Professional Documents
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1
LANGUAGE PLANNING AND POLICY
Edited by
Richard B. Baldauf, Jr and Robert B. Kaplan
Copyright © 2004 Richard B. Baldauf Jr, Robert B. Kaplan and the authors of individual
chapters.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means
without permission in writing from the publisher.
v
Series Overview
Since 1998 when the first polity studies on Language Policy and Planning –
addressing the language situation in a particular polity – were published in the
Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 15 studies have been
published there and since 1990 in Current Issues in Language Planning. These stud-
ies have all addressed, to a greater or lesser extent, 22 common questions or
issues (Appendix A), thus giving them some degree of consistency. However, we
are keenly aware that these studies have been published in the order in which
they were completed. While such an arrangement is reasonable for journal publi-
cation, the result does not serve the needs of area specialists nor are the various
monographs easily accessible to the wider public. As the number of available
polity studies has grown, we have planned to update (where necessary) and
republish these studies in coherent areal volumes.
The first such volume is concerned with Africa, both because a significant
number of studies has become available and because Africa constitutes an area
that is significantly under-represented in the language planning literature and
yet is marked by extremely interesting language policy and planning issues. In
this first areal volume, we are reprinting four polity studies – Botswana, Malawi,
Mozambique and South Africa – as Areal Volume 1: Language Planning in Africa:
Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa.
We hope that this first areal volume will better serve the needs of specialists. It
is our intent to publish other areal volumes subsequently as sufficient studies are
completed. We will do so in the hope that such volumes will be of interest to areal
scholars and others interested in language policies and language planning in
geographically coherent regions. The areas in which we are planning to produce
future volumes, and some of the polities which may be included are:
• Africa (2), including Burundi and Rwanda, Côte d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Tunisia,
Zimbabwe;
• Asia, including Bangladesh, Malaysia, Nepal, the Philippines, Singapore
and Taiwan;
• Europe (1), including Finland, Hungary and Sweden (in press);
• Europe (2), including the Czech Republic, the European Union, Ireland,
Italy, Malta, and Northern Ireland;
• Latin America, including Ecuador, Mexico and Paraguay; and
• Pacific Basin, including Vanuatu and Fiji;
In the mean time, we will continue to bring out Current Issues in Language
Planning, adding to the list of polities available for inclusion in areal volumes. At
this point, we cannot predict the intervals over which such volumes will appear,
since those intervals will be defined by the ability of contributors to complete
work on already contracted polity studies.
Series Overview
2 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
An Invitation to Contribute
We welcome additional polity contributions. Our views on a number of the
issues can be found in Kaplan and Baldauf (1997); sample polity monographs
have appeared in the extant issues of Current Issues in Language Planning. Inter-
ested authors should contact the editors, present a proposal for a monograph,
and provide a sample list of references. It is also useful to provide a brief
biographical note, indicating any personal involvement in language planning
activities in the polity proposed for study as well as any relevant research/publi-
Series Overview 3
References
Kaplan, R.B. and Baldauf, R.B., Jr. (2003) Language and Language-in-Education Planning in
the Pacific Basin. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Kaplan, R.B. and Baldauf, R.B., Jr. (1997) Language Planning from Practice to Theory.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Pennycook, A. (1998) English and the Discourses of Colonialism. London and New York:
Routledge.
Appendix A
Part I: The Language Profile of ...
(1) Name and briefly describe the national/official language(s) (de jure or de
facto).
(2) Name and describe the major minority language(s).
(3) Name and describe the lessor minority language(s) (include ‘dialects’,
pidgins, creoles and other important aspects of language variation); the
definition of minority language/dialect/pidgin will need to be discussed in
terms of the sociolinguistic context.
(4) Name and describe the major religious language(s); in some polities reli-
gious languages and/or missionary policies have had a major impact on the
language situation and provide de facto language planning. In some contexts
religion has been a vehicle for introducing exogenous languages while in
other cases it has served to promote indigenous languages.
(5) Name and describe the major language(s) of literacy, assuming that it
is/they are not one of those described above.
(6) Provide a table indicating the number of speakers of each of the above
languages, what percentage of the population they constitute and whether
those speakers are largely urban or rural.
(7) Where appropriate, provide a map(s) showing the distribution of speakers,
key cities and other features referenced in the text.
Part II: Language Spread
(8) Specify which languages are taught through the educational system, to
whom they are taught, when they are taught and for how long they are
taught.
(9) Discuss the objectives of language education and the methods of assessment
to determine that the objectives are met.
(10) To the extent possible, trace the historical development of the policies/prac-
tices identified in items 8 and 9 (may be integrated with 8/9).
4 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
(11) Name and discuss the major media language(s) and the distribution of
media by socio-economic class, ethnic group, urban/rural distinction
(including the historical context where possible). For minority language,
note the extent that any literature is (has been) available in the language.
(12) How has immigration effected language distribution and what measures
are in place to cater for learning the national language(s) and/or to support
the use of immigrant languages.
Part III: Language Policy and Planning
(13) Describe any language planning legislation, policy or implementation that
is currently in place.
(14) Describe any literacy planning legislation, policy or implementation that is
currently in place.
(15) To the extent possible, trace the historical development of the policies/prac-
tices identified in items 13 and 14 (may be integrated with these items).
(16) Describe and discuss any language planning agencies/organisations oper-
ating in the polity (both formal and informal).
(17) Describe and discuss any regional/international influences affecting
language planning and policy in the polity (include any external language
promotion efforts).
(18) To the extent possible, trace the historical development of the policies/prac-
tices identified in items 16 and 17 (may be integrated with these items).
Part IV: Language Maintenance and Prospects
(19) Describe and discuss intergenerational transmission of the major
language(s); (is this changing over time?).
(20) Describe and discuss the probabilities of language death among any of the
languages/language varieties in the polity, any language revival efforts as
well as any emerging pidgins or creoles.
(21) Add anything you wish to clarify about the language situation and its prob-
able direction of change over the next generation or two.
(22) Add pertinent references/bibliography and any necessary appendices (e.g.
a general plan of the educational system to clarify the answers to questions
8, 9 and 14).
Language Policy and Planning in
Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique and
South Africa: Some Common Issues
Richard B. Baldauf Jr
Associate Professor, School of Education, University of Queensland, QLD 4072
Australia (rbaldauf@bigpond.com)
Robert B. Kaplan
Professor Emeritus, Applied Linguistics, University of Southern California. Postal
address: PO Box 577, Port Angeles, WA 98362, USA (rkaplan@olypen.com)
Introduction
This volume brings together four language policy and planning studies
related to southern Africa1. (See the ‘Series Overview’ at the start of this volume
for a more general discussion of the nature of the series, Appendix A for the 22
questions each study set out to address, and Kaplan et al. (2000) for a discussion
of our underlying concepts for the studies themselves.) In this paper, rather than
trying to provide an introductory summary of the material covered in these stud-
ies, we will want to draw out and discuss some of the more general issues raised
by these studies.
Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa represent a cluster in
several senses:
• They are geographically proximate roughly along a north–south axis. They
share common borders; that is Malawi shares a border with Mozambique,
and Mozambique and Botswana share a border with South Africa.
• They are members of the Southern African Development Community
(which integrates a total of 14 countries).
• They share a number of African languages among them.
• They share a number of common educational, social and economic
problems.
• Three of them have English as a colonial language; one has Portuguese, but
also uses English as an additional language.
• They all have autochthonous languages, some in common with one
another, which require planning development.
• All are members of the Commonwealth of Nations group.
• All of them have a common concern in terms of languages of religion.
• All of them recognize the existence of a gap between official policy and
actual practice.
There is also a major sociolinguistic and language planning and policy divide
that separates them: South Africa with its greater population and resources, and
the politicalization of language as a marker of ethnicity which began under the
previous apartheid regime, has attracted much more scholarly interest and
hands-on involvement by the government. As a result, there is a much larger
published literature for South Africa than there is for Botswana, Malawi and
Issues of resources
It is important to point out that, in some of the polity studies, so little
sociolinguistic work is actually available, and the economic and social conditions
are such (e.g. the civil wars currently raging or recently concluded in a number of
African polities), that contributors are significantly constrained. In many poli-
ties, Côte d’Ivoire (Djité, 2000) for example, conditions and the state of academic
research (i.e. not only the work published about the polity, but access to journals
and recent books, computer facilities, time to do research, adequate salaries let
alone, funds for travel and research projects, etc.) are such that many of the 22
questions suggested for these studies simply could not be adequately addressed.
Moving from research to practice, it is also a matter of reality that, among the
enormous number of competing demands on governmental coffers, language
policy and planning does not always rank high. In some African states, the costs
(monetary, human, and temporal) of civil war, rapidly varying commodity
prices, human resources shortages, the AIDS epidemic, etc.) are so great that the
relative priority of language planning is necessarily lowered (but, see Kaplan &
Baldauf, 2003, especially Chapter 3 (pp. 31–46), for an example of political will
overriding fiscal constraints). These factors mean that there are constraints on
resources that significantly impact on any notion of an ‘ideal’ monograph that
might be produced.
Framing context
Beyond the 22 questions that authors have been urged to examine, we have
urged each of the contributors to frame their study by taking an ecological stance
(see, e.g. Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997; Mühlhäusler, 2000), but that turned out not to
be entirely satisfactory because each of the contributors is in fact a specialist in the
context of linguistic issues in the polity in which s/he worked; that is, the polity
specialists were not always extensively cognizant of problems occurring across
an ecological perception of language spread, but rather were constrained by the
political boundaries within which they worked. It was, perhaps, unrealistic of us
to expect a wider perception. However, while the ecological stance did not inevi-
tably materialise across political boundaries, there is evidence in the various
8 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
such a selection of contributors will exactly serve our larger intent – to help to
develop a basis for theorising the discipline. The specialists, working from the
inside, know (and do) report on who did what, to whom, when, and for what purpose
in great detail. Given a series of polity monographs such as those presented here,
we continue to believe that the other focus of Current Issues in Language Planning –
the two ‘issues’ numbers each year focusing on topics like language ecology
(CILP, 2000, 1: 3), language revival (CILP, 2001, 2: 2&3), post-colonialism (CILP,
2002, 3: 3), language rights (CILP, 2003, 4: 4) – will serve to bring to bear a leaven-
ing influence on the collected data. These numbers will pay greater attention to
the political and social problems inevitably apparent in the policy studies
themselves.
English
In Malawi, English is the official language; Chichewa in some form (spoken
by about fifty per cent of the population) is the national language, and twelve
other indigenous languages (and their varieties) are spoken. As Kayambazinthu
points out, ‘…language planning practices (past and present) present an interest-
ing case study of pervasive ad hoc and reactive planning, based more on
self-interest and political whim than research.’
In Botswana, English is the ‘officialized’ language together with Setswana
which (in some form) is spoken as a first language by some 80 per cent of the
population. The Constitution is essentially silent on language issues, except that
two sections specifically state that the ability to speak and read English is
required to serve in the House of Chiefs and in the National Assembly. (In 1998,
Setswana was formally authorized to be spoken in the House of Chiefs and in the
National Assembly.) However, Setswana is not so much a language as a
language-complex; the eight ‘major tribes’ use eight mutually-intelligible variet-
ies of Seswana. In addition, there are eleven other tribes that speak varieties close
to Setswana, and eight tribes that speak languages unrelated to Setswana. As
Nyati-Ramahobo notes, ‘There is tension between policy formulation and implemen-
tation, and an imbalance in social justice….While pressure from civil-society has
10 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
Portuguese
In Mozambique, Portuguese is the ‘officialized’ language, mandated in the
Constitution; the remaining twenty languages are all Bantu languages. The
nation is only ten years removed from a devastating 16-year civil war. Its current
language policy (in the 1990 revised Constitution) requires that ‘the state shall
value the national languages and promote their development and their growing
usage as vehicular languages and in the education of citizens.’ Lopes points out
that ‘…the status of Bantu languages [in comparison with Portuguese] and the
present efforts to develop and promote them in society have a long way to go.’ In
sum, there is a substantial gap between official policy and linguistic reality.
Discrepancy analysis
This brief summary distorts the situation because it ignores the effects of the
presence of other languages in each of the polities as well as the ecological issues.
In all of the polities discussed, the role of English needs to be considered; there is
popular pressure to learn it in Mozambique, and a comparable popular pressure
to diminish its influence in Botswana, Malawi and South Africa. In South Africa
and Mozambique, there is a recognized need to consider Asian languages pres-
ent in the immigrant population. And there is a growing need for a pan-African
means of communication for economic and political purposes.
Consequently, a ‘standard’ language constitutes a purely ideological
construct. The existence of such a construct creates the impression that linguistic
unity exists, when reality reflects great linguistic diversity. The notion of the exis-
tence and dispersion of a ‘standard’ variety through a community suggests that
linguistic unity is the societal norm; it also suggests a level of socio-economic and
socio-political unity that in the African states is contrary to the reality of linguistic
diversity (often reflected in socio-economic and political diversity). The (often
legal) obligation to use a codified standard is likely to cause frustration among
minority-language and dialect speakers, since the standardised language is for
them non-dominant; minority-language and dialect speakers probably use a
contact variety, likely to be at considerable variance from the ‘standard’ variety
(e.g. Popular French vs. Standard French in Côte d’Ivoire).
Language-in-education planning efforts in many polities … reflect the
cultural views of the West. These views are collectively known as the
'plumbing' or 'conduit' or 'telegraphic' conception of communication – i.e.,
the translation of messages that exist in the sender's mind into speech
signals (coded in linguistic form) which are converted back into the original
Some Common Issues 11
Conclusions
In sum, while language-in-education planning is widespread across the poli-
ties discussed here, it seems clear:
• That language-in-education policies are rarely anchored in national
language policies;
• that language-in-education policies are frequently ad hoc and sometimes
driven by market forces;
• that language-in-education policies are subject to sudden and radical
changes in direction in accord with unstable political agendas, and
• that the general condition of language-in-education policy is often frag-
mented and frequently simply ineffective – even wasteful of resources.
