lists a sample of such literature, which for one reason or the other suggested that it was better to use non-African languages as LOI.(16) A LOI policy, which favours the use of colonial languages, entrenches the schism between the elite and masses. It implicitly defines the culture and language of the masses as inferior and irredeemable and seeks to, in effect, replace it lock stock and barrel with a new advancing language and culture which is seen as best articulated “in his master’s voice” and diction. In this respect, Andreski made cogent observations: Instead of drawing the population together, the employment of French or English as an official language cuts off the elite from the commonality just as the use of French in eighteenth –century central and eastern Europe did. Having English or French as the official language prevents a crystallisation of a national consciousness because the graduates have no vested interest in anything that could be called national culture. It is probably because in fact they do not know where they belong that the African writers insist so much on their Negritude. Furthermore, not understanding the official language, the ordinary people can neither identify themselves with the state nor acquire even the most rudimentary information about public affairs. Another important consequence of the linguistic situation is that when one is compelled to use a language which one does not command perfectly one cannot say anything involved or subtle; and (what might have even more serious political consequences) one incurs the risk of cutting a comic figure in the eyes of those whose mother tongue it is. This often aggravates the inferiority complex, the feeling of insecurity and the need for individual or collective self-glorification, which often prompt political or economic follies.(17) Andreski’s views here echo and resonate with the language and opinion of Frantz Fanon in his Peau Noir , Masques Blancs (Black Skin, White Masks). Fanon in inimitable language draws the picture in graphic and telling terms: Every colonised people – every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality, finds itself face to face with the language of the civilised nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country.(18) A non-mother tongue LOI is the socio-linguistic basis for creating neo-colonial elites in Africa. Elites which reproduce themselves in increasing numbers and accept this slow extinction of their own languages in favour of the colonially bequeathed tongues. We do well to remember that, “of the 6,000 or so languages presumed to exist on Earth, 95% seem destined to disappear within the next 100 years.”(19) Most of Africa’s languages are included in this estimate. The surest way of ensuring the destiny of extinction for African languages is to avoid using them as LOIs. The writing is on the wall. What needs to be said here is that societies with colonial pasts which have been able to make a break with the use of colonial languages as media of education and instruction are those which make progress and development not only in the educational field, but also in other areas of social life. This point is particularly borne out in the experience of post-colonial Asia. Our attention has been drawn to the observations of the Sri-Lankan researcher A. Mahinda Ranaweera who writes that: The transition from English to the national languages as the medium of instruction in science helped to destroy the great barrier that existed between the privileged English educated classes; between the science educated elite and the non-science educated masses; between science itself and the people. It gave confidence to the common man that science is within his reach and to the teachers and pupils, that knowledge of English need not necessarily be a prerequisite for learning science.(20) Such observations prove the validity of the argument. If a post-colonial Asian society can register such records, the doubting Thomas’ among Africans can hardly justify their intellectual turpitude. In a text published by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) under the direction of Kabiru Kiyanjui; Languages of Instruction: Policy Implications for Education in Africa, we are informed that: In the wake of the Jomtien Conference in 1990, African governments have, with the help of the international community, engaged in unprecedented efforts to resolve the educational problems their countries face. The goal of good-quality education for all has taken centre stage in political and educational debates. One issue that has not been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction concerns the medium of instruction, also known as the language of instruction (LOI). What is the “best LOI policy in Africa?(21) The report, based on studies and experiences in six African countries (Botswana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, South Africa and Tanzania) suggests that LOI approaches that are based on mother tongue instruction in the early years of basic education result in faster and improved capacity for the acquisition of knowledge by pupils. Also, mother tongue based LOI facilitates the acquisition of second and third languages. Contrary to popular opinion that LOI approaches are ethnically divisive, the report found that LOI policies, which use African lingua-francas, provide pupils and students with an integrative attitude across ethnic borders. Other important findings of the report include the points that, The most commonly identified technical problems arising from inadequate language planning include the inappropriateness of technical terms in LOI, the complexity of syntactic patterns in textbooks, the poor quality and irrelevance of textbooks, and outdated teaching methodologies. Recent research indicates that the long-term benefits of producing learning materials in a mother tongue outweigh their high initial publishing costs. Progress in computer technology has considerably reduced the cost of offset printing. Desktop publishing, for instance, is resulting in the growth of national publishing industries, which will ultimately reduce African countries’ dependency on foreign publishers. African researchers are uniting across the continent to draw the attention of policymakers to the political, economic, and, above all, educational benefits of shifting toward LOI policies that take these research findings into account. By and large, these researchers recommend that African countries implement bilingual or multilingual LOI policies whereby mother tongues and the languages of wider communication (English, French, and Portuguese) are used systematically to suit both the educational needs and the political realities of African countries. Also, to provide reliable guidance for policymakers, researchers are recommending more empirical studies, especially in countries where such research is lacking.(22) Most experts in the field generally share the above findings. The value of mother tongue instruction is literally incontestable. The point which most make is that mother tongue LOI should be mandatory for the first two/three years of education. Practically, after the early primary stage, pupils should move, into English, French, Portuguese, etc. This is the position espoused by all the major donor agencies, the World Bank, the IMF, and which is accepted by most African governments, at least on paper. This position is not new. It is an argument, which has been with us from the early colonial period. It is my view that even this position falls far short of what should be the case. My argument is that the whole of African education, from primary to the tertiary level, should be conducted in local languages, the home language, the mother tongues. This is the way that all societies in the world which have managed to develop, or achieved a sustained developmental momentum, have or are doing it. Turkish students study to the university level in Turkish. Greeks, Albanians, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Danish, Germans, Chinese, Indonesians/Malaysians, Japanese, and others all manage their education from the beginning to the end in their own languages. Somehow when it comes to Africa the logic breaks down and all sorts of reasons are found why in the case of Africa this should be different. Tanzania should be one of the countries in the forefront of African efforts towards the use of an African language as language of instruction at all levels of the education system. KiSwahili is understood by about 90% of the population, and is spoken by about 50 million Africans in East, Central and the northern reaches of Southern Africa. Tanzania is the creative heartland of KiSwahili. In this area if there is anyone language which can pioneer the use of African languages as LOI, it is KiSwahili. I am not suggesting that, exclusively only African languages should be taught. The suggestion is that education should be conducted in the home languages of the people. In addition, other languages can be learnt as subjects geared towards the cultivation of multilingual cultural environments. Some of these could be other African languages. Such additional languages can include both the old colonial languages and some local or African languages. The ability to learn languages is more dependent on exposure to these languages at the right age than spectacular ability. The argument that I have elsewhere made is that development in Africa will not be forthcoming until we start using our languages as LOI from the beginning to the end of the education process.(23) Harmonising African Language Orthographies For agents and advocates of the principle of mother tongue education in Africa, it is not enough to argue the case. The legitimacy of the argument is for any analytical mind and on the strength of available evidence clear. In Roy-Campbell and Qorro’s Language Crisis in Tanzania, the authors draw our attention to Barrett’s contention in response to his question: Why is English still the Medium of Education in Tanzanian Secondary Schools? The reason Barrett provides, for this situation is that maybe the arguments for KiSwahili have simply not been sufficiently strongly put.(24) This argument does not appear plausible, in view of the wealth of arguments that are available generally to back-up mother tongue LOI world-wide and KiSwahili in particular. In the case of Tanzania and also Swaziland, Lesotho, Somalia and the Central African Republic where overwhelming majorities speak one language, which is indigenous, one can hardly say that the argument has not been sufficiently made, or is not patently clear. Francois Lim has discussed the case of Sango in the Central African Republic to good effect.