We hope that this first areal volume will better serve the needs of specialists. It
is our intent to publish other areal volumes subsequently. We will do so in the
hope that such volumes will be of interest to areal scholars and others interested
in language policies and language planning in geographically coherent regions.
(See the Series Overview elsewhere in this volume for more detail on our future
plans.)
Note
1. The studies in this volume were previously published as follows: Botswana Current
Issues in Language Planning (2000) 1, 243–300; Malawi Journal of Multilingual and Multi-
cultural Development (1998) 19, 369–439; Mozambique Journal of Multilingual and
Multicultural Development (1998) 19, 440–486 and South Africa Current Issues in
Language Planning (2001) 2, 361–445. Authors were offered the opportunity to update
their studies – to take into account major changes – with an addendum, but none
thought it necessary to do so.
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the actors? In P.M. Ryan and R. Terborg (eds) Language: Issues of Inequality (pp. 19–40).
12 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
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Blommaert, J. (1999) Language Ideological Debates. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
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Djité, P.G. (2000) Language planning in Côte d’Ivoire. Current Issues in Language Planning
1, 11–46.
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Kaplan, R.B. and Baldauf, Jr., R.B. (1997) Language Planning from Practice to Theory.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Kaplan, R.B. and Baldauf, Jr., R.B. (2003) Language and Language-in-Education Planning in
the Pacific Basin. Dordrecht :Kluwer.
Kaplan, R.B., Baldauf, Jr., R.B., Liddicoat, A.J., Bryant, P., Barbaux, M.-T. and Pütz, M.
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Stroud, C. (2001) Review of R.B. Kaplan and R.B. Baldauf, Jr. (1999) Language Planning in
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Further Reading
Botswana
Arthur, J. (1996) Code switching and collusion: Classroom interaction in Botswana
primary schools. Linguistics and Education: An International Research Journal 8 (1), 17–33.
Arthur, J. (1997) ‘There must be something undiscovered which prevents us from doing
our work well’: Botswana primary teachers’ views on educational language policy.
Language and Education 11, 225–241.
Arthur, J. (2001) Perspectives on educational language policy and its implementation in
African classrooms: A comparative study of Botswana and Tanzania. Compare 31,
347–362.
Batibo, H.M. (1997) Double allegiance between nationalism and Western modernization
in language choice: The case of Botswana and Tanzania. In M. Putz (ed.) Language
Choices: Conditions, Constraints, and Consequences (pp. 195–205). Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Batibo, H.M. and Smieja, B. (eds) (2000) Botswana: The Future of Minority Languages. Peter
Lang.
Beitz, S. and Vossen, R. (1994) A trilingual model as an answer to educational problems?
In search for adequate media of instruction for the pupils of Botswana. Frankfurter
Afrikanistische Blatter 6, 1–8.
Herbert, R.K. (1999) Review of L.-G. Andersson and T. Janson (eds) (1997) Languages in
Botswana: Language Ecology in Southern Africa. Anthropological Linguistics 41, 561–563.
Maruatona, T.L. (2002) A critique of centralized curricula in literacy programs: The case of
Botswana. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy 45, 736–745.
Mpofu, S.T. and Youngman, F. (2001) The dominant tradition in adult literacy – A
Some Common Issues 13
Malawi
Chimombo, M. (1994) The language of politics in Malawi: Influences on the Chichewa
vocabulary of democracy. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere [African Studies Working
Papers] 38(June), 197–208.
Chimombo, S. and Chimombo, M. (1996) The Culture of Democracy: Language, Literature, the
Arts and Politics in Malawi, 1992–1994. Zomba, Malawi: WASI Publications.
Kamwendo, G.H. (1997a) Language policy in Malawi. Zimbabwe Journal of Educational
Research 9(2), 203–215.
Kamwendo, G.H. (1997b) Language rights in the dictatorship: The case of Malawi during
Dr Banda’s rule. Language Matters 28, 36–50.
Kishindo, P.J. (1996) Dr H. Kamuzu Banda’s language policy: A study in contradictions.
Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere [African Studies Working Papers] 48(Dec), 55–79.
Kishindo, P.J. (1998) On the standardization of Citumbuka and Ciyao orthographies:
Some observations. South African Journal of African Languages 18 (4), 85–91.
Matiki, A.J. (2001) The social significance of English in Malawi. World Englishes 20 (2),
201–218.
Schmied, J. (1996) English in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. In V. de Klerk (ed.) Focus on
South Africa (pp. 301–321). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Williams, E. (1996) Reading in two languages at year five in African primary schools.
Applied Linguistics 17, 182–209.
Mozambique
Alves, J. and Hoisnard, J.Y. (1997) Mozambique: French in full renaissance. [Mozambique:
Le francais en pleine renaissance]. Diagonales 41(Feb), 41–44.
Cahen, M. (1990) Mozambique: An African nation with Portuguese as an official
language? [Le Mozambique: une nation africaine de langue officielle portugaise?]
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Faulstich, E. (1995) Toward language planning of Portuguese: Portugal, Brazil, and
Africa: Some reflections. [Vers la planification linguistique du portugais: Portugal,
Bresil, Afrique, quelques reflexions.] Terminologies Nouvelles [New
Terminologies]14(Dec), 66–76.
Firmino, G.D. (1996) Revisiting the ‘language question’ in postcolonial Africa: The case of
Portuguese and indigenous languages in Mozambique. Dissertation Abstracts
International 57(3), 1199A.
Garcez, P.M. (1995) The debatable 1990 Luso-Brazilian orthographic accord. Language
Problems & Language Planning 19, 151–178.
Lopes, A.J. (2001) Language revitalisation and reversal in Mozambique: The case of
Xironga in Maputo. Current Issues in Language Planning 2, 259–267.
Lopes, A.J., Sitoe, S.J. and Nhamuende, P. J. (2002) Moçambicanismos para um Léxico de Usos
do Português Moçambicano. [Mozambicanisms in the use vocabulary of Mozambican
Portuguese]. Maputo, Mozambique: Livraria Universitária, Universadade Eduardo
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Louzada, N.C.M. (1987) Mocambique: O portugues como segunda lingua no sistema
14 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
nacional de educacao [Mozambique: Portuguese as a Second Language in the National
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Matsinhe, S.F. (1993) The use of African languages as medium of instruction in
Mozambique: Problems and possibilities. South African Journal of African
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Ngunga, A. (1999) Literacy campaigns in Mozambique: Why did they fail? Language
Matters 30, 147–156.
Passanisi, D.J. and Wolf, W.C., Jr. (1991) The social and political consequences of language
planning in Mozambique. Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 13 (1), 17–35.
Rothwell, P. (2001) The phylomorphic linguistic tradition: Or, the siege of (the)
Portuguese in Mozambique. Hispanic Research Journal 2 (2), 165–176.
Schmitz, J.R. (1998) Orthographic reform, planning, and linguistic diffusion: The example
of Portuguese. [Reforma ortografica, planejamento e difusao linguistica: o caso da
lingua portuguesa]. Language Problems & Language Planning 22, 254–266.
Stroud, C. (1999) Portuguese as ideology and politics in Mozambique: Semiotic
(re)constructions of a postcolony. In J. Blommaert (ed.) Language Ideological Debates (pp.
343–380). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
South Africa
Alexander, N. (1992) Language planning from below. In R. Herbert (ed.) Language and
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Witwatersrand University Press.
Alexander, N. (1995) Nation building and language in the new South Africa. In M. Pütz
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Banda, F. (2000) The dilemma of the mother tongue: Prospects for bilingual education in
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Barkhuizen, G.P. (2002) Language-in-education policy: Students’ perceptions of the
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Bernsten, J. (2001) English in South Africa: Expansion and nativization in concert.
Language Problems and Language Planning 25, 219–235.
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Some Common Issues 15
Implications for access and equity. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development
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Chick, K. and McKay, S. (2001) Teaching English in multiethnic schools in the Durban
area: The promotion of multilingualism or monolingualism? Southern African
Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 19 (3–4), 163–178.
Coetzee, A.E. (1993) The maintenance of Afrikaans in a New South Africa. AILA Review 10,
37–51.
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Some Common Issues 17
Lydia Nyati-Ramahobo
Faculty of Education, University of Botswana, Private Bag 0022, Gaborone,
Botswana
Introduction
The monograph has elements of a descriptive study and a case study, in that it
describes the language situation in Botswana. Specifically, it describes the
language profile of Botswana, the spread of Setswana, language planning and
policy activities and both formal and informal efforts to promote and preserve
the languages of the country. Data utilised for this work were collected from
January 1989 to September 1990. This data collection process covered language
planning activities since independence, mainly in the period between 1977 to
1990, when government was in the process of implementing the recommenda-
tions of the first National Commission on Education (NCE 1). The Commission
had reviewed the education system from independence until 1976. It completed
its work in 1977 and its recommendations, contained in the Government White
Paper No.1 of 1977: National Policy on Education, were endorsed by Parliament in
August of the same year (Republic of Botswana, 1977). Data for this monograph
were further updated between June 1996 and May 1998. This was after the
completion of the work of the Second National Commission on Education (NCE
2). This Commission reviewed the education system between 1978 and 1991. The
subsequent endorsement of its recommendations, contained in the Government
White Paper No.2 of 1994: The Revised National Policy on Education (RNPE), came
out in 1994 (Republic of Botswana, 1994). These two documents provide
language policy directions as part of the overall education policy. The study also
has utilised data that were collected for the Directory of Language Bodies in Eastern
and Southern Africa coordinated by Kamanakao Association on behalf of the
International Development Research Center, Nairobi office, from January to
21
Background
Botswana is situated in the centre of Southern Africa. It shares borders with
Zimbabwe, to the east, Namibia to the west and part of the north, South Africa to
the south and Zambia to the north (Map 1). It is landlocked and most of its goods
come through South African seaports. It straddles the Tropic of Capricorn in the
Southern African plateau (Republic of Botswana, 1997: 8:3). Botswana is about
1000 m above sea level and the land area is 582,000 km2 (222,000 sq. miles), about
the size of Kenya or France.
Most of Botswana is flat with a few rocky outcrops and undulations (Republic
of Botswana, 1997: 8:3). In the north-west district is the Okavango Delta, an area of
wetlands measuring 16,000 km2 (6106 sq. miles) (Tlou, 1985), with a variety of
wildlife and birds. To the west is the Kalahari desert also blessed with wildlife. In
the central part of the country are the Makgadikgadi saltpans. All of these areas
attract tourists. The climate is often described as arid or semi-arid as the country is
situated close to the high-pressure belt of the southern hemisphere. The mini-
mum rainfall ranges between 250 mm in the south-west and 650 mm in the
north-east. Most rains come between December and March. There are mainly
two seasons: winter (May to July) and summer (August to April). Minimum
temperatures range between 33 degrees Celsius in January and 22 degrees in July
(96–74º F). Maximum temperatures range between 43 degrees and 32 degrees
Celsius (116–74º F).
Botswana’s economy is largely supported by the mining industry. At inde-
pendence, Botswana was considered one of the poorest countries of the world.
However, in 1967, diamonds were discovered at Orapa, one of the largest known
kimberlites in the world, and later at Letlhakane and Jwaneng. Copper and
nickel were also discovered at Selibe-Phikwe. Currently Botswana has three
diamond mines, two copper and nickel smelters, a coal mine, soda ash and a salt
extraction plant. Mining has transformed the economy to one of the fastest grow-
ing in Africa. Available data indicates that in 1994/95 mineral resources contrib-
uted 34% of the gross domestic product (GDP) and 74. 9% of the country’s export
earnings. It also contributed over 50% of government revenues (Republic of
Botswana, 1997). The beef industry has contributed to the economy as well. For
The Language Situation in Botswana 23
Map 1 Botswana’s location in Southern Africa and other features (Wayeyi areas,
mining towns)
instance, in 1994/95, it contributed 3.7% of the GDP, a decline from the record
40% before the mining era. Most of the beef is sold to the European Union. The
population of Botswana remains rural and a large part of it depends on agricul-
ture for its living, mainly subsistence farming, crop production and cattle rear-
ing. Agriculture also contributes about two per cent of formal employment.
Other sources of revenue are manufacturing, tourism, transport and construc-
tion. There are efforts to diversify the economy to reduce dependency on
diamonds. These efforts include encouraging foreign investments in areas such
as manufacturing and tourism.
Before the advent of the British to Botswana, the system of governance was
through chieftainship. Each tribe had a chief with absolute powers (Somolekae &
Lekorwe, 1998). Some tribes, which lived in smaller groups, would have a leader
for each group with absolute powers, whom they would refer to as chief or elder.
Chieftainship is hereditary from the male line in most Setswana speaking tribes.
The chief’s eldest son would inherit the position. In matrilineal tribes, such as the
24 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
Wayeyi, chieftainship was hereditary from the female line. In other words, the
chieftainship would pass to the chief’s sister’s eldest son. Chiefs command a lot
of respect amongst their people and other tribes. A chief had responsibilities for
his people as well. He had to protect his people from war, hunger and other natu-
ral disasters. He was to perform ceremonies to launch the hunting and the
ploughing seasons. He was a medicine man who would perform certain reli-
gious practices for his people to protect them from disease and mishap. He
would also marry people, distribute land, and mediate disputes (Mgadla &
Campbell, 1989; Mgadla, 1998). Naturally, a chief would have assistants in the
form of sub-chiefs. In most cases, these would be close relatives. He would also
have his mophato (a team of his age peers). The chief had to be generous, sensitive
to the rule of law and had to live up to the expectations of his people. The expres-
sion kgosi ke kgosi ka batho (a chief is only a chief because of his people) was the
fundamental principle. Without the support of his people, he was nothing, and
so it was critical for him not to abuse his powers.
In January 1885, the British enforced an Order in Council that declared their
intention to occupy southern Botswana. In 1890, this order was extended to the
northern part of the country, and actual colonial rule began. The motive behind
the order was to keep the Germans from occupying the area as had already
occurred in South-West Africa in 1884 (Ramsay, 1998). Through this order, Brit-
ain informed Botswana chiefs that the British were coming to protect them from
the Germans. This meant that the protectorate was actually imposed on the
chiefs; it was not requested as has been stated in some historical accounts
(Ramsay, 1998). Three of the chiefs were summoned to England for consultations
on the acceptance of the protectorate. These were Kgosi (Chief) Khama III of the
Bamangwato tribe in the Central District, Chief Gaseitsiwe I of the Bangwaketse
tribe in the south-western part of the country and Chief Sechele I of the Bakwena
tribe. While Khama III embraced the idea, the others accepted it with some
degree of reluctance (Ramsay, 1998). During the period between 1885 and 1965
the country was known as the Bechuanaland Protectorate. The British divided it
into nine reserves each led by its chief. While traditionally the chiefs had had
complete legislative, executive and judicial powers, the Order in Council of 1890
transferred those powers to the British High Commissioner. The chiefs were no
longer recognised as the ‘sovereigns of the soil’. Land concessions were awarded
to the British South African Company, which came in and forced out other
companies. Queen Victoria was regarded as the ‘sovereign of the soil’.
Another Order in Council of 1891 gave more legislative powers to the High
Commissioner to enact laws for the administration of justice. However, he was
cautioned to be sensitive to native laws as long as they were not in conflict with
the interests of the British. In 1895, the three chiefs previously mentioned sent a
petition to London, resisting the erosion of their powers on their own lands, but
this was ignored. By this time, their role had been reduced to the collection of a
hut tax to raise funds for the running of the colony. In 1934 the most direct piece
of legislation, the Native Administration Proclamation, was introduced; it
reduced the powers of chiefs and changed Tswana custom and law. It required
the chief’s successor to be appointed by the whole tribe and to be recognised by
the High Commissioner (Somolekae & Lekorwe, 1998). This eroded the heredi-
tary aspect of chieftainship and subjected the appointment of the chief to the
The Language Situation in Botswana 25
THE
CONSTITUTION
H.E.
The President Court of
National H.E. The Appeal
Assembly President
House of
Chiefs VP Magistrates
Courts
Permanent Secretary
to the President
Ministries
approval of the High Commissioner. It enabled the British to select chiefs who
were sympathetic to their interests and not necessarily to those of their people.
Consequently, the High Commissioner could hire and fire chiefs. The Native
Tribunal Proclamation No. 75 of 1934 further eroded the legislative and judicial
powers of chiefs. Chiefs’ responsibility to hear cases of rape, murder and homi-
cide was removed. These powers were maintained after independence and the
essence of all these pieces of legislation are still alive within the current regula-
tions. Chiefs and sub-chiefs are employees of the Ministry of Local Government
which has the power to dismiss them.
The constitution of Botswana provides every citizen with fundamental rights
and freedoms. It is based on the four national principles of democracy, unity,
development, and self-reliance. Elections are held every five years. It provides
for the legislative, executive and judicial structure (Figure 1). The legislative
25
26 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
Setswana are spoken that do not fall under any of the eight Paramount Chiefs;
these include the North-east, Kgalagadi, Gantsi and Chobe districts (Map 2).
Those tribes in the North-west, including the Hambukushu, Herero, Subia,
Wayeyi, Baciriku (Baqcereku), and Basarwa are represented and ruled by the
Batawana and are regarded as such (Map 2). The House elects three additional
members by special election. Tribes, whose members do not speak Setswana as
mother tongue, are not allowed to be represented by their Paramount Chiefs.
They have to be represented by someone who speaks Setswana as a first
language. This is an attempt to assimilate everyone into the Setswana language
and culture.
The House of Chiefs is highly symbolic, as its role is to express the total culture
of the country and to influence policy from a cultural point of view. The current
composition of the House has been challenged since independence as it denies
other ethnic groups the opportunity to contribute to the decision-making
process. Furthermore, it violates the democratic principle of representation. The
continued imposition of chiefs and sub-chiefs from one tribe on another has been
a matter of contention since independence. In some areas of the country, even for
some of the eight so-called major tribes, tribe members are ruled by others. This
has provoked some resistance; for example, the Bakgatla living in the Bakwena
area are resisting the Bakwena rule and the Barolong in the Bangwaketsi area are
also resisting Bangwaketsi rule. Many observers have called for an increase in the
numbers in the House of Chiefs to make it more inclusive (Molutsi, 1998a).
The issue of chieftainship has also been highly politicised. Since most people
in the country still hold their chiefs in respect, they tend to vote for the party to
which their chief is sympathetic. As chiefs are government employees, they natu-
rally pay allegiance to the government. This is one of the factors that has led
Botswana to be described as a one party state (Molutsi, 1994). Under these
circumstances, there is little prospect for other parties to gain widespread
support. As long as people respect their chiefs as the custodians of their cultures,
and as long as the ruling party ensures the loyalty of all civil servants, the status
quo is likely to remain (Molutsi, 1998b). Chiefs who have not showed sympathy
for the ruling party have been intimidated. For instance, the paramount chief of
the Bangwaketsi, Chief Seepapitso IV, has been a supporter of the opposition
Botswana National Front (BNF), and that area supports the BNF. Having
supported the opposition for a long time, the Minister for Local Government
suspended him in 1994 (Somolekae & Lekorwe, 1998). It was only after a court
battle that he was returned to a position of power.
As chieftainship is related to ethnicity and language, it is against the above
background that government continues to promote an assimilationist policy. If
everyone were Tswana speaking, then everybody would be loyal to the ruling
party, as long as it is led by a Mongwato (Table 1, see Note 1). After the death of
Seretse Khama, the first president of Botswana, who was the chief of the
Bamangwato tribe, President Masire who is a Mongwaketsi had to appease the
Bamangwato by appointing Seretse’s cousin, Lenyeletsi Seretse to the Vice-Presi-
dency. Equally, in 1999 President Mogae had to appease the Bamangwato by
appointing Seretse Khama’s son, Ian Khama to the Vice-Presidency. Ian Khama
was also expected to use his chieftainship to the Bamangwato throne and his
father’s charisma to win the elections for the ruling party, which had lost face in
28 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
the 1994 general elections. Issues of ethnicity, language and chieftainship will
continue to dominate the political debate in the country. The modernist
assimilationist model enshrined within Sections 77 to 79 of the constitution, the
Chieftainship Act and the Tribal Land Territories Act fosters their continued
prominence.
The legislative wing of government is therefore made up of the National
Assembly and the House of Chiefs (Figure 1). There is also the Speaker of the
National Assembly who is elected by the assembly. The Attorney General is also
selected from the National Assembly to advise Parliament on legal matters.
The second wing of the Government is the Executive. It is made up of the Pres-
ident and his cabinet ministers and the Permanent Secretary to the President who
is in charge of the civil service. Finally, there is the Judiciary, which includes the
Court of Appeal, the High Court, the Magistrate Courts and the Administrator of
Justice (Figure 1).
Theoretical Framework
Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson (1989) describe language rights as existing on a
continuum from assimilation to maintenance. On this continuum, there are laws
and regulations, which may prohibit, tolerate, prescribe non-discrimination,
permit or promote the use of minority languages, either overtly or covertly. They
give the United States as an example of a covert assimilation-prohibition situa-
tion based on Senator Huddleston’s draft English language amendment which
reads ‘The English language shall be the official language of the United States’
(Skutnabb-Kangas, 1990: 27). This proposed legislation was meant to assimilate
all other groups to English and prohibit them from using their own languages.
Other languages are not mentioned and that means that they are indirectly or
covertly prohibited.2
An assimilation-tolerance model exists when the law prescribes one language
but provides room for other languages without any commitment to them. An
example of this model is Zimbabwe where minority languages such as Karanga
are used on the radio without any commitment to their development for use in
other social domains. An example of a maintenance-permission continuum on
the other hand, is South Africa. The Freedom Charter of 1955, also upheld in the
current legislation, stated that ‘All people shall have equal rights to use their own
languages, and to develop their own folk culture and customs’. The intention is
to maintain as many languages as possible, hence permitting their development.
In the discussion in Part III of this monograph, I note that the constitution of
Botswana is silent on language policy. However, Sections 61(d) and 79(c) of the
constitution state that the ability to speak and read English are requirements for
one to be a member of the House of Chiefs or the National Assembly. This indicates
that English is the only language that is permitted for use in Parliament and the
House of Chiefs. The constitution therefore covertly prohibits the use of other
languages. In 1998, Setswana was permitted to be used in Parliament; this was a
The Language Situation in Botswana 29
English to any other language in the country. Setswana is the main language of
Botswana. Some scholars estimate that it is spoken by about 80% of the popula-
tion as a first language (Obondo-Okoyo & Sabone, 1986, also refer to Map 1).
Others maintain that, taken individually, most Tswana speaking tribes are
minorities in Botswana, while collectively they may or may not form a majority
over non-Tswana tribes taken together (Mpho, 1987). For instance, Parsons
(1985: 27) maintains that the concept of
Tswanadom that is both philosophical and territorial has led many observ-
ers to assume that Botswana is a mono-ethnic state . . . [but] only in so far as
the Tswana minority has successfully imposed its culture on the majority
population of the extreme diverse origins…[and even then] ethnic identi-
ties have not disappeared.
However, because of this imposition, speakers of the eight dialects, which make
up the Setswana language, are regarded as the majority tribes in the country. The
Chieftainship Act, Cap.41: 01 (Republic of Botswana, 1965) states that ‘tribe
means, the Bamangwato Tribe, the Batawana Tribe, the Bakgatla Tribe, the
Bakwena Tribe, the Bangwaketse Tribe, the Bamalete Tribe, the Barolong Tribe
and the Batlokwa Tribe’ (41:3) (refer to Table 1, Category one). The Tribal Terri-
tories Act (Cap.32: 03 (Republic of Botswana, 1965) also defines tribal territory
with respect to these tribes meaning that only those tribes are sovereigns of the
land. Most of these tribes originated from South Africa during the Difaqane wars
in the 1820s and 1830s (Tlou & Campbell, 1984: 101; Ncqocqo, 1979; Ramsay et al.,
1996: 61). The Bakwena, Bangwato and Bangwaketsi are the descendants of
Malope (Tlou, 1998), which in the 1800s became separate tribes by the Difaqane
wars. Currently, the Bangwaketsi live in the south-western part of Botswana
while the Bangwato (or the Bamangwato) live in the central and the Bakwena in
the southern part (Map 2). About 10% of the population now speak Setswana as a
second language (Obondo-Okoyo & Sabone, 1986).
Other tribes speak languages that are regarded as sub-dialects of Setswana.
However, the speakers regard themselves as autonomous tribes. These are the
Babirwa, Batswapong, Bahurutshe, Bakhurutshe and Bapedi. Most of these
tribes also originated from South Africa and live on the eastern border of
Botswana with South Africa. By 1800, the Bapedi had settled throughout the
Central District, and in 1913 the Bakhurutshe moved to the interior of the Central
District (Ramsay et al., 1996: 15). The Bahurutshe live in the Kweneng District
closer to the Southern border of the two countries (Table 1, Category 2 and 3).
Other language groups include Bakalaka, Basarwa, Wayeyi, Hambukushu,
Baherero, Basubiya, Baciriku, Bakgalagadi, Bakgothu, Bashaga and Banabjwa
(Map 2, also Table 1, Category 3). It is estimated that these groups make up about
15 to 20% of the population (Obondo-Okoyo & Sabone, 1986; Janson & Tsonope,
1991: 86–7). They speak different languages that are neither related to Setswana
nor mutually intelligible. The Basarwa group is made up of about seventeen San
ethnic groups who speak different languages (Appendix 1).
All the tribes described in the previous paragraph are regarded as minority
tribes. The terms minority and majority have, by definition, no numerical signifi-
cance in Botswana. What determines whether a tribe is major or minor is whether
it belongs to one of the eight Setswana tribes and speak one of the eight Setswana
32 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
dialects. For instance, the Bakalaka are believed to be the largest tribe in the
Central District, and yet they are regarded as a minority tribe because they speak
Ikalanga, which is not related to Setswana. The Wayeyi constitute about 40% of
the population of the Ngamiland district (Anderson & Janson, 1997; also refer to
Kamanakao web-site in the reference section). By contrast, the Batawana consti-
tute one per cent of the population and yet the former are regarded as a minority
tribe and the latter as a majority tribe. The Batawana rule over the Wayeyi, and
the Batawana Paramount Chief represents the Wayeyi in the House of Chiefs.
The government does not recognise the Wayeyi Paramount Chief and this matter
is presently before the High Court. The Balete and Batlokwa have small popula-
tions occupying one village, and yet they are regarded as majority tribes and are
represented by their Paramount Chiefs in the House of Chiefs.