(25) In Lesotho where I spent some years during the late nineteen-eighties, although the overwhelming majority of the people speak the same language and are able to hold meetings of the highest governmental order in SeSotho, no attempt was made to go beyond this stage and introduce SeSotho more comprehensively into the education system. In Somalia, although when the country attained independence in 1960 it took English, Italian and Arabic as its official languages, it was the military regime of General Siad Barre who came to power in 1969, who in October 1972 settled for the use of the Latin script for the Somali language and whose administration proceeded rapidly to produce materials in the Somali language. Over a short period, a huge volume of literature was produced in the country. Warsame has explained how this was achieved.(26) One of the most important lessons about the Tanzanian experience, which is well brought out in RoyCampbell and Qorro’s text is the confusion and complications created by a half-hearted attempt to use KiSwahili as an LOI. Starting children off in primary school in KiSwahili and then expecting them at secondary and university levels to work in English is like casting them into two worlds, with one leg in either and belonging no-where. If we want in a country where 90% of the people speak KiSwahili, to work in KiSwahili as LOI, then it is important to be consequent and go the whole hog. This is the appropriate response to the following problem: The primary uses of English are in post-secondary school classrooms and among non-KiSwahili speaking foreigners. KiSwahili, or in some cases another mother tongue, is used in most aspects of life in Tanzania. Consequently, secondary school students have very little opportunity to practise the English they learn as a subject in schools. It is no wonder, then, that when such students enter Form One, they are at a linguistic disadvantage. This follows them throughout their secondary school career, with some students becoming marginally better with greater exposure to English.(27) The problem that the authors describe is similar to observations I made in the Southern Sudan (Juba) during the early-nineteen eighties. A large number of the Northern Sudanese students at Juba University, in the south, were instructed in Arabic for their primary and secondary school education, with English as a subject taught. At university they were lectured in English and supposed to write their assignments in English. The result was disastrous. The only caution one has, to my mind, to be wary of in the Tanzanian case is that although KiSwahili is African and is spoken flawlessly by 90% of the people, it is for most not the home language. What this implies is that its adoption as LOI should not halt attempts towards the harmonisation and development of other regional, equally large languages. For example, the harmonisation of the languages of the Great Lakes area, Runyakitara (Runyoro, Rutooro, Runyankore, Rukiga, Kiruwanda, Kiyamulenge) touches on speakers in north-western Tanzania, and covers a speech community including speakers from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania. Obviously native speakers of this language would prefer the possibility of also working in their language. The harmonisation of the Luo varieties between north Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and Ethiopia should empower culturally millions of people. The Ngoni of southern Tanzania speak a language, which is spoken in seven countries (South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania), in various dialects in the southern part of the continent. There is wisdom in providing the possibility for the speakers who may well total 40 million to use their mother tongue as a harmonised written form. In short the development and use of KiSwahili at all levels of education should not necessarily hinder the development of other mother tongues. All education is best achieved in the home language. However, what needs to be done to make this option economically viable? Make the switch profitable for both the individual and society? Economically the development of materials and the economies of scale are only manageable when they are developed on the basis of large mutually intelligible written forms. In practice, this means that they need to be cleansed of missionary linguistic fragmentation of the ethno-linguistic field. One inadvertent result of missionary linguistic practices in Africa is that dialects have been elevated to languages to the point that the myth of Babel in Africa appears real, when in fact it is only ephemeral. The truth is that the demographics of language and linguistic diversity in Africa are not really different from what obtains in other parts of the world. What is different is that the identification of linguistic units in Africa tends to be loose. The identification of language communities in Africa has been approached in a way, which favours the recognition of practically all dialect, and phonological variations as separated languages. This is partly because such observers have never in most instances, looked at African societies outside the framework of colonial boundaries or the immediate areas of missionary settlement and evangelical zeal. By this approach Cockney, Tyneside, broad Yorkshire, etc. in Britain will be languages in themselves. This fragmentation approach is still popular with the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), a leading group in the work of rendering African languages into script, otherwise translating the Bible into African languages. The rendition of African languages