The general pattern is that Setswana speaking groups rule over all the
non-Setswana tribes. The village capital of the major tribe is the capital of all the
other tribes nearest to it. It is the place where government services are provided
irrespective of the distance to be travelled. This is the way in which linguistic
imperialism has penetrated the social and economic lives of those tribes which
do not speak Setswana as a first language. In all national events, the major culture
portrayed is that of the eight major tribes. Minority languages and cultures are
suppressed and their use in public domains is discouraged. These policies are
meant to foster national unity and a national cultural identity. They are congru-
ent with an assimilationist model and are underpinned by an orientation that
views linguistic and cultural diversity as a problem and a threat to national unity.
Language of religion
Amanze (1998: 1) maintains that ‘traditional religion is a living faith among
Batswana today’. This is so because ‘they have revived and continued to observe
a great number of their religious beliefs and practices some of which were
attacked by the early missionaries as evil and detrimental to the spiritual life of
Batswana’. He further observes that people in Africa are ‘born, live and die in
their traditional religions’ (1998: 2). A recent newspaper report has indicated
most Batswana, including the highly educated, still rely on traditional medi-
cine (The Voice, Friday, 21 May 1998). Traditional medicine is closely related to
traditional religion. It is this religion that protects the people from witchcraft,
sorcery, drought, uncertainty, disease, misfortune and other physical, spiri-
tual, economic and social phenomena (Amanze, 1998: 3).
Like most Africans, Batswana believe in one supreme being (Modimo in
Setswana, Urezha in Shiyeyi (Tlou, 1985), or Nyambe in Thimbukushu or Nzimu in
Ikalanga. For all ethnic groups in Botswana this one God is always described in
anthropomorphic terms. He can see, hear, get angry, forgive, answer and so on.
This is reflected in given names of people such as Oarabile (He has answered).
They also believe in ancestral spirits (Badimo) in Setswana, or Wazumu in Shiyeyi.
The dead are considered to continue to exist in a spiritual form, and they serve as
the mediator between the living and God. The spirits can also neglect or punish
the living; they can forgive, protect and come closer to them in times of need.
When they are angry they may bring disease, misfortune, or death. Certain prac-
tices need to be followed to make them happy. These practices have stood the test
of time and people in towns go to villages on weekends to perform such rites.
The Language Situation in Botswana 33
This phenomenon has maintained a strong bond between the working class in
towns and their traditional villages. While some practices such as initiation cere-
monies have ceased, those practices related to health and fortune continue
despite attempts by the missionaries to abolish them. Some of the practices
include birth rites to protect the child from disease and bad spirits and marriage
rites to ensure that the couples do not divorce.
The priesthood in the African religion includes diviners, medicine men and
rainmakers. Chiefs also hold religious powers. During colonial rule, the British
overtly banned some religious practices. They felt that practices such as bogwera
(male initiation) took a lot of the chiefs’ time from their work for the colony. For
instance, in 1931 Kgosi Sebele II of the Bakwena tribe, a traditionalist, wanted to
follow the bogwera which one was required in order to be a chief or a respected
male adult (Ramsay, 1987). The British collaborated with his relatives who were
against his policy of promoting commoners to chieftainship duties. They used
their complaints to make Sebele II a political prisoner. The real reason was that he
insisted on practising bogwera. Currently, only the Kgosi Linchwe II Kgafela of
the Bakgatla still practises bogwera. As chiefs are now elected and not necessarily
born into ruling positions, their religious powers have been reduced. They act
only as clients to medicine men who strengthen them and protect them from evil
and opposition. In 1998 the Wayeyi informed Kgosi Tawana that they would like
to have their own chief. He said in a kgotla3 meeting ‘I am not afraid that you will
take my chair [meaning chieftainship seat] because I have put some powerful
charms under it and no one can take it away’ (Davies, 1998). It was not Kgosi
Tawana but the medicine men who provided the charms, and that was under-
stood by the Wayeyi. Chiefs no longer have powers to bring rain and provide
good harvest for their people. They have lost their religious powers.
Missionaries from the London Missionary Society (LMS) came to Bechuana-
land (Botswana) in the first half of the 18th century to spread Christianity. The
missionaries’ first task was to convert each of the Paramount Chiefs of the eight
major tribes to Christianity. This practice resulted in the LMS playing a major
role in the development of Setswana both in Botswana and in South Africa. It was
the first language south of Ethiopia to have a translation of the Bible, a task that
was completed by the 1850s (Parsons, 1998). The LMS built three senior second-
ary schools in Botswana that still operate today: Moeding and Moeng Colleges
and Maun Secondary School. They also built hospitals, which continue to
provide medical care. During this period the use of Setswana in religion was
obvious, as morning prayers in schools and hospitals were conducted in
Setswana. When deacons and other church leaders visited hospitals to pray for
the sick, the services were conducted in Setswana. After independence, morning
prayers in schools began to be conducted in English. Christianity has therefore
played a major role in the promotion of Setswana and English in the church and
in the exclusion of other languages in accordance with the assimilationist model.
Chiefs were often tutored by missionaries or local priests who were trained by
and worked for missionaries. For instance, Kgosi Seepapitso II of the Bang-
waketsi was tutored as a child by Moruti (Preacher) Mothowagae Motlogelwa of
the LMS and later went to Lovedale Institute, a missionary school in South
Africa. Religion therefore played a significant role, not only in building schools
but also in schooling the chiefs and teaching them English. This was helpful in
34 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
maintaining traditional ways, as some dikgosi (chiefs) like Seepapitso used their
education to resist some of the changes the British wanted to implement. Like
Sebele, he was a traditionalist who believed in Christianity without abandoning
Tswana law and custom (Ramsay, 1987). He spoke English very well and conse-
quently was able to put his point of view to the British. As he himself was fluent
in English, he did not oppose its use in the church along with translations into
Setswana.
While the majority of the people in Botswana believe in their ancestral sprits,
Christianity is the official religion in the country. About 176 Christian denomina-
tions are represented in Botswana (Amanze, 1994). Other religions such as Bahai,
Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism are also present (Table 3).
Amongst the Christian churches there are three types (Amanze, 1998: ix): the
mission churches (30.5%), which came because of missionary work in Africa, the
Pentecostal churches (6.58%) and independent churches (64.93%), mainly of
African or specifically Tswana origin (Sic, percentages add to more than 100% in
the original). The latter are mostly a blend of Western and African philosophies
of religion. The independent churches have upheld the African religions and
traditions. Within the mission churches, the largest is the Roman Catholic
Church with 47,000 members followed by the Lutheran church with 24,000
members (Amanze, 1994). A denominational classification of Christian churches
in Botswana includes: Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican,
Congregational, Methodist, Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist, Pentecostal and
Independent churches (Amanze, 1999). Their approaches to religion include
the apostolic, the prophetic, the evangelical and the spiritual. While traditional
religious acts such as drinking, concubinage, pre-marital sex, polygamy, and
smoking were not banned, most churches, including independent churches,
discourage such practices, of course with varying degrees of success. The meth-
ods of worship, more especially in independent churches, have blended both
Western and African styles. Dress is formal as it is in the West but the proceed-
ings include African styles such as hand clapping, drumming, dancing and the
use of African music.
Religion has increased the use of Setswana and English. A study conducted by
Nyati-Ramahobo (1991) concluded that most churches use English and Sets-
wana, with the former playing a major role in the proceedings of the church. For
instance, in the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa (UCCSA), the
main message of the sermon is delivered in English with translations into
The Language Situation in Botswana 35
only major villages were included. The census for 1946 may have been done
during the ploughing season when most people were away in the fields. Another
possible explanation for the decrease between 1936 and 1946 was that the count
was conducted at the height of the conflict between the Bayei (Wayeyi) and
Batawana, just before the 1948 court case. During that period most minority
groups were intimidated and were forced to identify themselves as the
Batawana. This seems to make sense in that the Batawana population was seen to
have increased but others (like BaYei, Hambukushu and BaKgalagadi) had
decreased.
Mpho (1987) presents figures for the 1946 census in the Central District (see
Table 5). The Kalanga were the most numerous in this reserve, and yet at inde-
pendence they were declared a minority and their language was banned from
use in school since it was not Setswana, and recognising it would not promote the
concept of Tswanadom.
Table 6 provides post-independence figures along with the most recent esti-
mates by scholars. The compilation in Batibo et al. (1997) has relied on Anderson
and Janson’s estimates. The figures for Wayeyi could be higher due to denial of
Shiyeyi identity by many Wayeyi at that time. In fact Anderson & Janson (1997:
73) estimate that the Wayeyi could be between 28,000 and 37,000. While the
denial syndrome is not exclusive to the Wayeyi, the Batawana more extensively
subjected them to slavery than any other tribe. Most of them have become assimi-
lated and cannot speak Shiyeyi, while others speak it but do not admit that they
do due to the low status of the language through its association with slavery.
However, things may have changed slightly since 1995, after the formation of the
Kamanakao Association (see Part IV). The figures for the BaHerero could be
much lower. They immigrated to Botswana in 1904/05 (Anderson & Janson,
The Language Situation in Botswana 37
Table 5 Population of the Bamangwato Reserve (now Central District, see Map 1)
Group Population
Bakalaka 22,777
spalphaBamangwato 20,159
Batswapong 11,237
Babirwa 9,636
San 9,567
Bakhurutshe 5,441
Bakgalagadi 3,963
Batalaote 3,538
Bakaa 3,055
Bapedi 2,572
Baphaleng 2,409
OvaHerero 1,013
Balozi 1,006
Bakwena 892
Baseleka 889
Banajwa 844
Bayei/Wayeyi/Bayeyi 724
*Batswana refers to the eight dialects spoken by the eight so-called major tribes. There
have been no data on the numbers for each of these tribes for the past 63 years.
From 1977 to 1992, the Ministry of Education (Figure 2) tried to implement the
recommendations of the first National Commission on Education and deliver
education for social justice. In 1992, the second President, Sir Ketumile Masire,
appointed the second National Commission on Education (NCE 2), to reassess
the entire system and indicate its strengths and weaknesses with a view to forg-
ing a way forward into the next millennium. This thrust developed in light of the
fact that there had been many societal, economic, political and cultural changes
since 1977. Mr Ponatshego H. Kedikilwe, then Minister of Presidential Affairs
and Public Administration, chaired this Commission. He was the Minister of
Education, and many people thought that he had the opportunity to implement
his own recommendations. However, he later resigned his cabinet post. The
Commission started its work in April 1992 and completed it in 1994. It identifies
key areas where improvements had taken place since the last Commission and
areas that needed attention within the system. The following improvements
were reported to have taken place:
enrolments had continued to expand (Table 8);
the Department of Curriculum Development and Evaluation had been
established, and the curriculum was generally sensitive to the philosophy
of Kagisano;
there were great improvements in the curriculum and new teaching meth-
ods and approaches had been put in place to facilitate learning;
universal access to primary education had been achieved and there was
greater access to junior secondary education (Figure 3);
the Department of Primary Education had been established at the Univer-
sity of Botswana in 1981 to train teachers to diploma level and education
officers to degree level. Thus there was a steady decrease in the number of
untrained teachers from 38.6% in 1978 to 13.3% in 1991.
The following areas still remained problematic:
The Language Situation in Botswana 41
Other
Ministries
Permanent University of
Secretary Botswana
External
Agencies
Coordinator
of RNPE*
MLGH
DEPARTMENTS DEPARTMENTS
access to senior secondary education was still a problem (NCE 2, 1993: 148);
there was still need for equity in the provision of education between rural
and urban areas;
there was still an imbalance in the provision of education between second-
ary and primary education. Primary school teachers still had no housing,
the schools were not electrified and there was still a shortage of classrooms.
These problems still persist today. There are still large numbers of
untrained teachers found in primary schools.
The Commission then made recommendations in four major areas:
(1) Equity: Not only was equity necessary between rural and urban areas, and
between primary and secondary education, but also for children with
special abilities or disabilities in and out of school education, and by gender.
42 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
Age Level
22
21
Tertiary
of Work
World
Tertiary
20 Institutions
19
Distance
Vocational
18
Training
Education
and
17
Senior Secondary Part-Time
Form 4–5 (2 Years) Study
16
Secondary
15
Junior Secondary School
14
Form 1–3 (3 Years)
13
12
11
10
Primary
Primary School Adult Basic Education
9 Standard 1–7 (National Literacy
(7 Years) Programme)
8
5 Pre-School Early
Currently not in Place Childhood
4 (only run by NGOs) Education
It noted the high access rate to primary education by girls, but their high
drop-out rate at junior and senior secondary level. It further noted the
under-representation of females in science-related areas at tertiary level.
Some of the recommendations in this area, including the use of mother
tongue at pre-school level and upon demand at primary level, were rejected
by Parliament, and hence are not contained in Appendix 2.
(2) Quality: Academic achievement at primary school was still very low, with a
slight improvement at secondary level over the years. The Commission
further recommended that the education system should now address qual-
ity issues and reintroduce the 7:3:2:4 system. The development of the teach-
The Language Situation in Botswana 43
ing profession has been identified as the main strategy for addressing the
quality of education as teachers have the greatest impact on performance.
This development should include enhancing the status of teachers, provid-
ing better working conditions and incentives and improving teacher-train-
ing programmes.
(3) School management: The Commission noted that poorly managed schools
performed poorly, and recommended measures to address this matter. For
instance, the role of head teachers was to be clearly defined as instructional
leaders and the appropriate training was to be provided.
(4) Finance: The Commission noted that the education system required cost
recovery and effective financing systems. The development of educational
managers and review of the delivery system are critical to improving
education.
A total of 134 recommendations were made and those which were accepted are
contained the Government White Paper No. 2 called the Revised National Policy
on Education (RNPE) passed by the National Assembly in April 1994. Since then
efforts have been geared towards implementing these recommendations. Those
recommendations dealing with language are provided in Appendix 2.