into scripts for purposes of the development of Africa cannot at the same time proceed with fragmentation of languages as is being conducted by the SIL. In effect, the SIL is building and destroying at the same time. When one asks why this is the case, the reason that comes easily to the fore is that the object of such endeavours at rendering African languages into script is not in the first instance to help in the development of Africa, but rather simply to translate the Bible into African speech forms and to evangelise and convert Africans into Christians. Unless one assumes that converting Africans to Christianity represents development. All other considerations are for such purposes insignificant. The CASAS Experience The work of the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS), over the past 5 years studies has revealed that as first, second and third language speakers about 85% of Africans speak no more than 12 – 15 core languages (by core languages I mean clusters of mutually intelligible speech forms which in essence constitute dialects of the same language). These include Nguni; SeSotho/SeTswana; KiSwahili; Dholuo; Eastern Inter-Lacustrine; Runyakitara; Somali/Rendile/Oromo/Borana; Fulful; Mandenkan; Hausa; Yoruba; Ibo and Amharic. These would be the first order languages of prominence. Below these, there may be about 6 which are not so large, in terms of speakers, but which have significant numbers of users. The work of the Centre has been to network African linguists and other specialists who technically work towards the harmonisation of orthography between mutually intelligible clusters. Generally such clusters need to display a degree of + 85% mutual intelligibility. An appropriate instrument for measuring mutual intelligibility has been developed by CASAS and draft guidelines for the revision African orthographic conventions has also been developed. Prof. Hounkpati Capo of the University of Benin has harmonised the Gbe languages of maritime West Africa. These include Aja in Nigeria; Aja, Mina, Fon, Gun in Benin; Mina and Ewe in Togo; and Ewe in Ghana. Prof. Capo has designated this cluster as the Gbe languages. Recently, work on the south-central African languages of Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique have been completed. This has been done with Prof. Felix Banda of the University of the Western Cape, as Co-ordinator. This work has produced a harmonised orthography for languages such as ciNyanja/ ciCewa, ciNsenga/ciNgoni/ciNsenga, eLomwe, eMakhuwa, ciYao, ciTumbuka/ciSenga, ciBemba, kiKaonde, Lunda and ciLuvale, and related dialects. These will now have a single spelling system, rather than three or more spelling systems within the same language, or even more systems across related Bantu languages. Given the basic unity of the consonant and vowel structure of southern Bantu languages, technically, the harmonisation activity should yield successful results fairly easily. Work on Nguni (IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, IsiNdebele, IsiShangaan, SeSwati, Ngoni) and Sotho/Tswana (SeSotho, SeTswana, SePedi, SiLozi), spoken in 7 countries in each instance is due to start later this year. In May 2002, technical meetings for the harmonisation of the Mandenkan languages (Mande, Malinke, Dyula, Mandingo, Bambara) spoken in 5 countries; Gur (Gurunshi, Frafra, Senufo, Moree, Kulanga, etc.) spoken in 5 countries; and Akan (Twi, Fanti, Brong, Baule, Agni) spoken in 3 countries; will be conducted in Abidjan. Hopefully, by the end of this year (2002), these language clusters will have harmonised orthographies, and work will have proceeded towards harmonising the Fang dialects (Ati, Meke, Dzaman, Mtumu, Mveny and Okak). An important lesson arising out of this work is that we need to work in co-operation across borders because practically all African languages are cross-border speech forms, which defy the colonially inherited borders. Working within the framework of African neo-colonial borders creates more problems. The sentimental glories of neo-colonial flags and national anthems maintain the fragmentation process of African languages. For the sake of flag and so-called national identity, Kamuzu Banda of Malawi refused to except the reality of the fact that ciNyanja and ciCerwa are the same language. Sometimes these tensions are perceptible in the same country and represent attempts to own and control linguistic turf. In Ghana, for 25 years after the harmonisation of Akan to produce a unified Akan orthography, writers still persisted in using the pre-unification orthography which separated mutually intelligible dialects like Akuapim, Asante, Fanti, Akim, and Brong. In a report submitted to CASAS by Felix Banda who has co-ordinated work on the languages of south-central Africa, it was revealed that, that the new iciLamba orthography had adopted the graphemes [sy] instead of [sh] for the voiceless palatal fricative, because they associated the [sh] sound with iciBemba. This is clearly nonsense as the [sh] sound has nothing to do with iciBemba. Even our own cross-border orthography recommends [sh] rather than [sy] for the voiceless palatal fricative.