The latest available data is for 1997, and this does not indicate how the system
has been performing since the report. However, it indicates minority-dominated
areas such as Kgalagadi, Ngwaketse, Kweneng, Gantsi and Ngamiland have the
highest number of school drop-outs, the highest repetition rates, the highest
number of untrained teachers and the greatest shortage of classrooms (Central
Statistics Office, 1999: 24, 30,36).
Language-in-education policies
At independence in 1966, there was no clear policy regarding the medium
of instruction in schools. However, there was a general understanding that
English (the official language, required by the constitution) would constitute
the medium of instruction. Due to the relatively low qualifications of teachers,
and their inability to communicate in English, the use of Setswana was toler-
ated in lower grades. Other languages, such as Ikalanga, which were taught in
school before independence, were banned from use in school at independ-
ence.
The policy assumed the use of English as the medium of instruction at all
levels, with tolerance for Setswana when communication problems occurred in
Standards 1 and 2. On the other hand, practice indicated that teachers actually
code-switched between Setswana and English throughout the primary and
secondary school levels (NCE, 1977a). Practice further indicated that in the
North-east District, Ikalanga continued to be used as an informal medium of
instruction in schools despite its ban. Despite this reality, some officials in the
Ministry of Education continued to believe that English was the essential
medium of instruction. More efforts and resources were, therefore, allocated
towards the improvement of the teaching of English and its use as the medium of
instruction rather than Setswana, which was at that time a non-examinable
subject. The First National Commission on Education (NCE 1, 1977a: 76) viewed
this situation as one that neglected the national language. It noted that:
44 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
He [Mogae] is reported to have told residents of Dukwi and Mosetse that all
people who live in the Central District should consider themselves
Bangwato, thus justifying Ngwato hegemony over tribes like Basarwa,
Bakalaka, Babirwa, Batswapong and others. …Mogae failed a leadership
test. This was an opportunity for him to rise to the occasion and concede
that there is indeed a rather skewed constitutional arrangement. Instead, he
continued the tradition of pandering to the whims of the ‘principal’ tribes.
There is sufficient evidence that advocates of tribal equality are all for
national unity, but not at the expense of their integrity. (Moeti, 1998: 9)
This is clearly the assimilatory model of ‘ice-cream plus salt’. The President is
saying these tribes have to melt and give up their cultures and completely assimi-
late into the Ngwato culture. It is overt prohibition of the actualisation of the
cultures of these people. The trend within the ruling Botswana Democratic Party
is to uphold the constitution, discriminating as it may be, and those who point to
this problem are quickly labelled ‘tribalistic’ and ‘engineers of ethnic conflict’. For
fear of being labeled as such, critics tend to remain silent. Because of the push for
monolingualism and monoculturalism by the ruling party, the Revised National
Policy on Education, approved by Parliament in April 1994, contains only those
recommendations of the NCE 2 which deal with teaching of Setswana and
English (see Appendix 2).
It is worth noting that, while the new policy has advocated the use of English
as the medium of instruction (18(a)) at the expense of Setswana, the rest of the
recommendations advocate the use of Setswana in education. Recommendation
3, which calls for the formulation of a comprehensive language policy, could
possibly promote Setswana in other social domains, such as business, technol-
ogy, government, law and in the political structures. It is also worth noting that
recommendation number 46(b) assumes that job opportunities requiring compe-
tence in Setswana are available. Research indicates that such job requirements
are currently rarely found in advertisements as compared to those requiring
competence in English (Nyati-Ramahobo, 1991). This practice constitutes a
major demotivating factor for both learners and teachers of Setswana. The
economic use of Setswana must diversify beyond radio announcers, court inter-
preters and teachers to accommodate Setswana as a language of social mobility
and consequently, must absorb the products of the education system. A compre-
hensive language policy will have to take this issue very seriously in order to
facilitate the implementation of recommendations 31 and 46(b). Five years after
the approval of the policy, none of the recommendations has been implemented,
except that preparations are currently underway to implement 18(a), dealing
with the use of English at Standard 2. More resources continue to be directed
towards the use of English in all social domains including education. This prac-
tice has led scholars and citizens to believe that the government is pushing for
monolingualism in English and, to some extent, recognition of the role of
Setswana.
The language-in-education policy therefore relates to the specific use of
Setswana and English in education. Since none of the recommendations of the
NCE 2 have been implemented, the NCE 1 policy concerning medium of instruc-
tion is still in place. Setswana is therefore the medium of instruction in Standards
46 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
to lay a sound foundation for the growth of Setswana and English as the
media of instruction;
to promote creativity on the part of children;
to encourage the study and preservation of Setswana culture;
to help children appreciate that good spoken Setswana will be acquired at
home as well as at school;
to provide a curriculum that will strengthen Setswana as an important
instrument in nation building (Ministry of Education, 1982: 1).
Data from interviews indicate that the main purpose of teaching Setswana is
cultural identity and early concept formation. It is believed that cultural identity
and preservation will be achieved if books are written in Setswana for children in
Standards 1 to 4 (old policy, NCE 1) or in Standard 1 only (new policy, NCE 2).
The question of early concept formation seems to be defined as early as Standard
4. The purpose of teaching English is that it is the language of wider communica-
tion, business and the world of work.
The methodology for teaching both Setswana and English is said to be the
communicative approach. The decision to change to this approach came as a
recommendation from the first NCE, which thought that language teaching
concentrated on grammar and proverbs at the expense of literacy skills of read-
ing and writing. The rationale for this approach is that ‘we don’t expect children
to analyse the language before they can use it’ (Ramatsui, 30 July 1989, personal
communication). It is also necessary for the ten years of the basic education
programme, which seeks to provide children with skills they need in their daily
lives. The communicative syllabi, developed after the Commission’s recommen-
dation, came out in 1982 providing a few communicative topics, but remained
largely structural. However, the syllabi were further revised in 1995. Books that
were developed by publishing companies in 1998 for handling the new syllabi
were based on the communicative approach to teaching and assessment. These
have only been used in schools for one year so far, hence their impact and rele-
vance has not yet been assessed.
Examinations are taken after seven years of primary schooling, three years of
junior secondary and two years of senior secondary education. The first
Commission had recommended continuous assessment and remedial teaching
to enhance performance. These recommendations have not been implemented.
The achievement of universal primary education and ten years of basic educa-
tion have meant that the primary school leaving examinations (PSLE) have
ceased to be a selection tool. About 95.3% of students proceed to junior secondary
school (Central Statistics Office, 1999: xiv). Consequently, examinations have
changed from norm reference to criterion reference. A child’s performance is not
compared with other children, but with a set of criteria.
The new syllabi emphasise that assessment techniques should focus on find-
ing out whether children can read, write, speak and listen. The teacher should
focus on assessing students’ ability to read for different purposes, to write on
different topics for different audiences, to listen and speak in different situations.
If children can perform these four language skills as defined for each skill objec-
tive for each grade level, it automatically means they have the ability to use
language rules at the competence required at the equivalent grade level. The new
48 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
Media Languages
The role of the media in national life in Botswana dates back to 1850s (Sechele,
1998). It was part of what was called the ‘Tswana Press’ in South Africa. Sechele
reports that the Tswana Press was:
… a journalism that was based on the Setswana language in the areas occu-
pied by Setswana-speaking people of Bechuanaland protectorate (now
Botswana), Northern Cape, the former Transvaal, and the former Orange
Free State in South Africa. (p. 412)
lamp of Tswana people) and Naledi ya Batswana (the star of the Batswana).
Botswana’s second President, Sir Masire Ketumile was a reporter for the latter.
This paper reported on the chieftainship issue between the Batawana and the
Bayeyi in 1948. All these papers reported in Setswana. While there was no overt
prohibition of the use of other languages, there was no overt permission nor
promotion of these languages in the media either, because the missionaries had
only codified Setswana. It is not clear why, but the Setswana language press no
longer exists, not even in South Africa.
There are currently eight private newspapers in the country. All of them are
written in English. One of them includes pages in Setswana and a column in
Ikalanga. They circulate mainly in larger villages and towns. Since their birth in
1982, the independent media have provided an alternative voice in a country
dominated by government media (Sechele, 1998). Many believe that the inde-
pendent media have exposed corruption, political arrogance, insensitivity, lack
of transparency and accountability on the part of government (Grant & Egner,
1989). Most people believe that it was this media coverage that led to the increase
in opposition seats in Parliament from three to thirteen in the 1994 general elec-
tions (Sechele, 1998). The independent media continued to serve this function in
the 1999 general elections. The landslide win by the ruling party is attributed not
to the fact that Batswana have gained confidence in that party but rather to
in-fighting and the subsequent split of the opposition party twelve months
before the general elections. The ruling party is viewed by many as having run
out of strategies to win elections other than to divide the opposition party. The
twelve constituencies that the opposition won in 1994 still voted for the opposi-
tion in 1999, despite the split. A stronger opposition would have weakened the
ruling party even more than in 1994. The media is seen as central in strengthening
democracy in Botswana.
However, the media have problems which limit their impact. These include
the low levels of literacy in rural areas, self-censorship by some editors for fear of
victimisation, lack of facilities, untrained staff and insufficient motivation on the
part of reporters. The language policy which promotes English and to some
extent Setswana limits the effective flow of information to the rural areas. As a
result, voter and AIDS education are limited to towns and major villages
(Sechele, 1998). Legislation has also limited the freedom of the press. For
instance, in 1995 the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime Act was put
in place to prohibit journalists from reporting on cases that are still under investi-
gation. The Directorate investigates white-collar crimes, including those that
might be committed by ministers.
The Government Printer provides a special service specifically for the govern-
ment. It prints all government documents. Government ministries and depart-
ments place orders which are entered in a register indicating the date the order
was placed, the type of job to be done, the number required and the date the order
was collected. The Ministries of Agriculture, Commerce and Health were
selected for a study to find out the language in which the government communi-
cates with the general public. The Ministry of Agriculture was a suitable choice
since a large portion of the population depends on agriculture, which makes up a
significant part of the economy. In 1982 the government, through the Ministry of
Commerce and Industry, introduced the Financial Assistance Policy (FAP) to
50 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
tion was charged with that responsibility. Previous references to the Office of the
President were meant to discourage privately owned radio stations, where
government censorship would be more difficult. Stations could also broadcast in
minority languages. Mr Gunda lost his bid for a radio station licence, as his appli-
cation indicated the intended use of minority languages. This suggests that there
is a covert prohibition on the use of minority languages in the media. Many
attribute the rampant spread of HIV/AIDS in the country to the lack of relevant
information in the languages in which people have high comprehension ability.
Other educational campaigns on issues of national interest also do not reach the
people. Crucial messages reach only about 40% of the population, and this ineffi-
ciency in communication inevitably affects development.
Immigration
The movement of the Bakalaka tribe from Zimbabwe and parts of South Africa
into north-eastern Botswana in the 1600s (Tlou & Campbell, 1984) has rendered
that part of the country mainly Ikalanga speaking. The Kalanga were then
enslaved by the Bangwato tribe and brought to the Central District (Map 2).
Currently, Kalanga people predominantly inhabit Serowe, the capital of the
Bangwato, though most of them have assimilated into Bangwato culture. The
Wayeyi (also known as Bayei or Yei) came to Botswana from Central Africa
through Malawi and Zambia. They settled in a place called DiYei in the Caprivi
Strip (Nambia). Tlou (1985) estimates that they must have come to Botswana
around 1750 or earlier. Murray (1990: 4) estimates that they may have come as
early as AD 1000; others say they came around 1400 (e.g. Gazette, 1999).
Nyati-Ramahobo (1999b) concurs with Murray because the Shiyeyi language
adopted click sounds from Khoisan languages with which they came into contact
in the Okavango delta. For this process to have taken place the two groups must
have lived together for a long time. The Khoisan are believed to be the original
indigenous people of Botswana. The Hambukushu came into Botswana at two
different periods. The first group came between 1876 and 1890 and the second in
1969 because of the war in Angola. The Herero came to Botswana between 1897
and 1906 (Murray, 1987), escaping German rule in the then South-West Africa
(Namibia).
The distributions of Setswana speaking tribes caused by tribal wars and other
social events in the 1800s (Tlou & Campbell, 1984: 57–100) have contributed to the
spread of Setswana to all parts of the country. For instance, the war between the
Bangwato tribal sons in the Central District in 1795 (Sillery, 1965) caused one of the
sons (Tawana) to move into Ngamiland (North-west District) where the Batawana
tribe now live; this is the major way Setswana spread to that part of the country. As
the Batawana ‘imposed themselves’ (Sillery, 1965: 22) on the majority Wayeyi in
the area, they forced them to speak Setswana and punished them for using their
own language. Some of the Wayeyi then escaped into the Central District avoiding
Tawana’s subjugation and sought refuge from Khama III, the chief of the
Bangwato tribe and father of the first President of Botswana, Sir Seretse Khama. He
accepted them on condition that they speak Setswana so as to communicate their
grievances to him effectively and to enable him to defend them at the kgotla during
their court cases and in other important circumstances. Consequently, most
52 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
Bayeyi do not speak Shiyeyi. Equally, the Bakalaka were discouraged from
speaking Ikalanga, and most of those in Serowe only speak Setswana.
The movement of the Barolong tribe in the 1600s from Transvaal in South
Africa to the north-east introduced Setswana to that part of the country.
Setswana is, therefore, the lingua franca of the country; most children learn it at
home and at school. This factor made the choice of Setswana as a national
language easier. Foreigners learn the Setswana language and culture at the
Botswana Orientation Center. The spread of Setswana was, therefore, facilitated
by the spread of Setswana speaking groups to other parts of the country. The
spread of Setswana has been further facilitated by its use in school as the only
local language and by the prohibition of the use of all other languages repre-
sented in the country after independence.