(28) The approach of CASAS is that once the technical work on the harmonisation of orthography and the development of common spelling systems has been developed, the new system needs to be taught to writers and teachers who then produce materials using the new orthographies. These workshops have already been started in a number of instances. The target of CASAS in the short run is to complete work within the next few years on the 12 – 15 core languages. That will literally break the back of the problem. In all the instances of the harmonisation work what has been realised is that invariably not all the mutually intelligible languages equally and easily submit themselves to harmonisation. The speech forms, which lie at the extreme ends of the phonological spectrum of a given cluster, are often difficult to unite with the middle range speech forms. For example, CASAS has found that the Luo cluster consisting of languages such as Anyuak, Shilluk Jur, Lafon, Acholi, Lango, Alur, Chopadhola and Lakeside Luo do not easily collapse into one orthography. The same may be true for the Somali, Rendile, Borana and Oromo cluster. The logic of this work is that once this approach runs its course, it should be possible to produce materials for formal education, adult literacy, and everyday media usage for large readerships which on the economies of scale make it possible to produce and work in these languages. It is the empowerment of Africans with the usage of their native languages, which would make the difference between whether Africa develops, or not. Imperialism and Double Standards It is interesting to note the strong attachment, which some societies have towards their languages and the need to protect and use these languages. The French who are possibly one of the difficult interests Africans face in the effort to develop and use African languages in Africa are most sensitive about the need to protect French. In a recent news item, which appeared through the Reuters Agency in the Cape Times, we read that: Irate readers have accused the influential Parisian daily Le Monde of undermining the French language and bowing to Americanisation by printing a weekly supplement of New York Times articles in English. Many readers wrote letters of protest, contradicting a marketing survey Le Monde made last August in which 59% of those questioned supported a supplement in English. “This is the wrong way to be open to the world, it’s a self-enslavement, participation in the Americanisation of France,” wrote Albert Salon, president of the International Francophone Forum. Another reader wrote: “You shouldn’t be surprised that the Americans treat us with such condescension.” Several letters accused Le Monde of insulting the majority of readers who did not understand English. “They’ll be considered fools who have no place in today’s society,” one wrote. “When will you realise you’re sawing off the branch you’re sitting on?” another reader asked. “When will you understand that, by doing this, you contribute to isolating and despising millions of people who do not speak English fluently?” The paper has said it will decide after the trial period whether to continue. It wanted to attract new readers and aimed to create a Europe-wide advertising market with dailies in Germany, Italy and Spain.(29) It is for many, amazing that the French who have such strong attachment to their language can at the same time be such hard-headed imperialists when it comes to the pushing of French into Africa at the expense of the existence of the native languages of the denizens of the continent. The Portuguese have been equally persistent in their former colonies. Speaking about South Africa, Antjie Krog draws attention to the fact that in the post-colonial times that we live in, it is the African elites which have, willy nilly, become the protectors of colonial languages. As an Afrikaner poetess she suggests that, “Not only whites, … but also blacks are too dismissive of local languages as a medium in which nothing political has been said, or nothing of relevance to the greater political emancipation of black people”.(30) The dismissiveness which Krog speaks about attains ridiculous proportions when as Komarek has suggested: In some countries, they count in their statistics as illiterate people, those who do not read French or English. But they very often read Arabic. They very often read in other languages, but they count them as illiterates. This is a scandal. It is a disaster. It is ridiculous to call them illiterate because they cannot read one of the European or Western languages. Another thing that I always wonder about is yes English, French, and other languages are important for international communication, but how many people in a country need this? How many Germans are really mastering English? Perhaps 5 or 10 per cent? Why do we bother a hundred percent of six, seven and eight-year-olds to learn a competence for which they will have no use later.(31) In Madagascar, where in 1975 a left-wing coup brought in a nationalist government which diminished the usage of French and excessive reference to French culture, the educational system was nationalised, and Malagasy, which is the only language of the country spoken by everybody, was pushed to the fore as the only medium of instruction. For seven years this situation obtained. Primary school books, textbooks in Mathematics and other subjects were produced in Malagasy. Under the influence of the French, in conditions of diminishing economic well-being, and with promises of financial aid, the Madagascans agreed to go back to French, and the teaching of Malagasy in schools was cut down to only the first two years. Komarek is again scathing: The scandal is that Malagasy is the only language of Madagascar. Everybody … speaks one language. Of course, there are dialects, but 150 years ago the Bible was translated into Malagasy. Everybody reads the Bible. Everybody knows this higher standard Malagasy. Anyway, France was waiting for the opportunity to bring them down again and they succeeded. What is behind this?(32) The simple point behind this is that, the French in pursuit of a neo-colonial agenda inherent in the idea of a Francophonie (and for the British, the Commonwealth - Anglophonie) must persist in maintaining the supremacy of the French language in their former colonies, in the same way as they persist in stationing military garrisons in post-colonial Africa. Tanzania’s endoglossic LOI with respect to KiSwahili needs to be more than ever encouraged and supported. Its success depends not only on the political will of the ruling elite, but also and perhaps more importantly the strength and tenacity of the masses to defend a LOI, which is in their interest. Rubanza points out that, “While Tanzania’s move (lip service) to come up with a policy statement giving room for Kiswahili to be a medium of instruction at all levels in future, is welcomed, there is also a need to have concrete plans to bring the policy into effect.”(33) Rubagumya has drawn attention to the boost in the value of English during the 1980s.(34) It is important to guard against any attempt to turn the clock back and go back to the hegemony of English. That will represent a betrayal of the interests of not only the Tanzanian people but also, Africans in general. Concluding Remarks We can say that by record of what has transpired in Africa since the post-colonial era was ushered in, little structural change in the political economy of African society has registered. We are literally, where we were, in this respect, at the close of the colonial era. We still produce primary products with little added value in an era of what, fashionably, is called “globalisation”. International terms of trade are heavily weighed against us. Land in the rural areas where the masses live remains under-capitalised, mostly tied up to pre-capitalist tenurial systems or otherwise étatiste arrangements, which do not help the processes of accumulation. Warlordism, banditry and brigandage has come into the daily lives of increasingly larger numbers of Africans. The whole post-colonial period has been characterised by military-bureaucratic rule or varieties of autocratic dictatorship and pillage of state coffers by the new elites that have dominated the post-colonial state. In most senses, it is possible to say that the post-colonial elites have given scant consideration to the needs of the teeming masses of Africa. The above socio-economic realities have been reflected in the cultural lives of Africans. Here, the language question, in general, and the language of instruction issue, in particular, lies at the heart of matter. The answer to the language question provides the key to development challenge and the further emancipation of African people. It is at the same time, what will determine whether we remain a recognisable and distinct cultural component of humanity or vanish into another existing cultural area; that is, whether we cease to exist culturally as Africans. The issue of the need to as soon as possible, start using our languages on the basis of harmonised orthographies cannot be postponed. To do this successfully we need to snap out of the habit of looking for answers restrictedly within our state borders, the borders of independence. Africans will need to work more together, unite in this effort. Notes 1. This table is extrapolated from World Bank figures, which appear in F.J. Nieuwenhuis. The Development of Education Systems in Postcolonial Africa. A Study of Selected Number of African Countries. Human Science Research Council. HSRC Publishers. Pretoria. 1996. Pp. 20 – 21. 2. Julius Nyerere. Education in Tanzania. Education for Self-Reliance. In, A. Babs Fafunwa and J.U. Aisiku (Eds). Education in Africa. A Comparative Study. George Allen & Unwin. London. 1982. P.238. 3. K. K. Prah. Leadership and Management of Higher Education in Africa in the New Millennium; Opportunities and Challenges. Keynote Address Presented to the Kenyatta University International Conference on the Transformation of Higher Education Management and Leadership for Efficacy in Africa. Kenyatta University, Nairobi, 12th November 2001. 4. Liliana Mammino. Studying the Details of the Transition from the Mother Tongue to the Second Language. In, Sipho Seepe & Dolina Dowling (Eds). The Language of Science. Vivlia. Florida Hills. 2000. P.94. 5. Quoted here from, Birgit Brock-Utne and Halla B. Holmarsdotter. The Choice of English as Medium of Instruction and its Effects on the African Languages of Namibia. In, International Review of Education. Special Issue on Globalisation, Language and Education. Vol. 47. Nos. 3-4. July 2001. P.304. 6. Ibid. p.301 7. Walter Bgoya. The Effect of Globalisation in Africa and the Choice of Language in Publishing. In, International Review of Education. Ibid. P. 288. 8. Emmanuel N. Obiechina. Language and Theme. Howard University Press. Washington D.C. 1990. P.81 9. See, Ngugi Wa Thiongo. Decolonizing the African Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Heinemann. Nairobi. 1986. 10. Birgit Brock-Utne. Whose Education for All? The Recolonization of the African Mind. Falmer Press. New York and London. 2000. P.289. 