Unlike the situation in a number of other African countries, there has been no
significant European or Asian settlement in Botswana; after independence other
nationalities came as individuals and have served as expatriates or have become
citizens. As communities have not formed, language or place of origin is not yet
an issue for these individuals.
in English. All meetings in the civil service are conducted and recorded in
English. It is spoken and read by 40% of the population (Obondo-Okoyo, 1986:
12), mainly by the educated élite living in towns. Setswana is understood to be
the national language, but the constitution makes no reference to it. It is mainly
used in informal settings and in traditional matters.
The national adult literacy programme is conducted in Setswana irrespective
of the existence of other languages found amongst the communities in which it is
operating. The Revised National Policy on Education recommended goals for
out-of school programmes as follows:
(1) To establish a learning society in which education is seen as a lifelong
process.
(2) To guarantee universal access to basic education for school-age children
and adults in order to promote equity and social justice.
(3) To provide opportunities for young people and adults to further their initial
education to higher stages in order to raise the general level of education of
the population.
(4) To provide opportunities for adults to acquire work-related skills that will
improve their productivity and standard of living, and promote economic
growth.
(5) To increase the ability of adults to take part in social, political, cultural and
sporting affairs in order to improve their quality of life and promote greater
participation in the development process. (Republic of Botswana, 1994:
34–5).
The policy calls for the provision of adult education as a life-long learning
process. The policy should also provide opportunities for school-age children
who missed their chance for one reason or another to further their education. It
further calls for an educated and informed society through an increase in learn-
ing opportunities beyond normal schooling. Public education is expected to
make people aware of skills needed for life.
Non-governmental organisations have been pushing for the recognition of the
existence of other languages and ethnic groups (see Part IV). This has to some
extent had an impact on government; e.g. Parliament has passed the following
motions to allow the use of these languages in education and on the radio.
However, there are no efforts being made at the moment to make these motions
into laws or to implement them.
In 1995 Parliament approved the review of sections 77 to 79 of the constitu-
tion which stipulates that only chiefs of the eight tribes can be ex-officio
members of the House of Chiefs.
On Friday, 8 August 1997 Parliament passed a motion to allow all
languages to be taught in schools, used on the radio and in other areas as
necessary.
The second President of Botswana, Sir Ketumile Masire, constituted a task
force to develop a national vision for the country in the new millennium.
The task force, led by the then Manager of the Bank of Botswana and
current Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Mr Baledzi
Gaolathe, produced a document known as Vision 2016. This document
54 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
The Council also made some recommendations regarding the low status of
Setswana as compared to English and the resulting deterioration of the Setswana
language and culture. The work of the Council was carried out through four
main committees.
(1) The Book Review Committee was to review books used in schools to ensure
that they were morally acceptable.
(2) The Orthography Committee was to review the 1981 orthography.
(3) The Terminology Committee was to compile all foreign words in order to
coin Setswana equivalents.
(4) The Finance Committee administered funds from the Ministry of Education
for the work of the Council.
Recommendation No.3 of the Revised National Policy on Education said that
‘the National Setswana Language Council be renamed the Botswana Languages
Council and be given new terms of reference including the responsibility for
developing a comprehensive language policy’ (Republic of Botswana, 1994: 13).
The second President of Botswana formed another task force in the Ministry of
Education and charged it with the responsibility for the establishment of the
Botswana Languages Council. This task force was chaired by the Coordinator of
Revised National Policy on Education and former Permanent Secretary in the
same ministry, Mr Jake Swartland (Figure 2). The assignment of the task force
was to state clearly the mission and vision of the Botswana Languages Council, to
formulate its terms of reference, to define its structure membership, and to
suggest its home. The task force began its work in March 1997 and ended in
August of the same year. The report of the task force was presented to Cabinet
towards the end of 1997, but it was not approved. As a result, neither the National
Setswana Language Council nor the Botswana Languages Council are currently
functional as language planning bodies. In other words, formal language plan-
ning activities ended in 1997 after the completion of the work of this task force.
Informal language planning activities carried out by non-governmental organi-
sations that are concerned with the imminent death of their languages are
discussed in the following section.
indicated by the fact that even adult learners are beginning to demand the intro-
duction of English in the non-formal educational curriculum, since it is now
required for all types of jobs (Nyati-Ramahobo, 1996). This is not surprising,
since, as stated earlier, recommendations meant to enhance the status of
Setswana in education and in society have never been implemented. Janson &
Tsonope (1991: 75–6) note that:
The language has been neglected in the sense that it has been seen mainly as
a part of the traditional society, and by that token not very interesting for
the generation of planners that has been busy leading Botswana on the way
to development. … Official policy shows a degree of indifference to ques-
tions concerning Setswana.
The same can be said for the other indigenous languages of Botswana. It is this
attitude from the leadership that is threatening not only the existence of
Setswana but also its value to future generations.
The radio is an effective means for the intellectualisation of language and for
supporting the transmission of language from one generation to the next. Radio
announcers and members of the public code-switch between English and
Setswana when speaking on the radio. There is no conscious effort to speak pure
Setswana so that the young might be able to learn good Setswana. Consequently,
young people acquire borrowed English words under the impression that they
are Setswana words. The use of English words is common even in cases where
Setswana equivalents exist. For instance, most people seem to prefer the English
word ‘change’ – rendered as chencha – instead of the Setswana equivalent fetola or
fetoga. Young people find it difficult to express themselves exclusively in
Setswana.
On the other hand, a renewed sense of nationhood seems to be growing. This
may be seen from three recent examples:
the topical debate on the rights of minority groups, which became an elec-
tion issue in 1999 and led to the appointment of the presidential commis-
sion of enquiry into sections 77 to 79 of the constitution, in August 2000;
the publication of a book on the status of Setswana as a national language;
and
the fact that Miss Universe for 1999 was from Botswana.
When Miss Universe returned from the success at the Pageant, her first words
were in English and so was her address to the nation, to the great disappointment
of most Batswana. This disappointment was expressed on a radio programme
called Maokaneng, in which the general public discusses issues of national inter-
est by telephone in Setswana. Upon her second visit, Miss Universe was to
deliver her HIV/AIDS message at a concert organised in her honour by the
Ministry of Health. On that occasion she was reduced to tears when the youthful
crowd demanded that she deliver her speech in Setswana. Despite her tearful
claim that it was difficult for her to do so, the crowd insisted and she finally did
(Ndlovu, 1999). Every year Batswana express disappointment that the President
delivers his independence message in English (Kgengwenyane, 1996). This
public attitude could be a signal of a quest for national identity by the general
public.
The Language Situation in Botswana 57
language. He further observed a general decline in the use of the mother tongue
amongst his informants in some areas, indicating some degree of language shift.
Higher levels of language maintenance were observed amongst the Mbukushu
and Herero in some areas rather than others. He concluded that Shiyeyi was the
most threatened language in Ngamiland, as children no longer spoke it. Work by
Sommer & Vossen (1995) later complimented Vossen’s study.
As indicated previously, the Batawana enslaved the Wayeyi for over 250
years. Even after the abolition of slavery worldwide, the majority of Wayeyi still
continue to be ruled by the minority Batawana, despite their efforts since 1936 to
achieve autonomy. As a result, the Wayeyi suffer from low self-esteem; many
would prefer not to reveal their true identity, but rather say they are Batawana,
particularly to outsiders who have no reason to know anything to the contrary.
Those who can still speak the language are reluctant to use it in public places.
This situation, therefore, implies that Vossen’s data may primarily indicate an
identity crisis and the lack of overt language use but not an accurate picture of
language knowledge. On the other hand, it is also correct to suggest that
language knowledge without language use leads to language death. It is difficult
to say to what extent Shiyeyi is dead, or to what extent revival efforts would be
likely to succeed.
As previously indicated, the attitude of the government towards Setswana is
accompanied by intolerance for all other languages spoken in Botswana. Because
of this suppressive attitude, it is proper to say that all languages in Botswana are
somewhat threatened. Evidence that young people are not able to speak their
first languages is also showing up in other languages including Setswana. Smieja
and Mathangwane (1999) also observed a high degree of language shift amongst
the non-Tswana speakers such as the Babirwa, Kalanga, and Batswapong
towards Setswana and English. A great deal of cultural and linguistic loss among
many minority groups has been observed (Vossen, 1988). This has caused
concern, and some minority groups have begun to form organisations to revive
their languages and cultures. The work of some of these is described in the
following sections.
which BOCONGO mounts for its members. For instance, it provides training in
management, accounting and marketing strategies. NGOs may send their
personnel to such seminars free of charge. Other benefits include general dissem-
ination of information on what other NGOs are doing, including work on the
international scene. BOCONGO also places all valuable information on each
member on its own website for dissemination. Once registered with BOCONGO,
an organisation will also have access to donors who are interested in its field.
Currently there are 81 NGOs registered with BOCONGO. It is difficult to tell
the number of those that are not members of the mother body, since data on
these is not readily available. These NGOs fall within nine categories. In each
category, one NGO is selected by BOCONGO to be the lead organisation in that
area (Table 9).
Registration with the Registrar of Societies gives an NGO liberty to operate
within the legal framework, while registration with BOCONGO gives it the
opportunity to network with other bodies with similar interests. BOCONGO
also offers these NGOs a united voice to speak to the government on issues of
mutual interest. Due to the high fees charged by BOCONGO, not all NGOs regis-
tered with the Registrar of Societies are members of the BOCONGO. An organi-
sation dealing with language and or culture would fall under the Human Rights
category; their lead agency is Ditshwanelo (a Setswana word for rights), The
Botswana Centre for Human Rights. Within the framework of the assimilationist
policy, speakers of languages that are not recognised by the government view
this policy as a denial of their human rights, i.e. denial of the ability to access
information in their own languages. Their work therefore focuses on reviving
and maintaining their linguistic and cultural rights. Those dealing with language
from a religious perspective fall under the ecumenical category. Currently, there
are six organisations dealing with language and culture from a human rights
perspective.
134, see Table 5). This excluded those in the North-east District (Table 6).
Kalangas have a strong sense of identity. Currently, they are one of the few
minority groups whose children speak Ikalanga at home, including those in
homes in the upper and middle class areas living in cities and towns. This is quite
phenomenal given that the Bamangwato tribe enslaved them in the 1800s. There
is a popular belief that, due to this oppression, the Kalanga developed a coding
system for gaining access to educational opportunities. When applying for
entrance to schools, each Kalanga application would have a drawing of a peanut
at the lower right-hand-side, their staple food. Education officers who were
mostly Kalanga would then ensure school admission. Many Batswana believe
that this is the main reason they are currently the most highly educated and hold
high government posts. Due to pressure from the Tswana presidents, Kalanga
ministers overtly support the assimilation model, but they covertly support the
promotion of the Kalanga to high positions as an alternative empowerment strat-
egy.
Because of the banning of the Ikalanga language from the educational system
at independence, the language was formally relegated only to the home environ-
ment. For this reason, the culture of the Kalanga people has been slowly disap-
pearing. Based on this realisation, the SPILL was formed by the Kalanga élite in
1981 to develop and maintain the Ikalanga language and culture. Also embed-
ded in the work of the society was the issue of land rights and the right to self-rule
through the chieftainship structure. When SPILL started, it created a negative
reaction from within government quarters. It was perceived as tribalistic and
divisive. There was a strong campaign to shun it and to denounce it as a threat to
the peace and stability prevailing in the country. Those Kalangas who believed in
the movement, saw this as an intimidating strategy to discourage them and
potential donors from developing Ikalanga. There were also divisions amongst
the Kalangas themselves. Some, especially those holding high government posi-
tions, were against the formation of SPILL, at least in public. They feared victimi-
sation at their jobs should their loyalty to government be doubted. Therefore,
while the Kalangas are highly influential in government circles, they could not
use that influence to convince government to allow the use of Ikalanga on radio
or in education, prior to the presentation of the 1997 motion which has not yet
become law.
The SPILL began its work with the revival and revision of the pre-independ-
ence Ikalanga orthography, which was published in 1995. The organisation has
now published a hymnbook in Ikalanga. The New Testament has been translated
into Ikalanga as well. The Mukani Action Campaign (MAC), the educational
wing of SPILL, has developed 14 literacy booklets for informal teaching of
Ikalanga and for future use in schools as soon as government implements the
1997 motion. The MAC also publishes a newsletter and encourages the publica-
tion of news articles in Ikalanga. One of the independent newspapers publishes a
weekly column in Ikalanga. Their major donor, as previously indicated, is the
Lutheran Bible Translators based in the United States, an organisation which has
provided technical support to run an office in Francistown. This office was at the
forefront of the development of the orthography and the translation of the New
Testament. Through the Department of Adult Education at the University of
Botswana, UNESCO is funding a project on the use of minority languages in
The Language Situation in Botswana 61
adult literacy. The project includes Kalanga and Shiyeyi. With respect to the
Kalanga project, it funds training workshops for members of the MAC as well as
the production of some of the materials. The other source of funding is through
membership fees. SPILL raises funds using several strategies, and the funds are
used to run the daily work. Further details on SPILL are available on the refer-
ence section of their web-site.
One of the issues that the Kalangas have been pushing for is the right to be
represented in the House of Chiefs by their Paramount Chief. As indicated in
Part I, politically, they are regarded as members of the Bamangwato tribe, and
their Paramount Chief is that of the Bamangwato. Within their immediate locali-
ties, they can have Kalanga sub-chiefs. Currently, there is a Kalanga sub-chief in
the House of Chiefs, but he is not regarded as representative of all Kalangas since
he is not a Paramount Chief. The SPILL is, therefore, playing a crucial role in
language planning. It is one of those bodies promoting the orientation to viewing
language diversity as a right and a resource for development.
Kamanakao Association
The Wayeyi live in Ngamiland (North-west District, Map 2). Politically and in
accordance with the assimilation policy, every one in this district is called a
Motawana, since the Tswana speaking Batawana tribe rule them. As indicated
previously, the Batawana subjected the Wayeyi to slavery. There are two main
reasons why the Wayeyi were the most subjected: first there was direct contact
between them and the Batawana on the arrival of the Batawana in Ngamiland;
the second reason was the soft and peace loving nature of the Wayeyi. In 1962,
Pitoro Seidisa (a Moyeyi from Gumare) started some work with Professor Ernst
Westphal of the University of Cape Town to develop the orthography for the
Shiyeyi language. Due to the conflict between the Wayeyi and Batawana over
serfdom, the then Queen Regent of the Batawana, Pulane, ordered the arrest of
Mr Seidisa for presuming to develop Shiyeyi. The Batawana thought that the
development of Shiyeyi might raise the consciousness of the Wayeyi and
strengthen their struggle for freedom from slavery. When Westphal realised the
unacceptability of the Shiyeyi language among the ruling Batawana, he discon-
tinued his work on the language and stated in his will that all the material on
Shiyeyi should be burnt after his death. By the time of his death, the orthography
had been completed, a dictionary was still incomplete and Chapter 8 of the
Gospel of Matthew as well as a few hymns had been translated into Shiyeyi.
After independence in 1966 the language policy continued to discourage the
development and use of any languages other than Setswana. The Kamanakao
Association was founded in 1995 by the Wayeyi élite to continue the work of Mr
Seidisa and Professor Westphal. Its aim was to develop and maintain the Shiyeyi
language and culture. The work on orthography was completed in 1998 and
work on materials production and training is on going. The Association has
produced a draft of an interdenominational hymnbook, a phrase book for teach-
ing Shiyeyi and a booklet containing songs, stories and poems. It also produces a
calendar in Shiyeyi.
The Kamanakao Association has three main sources of funding for its
programmes. The Lutheran Bible Translators funded the development of the
orthography and some of the publications previously mentioned. They continue
62 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
to fund the translation of hymns and the translation of the Jesus Film into Shiyeyi.
Currently, plans are under way to translate the Gospel of Luke. The UNESCO
project has three phases concerning the development of Shiyeyi: the first phase
covers the training of secondary school leavers in using the Shiyeyi orthography
to write stories on cultural themes; the second phase will subsume the writing of
the stories and songs, and the last phase will involve writing primers for adult
literacy. Currently, the training is going on simultaneously with story and song
writing. The third source of funding is from the communities. The Kamanakao
Association has nine branch committees throughout the northern part of the
Central District and in Ngamiland. These communities are responsible for the
cultural aspects of the organisation. They organise cultural activities and are also
responsible for hosting the Shikati (Chief in Shiyeyi) Kamanakao5 as he visits the
villages. These committees fund their own activities. They raise funds for the
association through the sale of T-shirts, booklets, bags and calendars and of
course through cultural activities.
The relationship between these two organisations and the government is one
of uneasy tolerance. While the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs authorised
their registration in accordance with the right to associate, they are seen as
moving against the assimilationist policy. This is particularly so in regard to the
chieftainship issue. The Wayeyi élite holding high government posts are torn
between supporting a just cause in which they believe and risking their jobs.
Consequently, they tend to remain neutral and unpredictable. Some Wayeyi,
especially politicians within the ruling party, have been used to campaign
against the work of Kamanakao Association. They have portrayed the Associa-
tion as tribalistic and have worked against the acceptance of Shikati Kamanakao
to represent the Wayeyi in the House of Chiefs. The Wayeyi have taken the
government to court for discriminating against their Paramount Chief. On the
other hand, some Wayeyi élite and academics have been successful in taking the
message of the Association to the people, through the village or branch commit-
tees. The message is understood as linguistic human rights as well as political
rights in terms of representation. After his installation as Paramount Chief of the
Wayeyi, in April 1999, Shikati Kamanakao has taken his role to be that of educat-
ing his people about their rights to develop and maintain their language and
culture through public meetings. His meetings have been attended by Criminal
Investigation Officers from the Police Department to try and intimidate people
attending. After a year of public education campaigns, people now feel free to
attend and participate in village committees and other cultural activities. They
are gaining confidence in demanding their rights to representation. They have
contributed money towards the costs of the lawsuit.
This lawsuit may have some influence in expediting the government’s deci-
sion to review Sections 77 to 79 of the constitution, which discriminate along
tribal lines concerning representation in the House of Chiefs. In February 2000,
an independent newspaper reporter held an interview with President Mogae
that was reported as follows:
While the President’s promise is not a new thing, many people believe that the
lawsuit is likely to end the unreasonable delay in action on the constitutional
amendment. However, speculation is rife that the government is lobbying the
general public to accept the status quo. In fact, the President mentioned his own
preference for the status quo during the interview. He said, ‘I have my own views
… the arrangement with regards to the North East, Kgalagadi and Ghanzi is the
type I will be inclined to. It’s more democratic but Batswana believe in chiefs by
birth and I am not going to change that’ (Chilisa, 2000: 19 (11–17 February)).
As stated above (Background section), the areas mentioned here are minority
dominated and they are represented by elected sub-chiefs in the House of Chiefs
and not the Paramount Chiefs by birth of these minority tribes. This is in line with
the assimilation theory that only Setswana speaking tribes can be represented by
their Paramount Chiefs by birth. Minority groups can only be represented by
elected sub-chiefs to ensure that the people elected are sympathetic with the
ruling party policy of assimilation into Tswanadom. In the case of Ngamiland,
the tribes there are represented by the Tswana speaking Batawana chief. Accord-
ing to the Wayeyi, they are not represented, since imposing a Motawana chief on
them and rejecting their Paramount Chief is not democratic. The consultations to
be held with the people are less likely to change the current situation, as lobbying
will follow the elections pattern where people are alleged to have been bribed
and misinformed in house-to-house campaigns. The rural population is less
informed as it has no access to information, and it is likely to accept information
provided by the government. For this reason, the status quo is likely to prevail
after the consultations. On the other hand, should the educated élite make writ-
ten submissions to the task force, and work with NGOs to put pressure on the
government to change, there is a window of opportunity for change. Should the
task force complete its work and the relevant sections be changed, while the
lawsuit is still delayed in court (the hearing had been postponed twice between
October and December, 1999), the ruling of the court would contribute to the
recommendations of the task force. The work of the task force may also lead to
the withdrawal of the lawsuit. Both Kamanakao and SPILL are locally driven and
members of BOCONGO.
projects for disadvantaged groups including the disabled, women, and street
children. The Etsha project focuses on the development and use of the
Thimbukushu language for religious purposes (see Table 1). It utilises reading
material developed in Namibia and by other linguists elsewhere on Thimb-
ukushu to conduct literacy classes at least three times a week for female adults
among the Hambukushu people. Some of its activities include: training in basket
weaving amongst the Hambukushu and Wayeyi females at Etsha, marketing the
baskets outside Botswana, running a pre-school in Thimbukushu, running a
poultry project for out-of-school youth, and running a guest house. This work
has served as a source of inspiration for the revival and maintenance of the
Thimbukushu language in Botswana. Currently, there are efforts to register a
Thimbukushu cultural organisation by the Hambukushu people.
The Basarwa (Bushmen) belong to about 17 main Khoisan language groups
(Appendix 1). They are the indigenous people of Botswana and are nomadic. It is
estimated that there are about 40,000 Basarwa in Botswana, making up about four
per cent of the population. They are mainly hunters and gatherers. Due to their
nomadism, they are found in seven of the eight administrative districts (Mazonde,
1997). Their main areas of concentration are Ghanzi, Kweneng, parts of Ngamiland
and Ngwaketsi districts and they have a high degree of language maintenance
(Smieja & Mathangwane, 1999). From time immemorial, the Basarwa have
worked for the wealthy Setswana speaking groups who use them as herd-boys for
low wages, provided mainly in the form of food. They own no land and are ruled
by the Setswana Paramount Chief in whatever area they happen to reside. For
instance, those in Kweneng are considered Bakwena and ruled by the Bakwena
Paramount Chief. Mogwe (1994: 57) best describes the plight of the Basarwa.
The Basarwa are the poorest of the poor.… Why have development
programs aimed at the improvement of their standard of living focused
instead on assimilation or integration without informed choice and with-
out the participation of the Basarwa during both planning and implemen-
tation? … Rampant discrimination against the Basarwa peoples has meant
that they have become marginalised culturally, politically, socially, and
economically.… The state imposes leaders on them who are not of their
culture or language group. This in turn has exacerbated their position of
marginalisation. Attempts to use the law are frustrated because they lack
the operation language of Setswana customary courts.
In 1999, two Basarwa who had been sentenced to death by the high court for
murder; their case was appealed by Ditshwanelo, the Botswana Center for
Human Rights (see Table 9). It was discovered that the Basarwa were not given
an opportunity to speak in their language in court and were not listened to when
they struggled in Setswana to air their unhappiness about their lawyer. The high
court did not listen to their pleas but sentenced them to death. However, in 1999,
the appeals court ordered a retrial. Mogwe argues that the human rights of the
Basarwa have neither been respected nor protected by the state. The state had
argued that Ditshwanelo had no right to represent the Basarwa, further violating
their right to representation by challenging Ditshwanelo’s efforts.
Due to the marginalised status of the Basarwa, many international organisa-
tions have come to Botswana to establish community based development
The Language Situation in Botswana 65
ens, organises and coordinates development projects within the settlements and
communities in Ghanzi towards the acquisition of land and land rights to gather
and hunt. It links these communities to those in neighbouring countries like
South Africa and Namibia. It has an education wing responsible for collection
and dissemination of information on human rights, and monitors human rights
abuses, especially those dealing with game licensing for hunting. FPK’s major
activities include advocacy and negotiating with government for the rights of the
Basarwa. The FPK also has income-generating projects in ostrich and poultry
farming and it runs a cultural centre.
Summary
The work of non-governmental organisations has begun to signal to the
government that there is a language and cultural problem to be attended to. The
Department of Youth and Culture (DYC) was established in the Ministry of
Labor and Home Affairs in 1989, and the Botswana National Cultural Council
(BNCC) was established in 1992 within the Department. The Department has
been charged with the responsibility to develop a national cultural policy.
Currently, there is a consultancy to review the draft of this policy document and,
amongst other things, to review the capacity of and the linkages between institu-
tions dealing with culture, especially the DYC and the BNCC, the House of
Chiefs and NGOs. The consultancy will also provide a state of the art account of
the sociological, historical and linguistic relations of peoples within the cultural
setting of Botswana. This signals a willingness on the part of the government to
begin to address the thorny issues relating to the linguistic and cultural diversity
of the country, and the chieftainship issues within the framework of human
rights and globalisation.
The government seems to be convinced about the role of culture in develop-
ment, and there are plans to develop cultural villages. However, the govern-
ment’s view appears to be that culture can best be preserved through museums
and cultural villages set up for public viewing. Culture is not considered as a way
of life that a community must live as part of national development. There are no
serious efforts to instil language and cultural studies into the curriculum (Milon,
1989; Nyati-Ramahobo, 1998a). Apparently there is also the belief that the
cultures of minority groups can be preserved without the use of their languages.
68 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
This constitutes a difficult task, since some crucial aspects of culture can only be
expressed through language. Efforts to revive and maintain Botswana languages
rest with the civil society’s will to work tirelessly despite the government’s resis-
tance. The role of the élite, especially academics, is crucial to the development
and maintenance of the languages of Botswana. One major characteristic of
democracy in Botswana is freedom of speech. Academics, other activists and the
media have taken advantage of this characteristic to take the issues into the
public arena. However, there is another element of our democracy working
against this. While there is freedom of speech, there is no freedom after speech
(Mogwe, 1994). That is, people can talk, but they are not listened to, and there are
a number of subtle ways of victimising those who speak out and who are
employed by the government. It is for this reason that government employees
play rather a debilitating role in the promotion of linguistic and cultural rights of
minority groups in Botswana.
Ba ne ba ile go shaora.
(They went swimming).
Shaora is a Shiyeyi word for swimming.
While the Setswana equivalent for such words may exist in other parts of the
country, to people in Ngamiland only the Shiyeyi words exist, and this is the
normal way of speaking. They would never use words such as go thuma for swim-
ming as it is used in the southern part of the country. As this creole variety has not
been studied, it is difficult to say whether it is in fact a creole or whether it is a
dialect with some Shiyeyi lexical code-switching. As a result of the low status of
the Wayeyi, and the movement of more people from the north-west (Maun area)
to work in the south (see Map 2), there seems to be a movement towards standard
Sengwato dialect and towards an avoidance of Shiyeyi words at all costs.
However, the old and uneducated population continues to use this mixture.
Anderson & Janson (1997) discuss Tsotsitaal and question whether or not it is
spoken in Botswana. A number of factors may be responsible for the importation
of this pidgin language into Botswana from South Africa:
the movement between the two countries for economic activities is a
constant factor;
families are divided across the border;
The Language Situation in Botswana 69
there was the influx of South African refugees into Botswana during the
apartheid era;
Batswana watch South African television.
As a result, Tsotsitaal is spoken by the youth in towns, especially those in the
southern part of the country, to almost the same extent that they speak American
English. Currently, these phenomena are confined to the youth who switch to
normal Setswana when speaking to adults. The current situation concerning
pidgins and creoles in Botswana is that none of the varieties have really been
studied by scholars in a detailed manner.
attitudes of the leadership. This situation is likely to continue to limit the impact
the non-governmental organisations might have. With this kind of tension, it is
difficult to predict the future directions of language development and usage in
Botswana.