11. Robert Phillipson. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 1992. In his review of Phillipson’s book Macdonald Daly writes that “Fallaciously identified with modernity, progress, freedom, civilisation and reason, English commands monumental financial, official and popular backing in parts of the globe where its role is dubious. As a result, indigenous languages ‘are not accorded enough resources to develop so that the same functions could be performed in them.’ Macdonald Daly. Linguistic Imperialism … being the book that all English speakers should read. New Internationalist. September 1995. P.33. 12. Robert Phillipson. English for Globalisation or for the Worlds People? In, International Review of Education. Ibid. P.187. See also, Alastair Pennycook. English and the Discourses of Colonialism. Routledge. London and New York. 1998. And, Robert Phillipson. Linguistic Imperialism. Oxford University Press. Oxford. 1992. 13. Walter Bgoya. Op cit. P.286 14. Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu. The Language Planning Situation in South Africa. Current Issues in Language Planning. Multilingual Matters. Series 2 (3). 2001. Clevedon. P.37. 15. S.W. Pienaar (Ed.). Glo in U Volk: D.F. Malan as Redenaar, 1908 – 1954. Tafelberg. Cape Town. 1964. Pp. 175-76. Quoted here from Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu. Ibid. P.12. 16. See, Adedeji Awoniyi. Determining Language in Education Policy: The Dilemma in Africa. In, Kola Owolabi (Ed). Language in Nigeria. Essays in Honour of Ayo Bamgbose. Group Publishers. Ibadan. 1995. Pp. 446-447. The list Adedeji Awoniyi provides includes: - B.W. Tiffen. English Versus African Languages as the Medium of Education in African Primary Schools. In, G.N. Brown and M. Hiskert (Ed). Conflict and Harmony in Education in Tropical Africa. George Allen and Unwin. London. 1975. P.324. - R.M.F. Dalton. The Position of English as a Medium of Instruction in Emergent Territories in Tropical Africa. Education Review. Vol. 13, No. 2. 1961. Pp. 111-115. - E.L. Makward. The Language Problem. West African Journal of Education. Vol.7, No. 2. 1963. Pp. 8793. - N.C. Denny. Language and Education in Africa. 1971. In, J. Spencer (Ed.). Language in Africa. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. 1963. Pp. 40-52. - E.C. Rowlands. Yoruba and English: A Problem of Co-Existence. African Language Studies. 1963. Vol.IV. Pp. 208-214. - L.F. Brosnahan. Some Aspects of the Linguistic Situation in Tropical Africa. Lingua. 1965. Vol.12, No.1. Pp. 54-65. 17. Stanislav Andreski. The African Predicament. A Study in the Pathology of Modernisation. Michael Joseph. London. 1968. Pp. 72-73. 18. Frantz Fanon. Black Skin, White Masks. New York. 1967. P.18. 19. George Monbiot. Global Villagers Speak with Forked Tongues. Guardian Weekly. September 3. 1995. 20. A. Mahinda Ranaweera. Sri Lanka: Science Teaching in the National Languages. Prospects. 6(3): 416423. P.423. Quoted here from, Birgit Brock-Utne. Whose Education for All? The Recolonization of the African Mind. Falmer Press. New York and London. 2000. Op cit. P.153. 21. Report of the Working Group of Educational Research and Policy Analysis Association for the Development of Education in Africa, on, Languages of Instruction: Policy Implications for Education in Africa. International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Ottawa. Executive Summary. 1997. P.xiii. 22. Ibid. P.xv. 23. K.K. Prah. Mother Tongue for Scientific and Technological Development in Africa. Deutsche Stiftung fur internationale Entwicklung (DSE). Germany. 1995. And, African Languages for the Mass Education of Africans. Deutsche Stiftung fur internationale Entwicklung (DSE). Germany. 1995. 24. Zaline M. Roy-Campbell & Martha A.S. Qorro. Language Crisis in Tanzania. The Myth of English Versus Education. Mkuki Na Nyota Publishers. Dar es Salaam. 1997. P. 5. 25. Francois Lim. The Harmonisation and Standardisation of Sango, the Official National Language of Central Africa. In, Kwesi Kwaa Prah (Ed). Rehabilitating African Languages. The Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society. Cape Town. 2002. 26. Ali A. Warsame. How a Strong Government Backed an African Language: The Lessons in Somalia. In, International Review of Education. Special Issue on Globalisation, Language and Education. UNESCO. Hamburg. Vol. 47. Nos. 3-4. July 2001. Pp. 341-360 27. Zaline M. Roy-Campbell & Martha A.S. Qorro. Ibid. P. vi. 28. Report made to Prof. K.K. Prah by Prof. Felix Banda. Cape Town. 17th April 2002. 29. Reuters Correspondent. Articles in English Start French War of Words. The Cape Times (South Africa). 15th April 2002. P.4 30. Hans Pienaar. Antjie Krog Gives Voice to South Africa’s Mother Tongues. Poet challenges predominance of English. The Sunday Independent (South Africa). April 14, 2002. P.11. 31. Kwesi Kwaa Prah and Yvonne King (Eds). In Tongues. African Languages and the Challenges of Development. Monograph Series No. 1. The Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS). Cape Town. 1998. P.41. 32. Ibid. P.39. 33. Y.I. Rubanza. Realistic Revolutionary Strategies in Harmonisation and Standardisation of African Languages. In, In, Kwesi Kwaa Prah (Ed). Rehabilitating African Languages. The Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society. Cape Town. 2002. P. 50. 34. Casmir Rubagumya. Language Promotion for Educational Purposes: The Example of Tanzania. International Review of Education. Vol. 37. No. 1. 1991. P. 75.