In discussing whether the 1999 general elections were issue-driven, one news-
paper stated that:
…[p]erhaps the only issue that was articulated effectively is the one relat-
ing to ethnic inequality. . . . The opposition, in particular, seems to have
been effective in presenting its case to the electorate. . . . And it would
appear that many people in the affected areas were bought into it. (Mbuya,
1999: 15)
Many opposition parties promised the electorate that, if elected to power, other
languages would be taught in schools, and sections of the constitution, which
discriminate on the basis of tribal affiliation, would be reviewed. However, an
analysis of the election results indicated that people in minority dominated areas
voted for the ruling party. Four factors have been alleged to be responsible for this:
(1) Internal conflict amongst opposition parties which went on until the date of
the election left the electorate with no choice but to elect the devil they knew’
(2) The ruling party has exploited the ignorance of the rural poor who have no
access to the media. It is alleged that the people were informed in house to
house campaigns that the constitution had been amended to incorporate
laws on ethnicity and gender.
(3) There were also allegations of bribery – the use of money and the deliveries
of drought-relief foodstuffs in some villages during the election week.
(4) In his tour of the country just a week before elections, the President
informed his audiences that the constitution does not discriminate. This
created the impression that it had been amended, thus confirming the infor-
mation provided in the house-to-house campaigns. In fact, many Wayeyi
were happy that their Shikati would be admitted to the House of Chiefs, and
so they voted for the ruling party.
Should these allegations be true (though they are not new), then change is less
likely to be achieved through the parliamentary process. In a country where
more than 40% of the population lives below the poverty datum line (Jeffris,
1997), this practice is likely to continue for some time, at least until there is a
strong and united opposition.
One of the organisations advocating ethnic and language rights has taken
the government to court for discriminating against their Paramount Chief, by
refusing him membership of the House of Chiefs. Should the government win
the case, the issue is unlikely to go away, and the debate may go to higher levels.
The government has demonstrated intolerance on the issue, and it is most
unlikely to accede to the demands of non-Setswana speaking tribes. Whether
the government accepts change or not, many languages are likely to be
preserved and enhanced through the work of non-governmental organisa-
tions. It is necessary for these non-governmental organisations to work
together and to seek the support of the human rights groups, in order to exert
more pressure on government. Members of Parliament who are from minority
The Language Situation in Botswana 71
groups hold the passport for change. Should they stand firm on their word
during the debate of the motion to amend Sections 77 to 79 of the constitution,
the government is likely to act quickly. However, should they feel threatened,
change will be slow and painful.
The very principles of unity and democracy which all the ethnic and linguistic
groups of Botswana embraced at independence, which subsequently resulted in
the acceptance of the modernist/assimilationist paradigm into Tswanadom, are
the very principles providing them good grounds to assert and not relinquish
their subnational identities. After 33 years of independence, the issue of nation-
hood is no longer in question. The question now is what has this democracy and
nationhood achieved for every one of us. Attempts to react to this question
clearly demonstrate that the concept of Tswanadom has relegated some
members of this nation to a low and unacceptable status, economically, politi-
cally and culturally. For this reason, the democracy for which Botswana is well
known and respected is challenged. The orientation to view linguistic and
cultural diversity as a problem is counterproductive to democratic gains. The
option is to move quickly from overt assimilationist models to true pluralistic
models, in which both group rights and individual rights are guaranteed, and
democratic principles of representation are respected.
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Dr Lydia Nyati-Ramahobo,
Faculty of Education, University of Botswana, Private Bag 0022, Gaborone,
Botswana (ramaholn@mopipi.ub.bw).
Notes
1. The name of the country is Botswana, the people are Batswana, one person from
Botswana is a Motswana and the national language is Setswana. This formula for
prefixing applies to the eight Setswana speaking tribes, who are represented by their
paramount chiefs:
Note: The alternative prefix Ma- is used to demean the tribe. Languages spoken by
tribes in Categories 2 and 3 are considered minority languages.
2. A more detailed description of the ‘English only’ situation can be found in Kaplan and
Baldauf (in press).
3. A traditional meeting place where the chief hears cases, consults and informs his
people about development matters in the village.
4. Contribution from a participant at a symposium on ‘The Quality of Life in Botswana’
organised by the Botswana Society, 15–18 October 1996.
5. The name of the Chief is the same as the name of the Association.
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– Proficiency in the use of Setswana and English language as tools for effec-
tive communication, study and work
– an understanding of society, appreciation of culture and sense of citizen-
ship; etc. (p. 21)
Recommendation 32 [para. 5.5.13]
With respect to Junior Certificate curriculum,
(b) each student should take eight core subjects, namely, English, Setswana
Social Studies etc.
(d) in addition each student should select a minimum of two and a maximum of
three optional subjects. At least one of the subject selected should be from
each of the following groups of subjects:
(ii) Third language (p. 63)
Recommendation 46 [para. 5.10.33]
In order to improve the teaching of Setswana, the Commission recommends
that:
(a) teachers should be exposed to as many language teaching methods as possi-
ble so as to provide a variety for the teacher and the learner, with emphasis
on communicative approaches, and therefore make Setswana more interest-
ing as a subject (p. 26)
(b) information on job opportunities other than teaching, e.g. in the media,
professions and as translators, Court interpreters, and Parliamentary trans-
lators, should be more extensively disseminated. With some guidance
students at school level would then take their study of the language more
seriously, recognising opportunities for development in the language (p.
66)
(c) the University of Botswana’s Department of African Languages and Litera-
ture should play a leading role in guiding academic presentations in
Setswana and cooperate with the Faculty of Education in promoting the
teaching of Setswana.(p. 26)
Recommendation number 70 [para.7.6.9]
With respect to the development of a core curriculum for students in tertiary
education institutions, the Commission recommends the following compo-
nents:
(d) a module on Botswana’s culture and values, within the context of heteroge-
neous African cultures, noting the uniqueness and universals of Botswana’s
ways of life (p. 34)
Recommendation 100 [para. 10.5.9]
(c) the primary teacher training curriculum should prepare teachers to handle
adequately some of the innovative methods such as Breakthrough to
Setswana, Project Method, continuous Assessment, Guidance and Coun-
seling, Special Education, Remedial Teaching, especially to support
assessed progression (p. 45)
78 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
This monograph presents a detailed study on the language planning situation in Ma-
lawi. It explores the historical and political processes, as well as current practices of lan-
guage planning in the country. The discussion further reconstructs and demonstrates
how sociopolitical change has been perceived in Malawi and how this perception has
translated into language planning in education, the media and the general patterns of
language use. The role of prominent individuals, the language situation itself and the
sociopolitical issues serve as bases from which language planning in Malawi should be
understood. Taken together the resultant language planning practices (past and pres-
ent) present an interesting case study of pervasive ad hoc and reactive language plan-
ning based more on self-interest and political whim than research.
Introduction
Malawi is situated in central southern Africa and shares boundaries with Tan-
zania in the northeast, Zambia in the west and Mozambique in the southeast. The
country is approximately 900 kilometres in length and ranges in width from
80–160 kilometres. It has a total area of 118,486 square metres of which 94,276 is
land and the rest is taken up by Lake Malawi which is about 475 kilometres long
(Malawi National Statistical Office (MNSO), 1996: 1). Malawi is divided into
three main administrative areas: the Northern, the Central and the Southern Re-
gions. The country is further divided into 27 districts, 5 in the Northern Region, 9
in the Central Region and 13 in the Southern Region. Malawi has an estimated
population of 12 million1 of which 42% were literate in 1987 and 89% are located
in the rural areas.
Malawi is linguistically heterogeneous with 13 Malawian languages and their
numerous dialects being spoken within the country (Kayambazinthu, 1995). The
language situation in Malawi, like that in most other African countries, is charac-
terised by the asymmetrical coexistence of English, the official language;
Chichewa, the national language, and 12 other indigenous languages and their
varieties. This monograph provides a description of the language situation in
Malawi and its various dimensions including the dynamism of multilingualism.
The monograph focuses on the major languages, their spread, language planning
and language maintenance and prospects in Malawi. The monograph also draws
together a number of isolated surveys carried out in Malawi to elucidate the lan-
guage situation there. The interplay and use of both major and minor languages
are focused on at both macro and micro levels.
79
80 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
Indigenous languages
Chichewa (zone N, group 20)3
In its standard and non-standard variety, Chichewa has been used as the sole
national language since 1968, for both regional and national administrative, liter-
acy and cultural purposes in Malawi. It is the native language of 50.2% of
Malawians, both rural and urban (MNSO, 1966). A number of source dialectal
varieties are spoken, reflecting the geographical origins of the population and
their wave of migration connected to territorial expansion. The major dialects re-
cognised in Malawi are Chewa, Nyanja and Mang’anja.
According to Phiri et al. (1992: 608), the central and southern part of Malawi
was dominated by the Chewa speakers and their subgroups: the Mang’anja of
the lower Shire Valley and Nyanja around the southern end of Lake Malawi. The
northern area stretched on the western side of Lake Malawi from the
Tumbuka-Chewa marginal zone in the centre to the Songwe river in the north
was occupied by three language families: the Tumbuka group,
Ngonde-Nyakyusa and the Sukwa-Lambya-Nyiha group.
Historians (Alpers, 1968, 1972; Pachai, 1973; Phiri et al., 1992: 615) agree that
between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries AD, most of central and southern
Malawi was settled by Bantu speakers. These were at first a collective part of the
vast and widely settled community of the Maravi or Malawi peoples, now
known as Chewa, Nyanja and Mang’anja. The Maravi migrated from the
Luba-Lunda kingdoms of eastern Zaire and settled in a place called Mankhamba
(present-day Dedza district) in Malawi under their leader, Kalonga. Here they
fused with the early inhabitants, the proto-Chewa.
Historically, a wave of migration took place connected with lack of space and
territorial expansion. As noted by Pachai (1973: 8), terminologically, the various
dialect clusters of Chewa,4 the language they spoke, is better understood within
the framework of migration, economic power and the political organisation of
the Maravi Empire. What started off as Maravi ended up as Chewa, Mang’anja,
Nyanja, Chipeta, Nsenga, Chikunda, Mbo, Ntumba and Zimba, as a result of dis-
persion and decentralisation. For over half of the seventeenth century, the
Maravi established an empire built upon ivory trade to Kilwa and Mozambique
with the Portuguese and, later, the Arabs, and embarked on territorial expansion
that took them beyond central and southern Malawi into adjacent parts of Zam-
bia and Mozambique (Phiri et al., 1992). Phiri also claims that by the early
seventeenth century, their federation of states encompassed the greater part of
eastern Zambia, central and southern Malawi and northern Mozambique. Popu-
lation growth led to pressure on land, local quarrels, the desire to settle on one’s
own, and the urge to control or protect trade routes and goods (Pachai, 1973).
Consequently, the empire disintegrated, leading to several different established
subsidiary chiefdoms and kingdoms of related people speaking various dialects
of the Chewa cluster (Marwick, 1963; Pachai, 1972).
For example, Kalonga is said to have sent out a number of his relatives to es-
tablish settlements in various areas for political and economic reasons (Alpers,
1968). Mwase settled in an ivory rich district, Kasungu; Kaphwiti and Lundu set-
tled in the lower Shire Valley and Mkanda in eastern Zambia (now Chipata
District). All these tributary kings owed allegiance to the Paramount Kalonga
82 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
and paid tribute. However, the bond was later severed. For example, Undi left
for Mozambique territory and was by 1614 reported to be trading with the Portu-
guese. This reduced Kalonga’s position (Pachai, 1973: 8). External factors such as
trade, availability of arms and ammunition acquired from the Portuguese and
Arab traders, gold and ivory trading led to the strengthening of the power of the
tributary kings like Undi, Lundu and Mwase-Kasungu (Pachai, 1973).
Kabunduli, Chulu, Kaluluma and Kanyenda moved into the Tumbuka-Chewa
marginal areas creating a mixed sociolinguistic group of whom the Tonga of
northern Nkhota Kota and Nkhata Bay districts are the most obvious (Phiri et al.
1992: 622).
Wherever they moved, the Maravi called themselves by the geographical ar-
eas in which they settled, to distinguish themselves from other groups. For
instance, people from the chiefdom of Mkanda in Zambia referred to themselves
as Chewa, Kunda, Nsenga and Ambo; those of the southwestern lakeshore and
the Shire River as Nyanja (meaning people of the lake or people living along the
lake). Those of Undi and Mwase Kasungu who settled in the hinterlands of
Kasungu, Dowa, Ntchitsi, Mchinji, called themselves Chipeta (Chipeta means
tall grass or savanna). Those of Kaphwiti were known as Mang’anja. ‘These vari-
ous dialectal names were no more than regional or geographical designations of
people who belonged to the same cultural and language groups, later on devel-
oping distinct dialects’ (Schoffeleers, 1972: 96). Of these, the name Chewa
referred to the numerically strongest group (Marwick, 1963; Pachai, 1973), of
whom about 80% live in Malawi and the remaining 20% or so in Zambia and Mo-
zambique (Pachai, 1973: 6).
Schoffeleers (1972: 96), unlike other historians, maintains that the
Chewa-speaking people were never known collectively as Chewa or Maravi but
were known by two names: a specific one and a generic one, the latter being
Maravi. But what is clear from all historical accounts is that the name Maravi (not
Chewa) stood for an ethnic group or part of it. One would therefore disagree with
Chilipaine (1985: 3) who stated that all these groups were ethnically Chewa, be-
cause ethnohistorical evidence points to the fact that they were ethnically Maravi
but dialectally rather differentiated. Although the linguistic affiliation between
the Chewa and the Nyanja is still a matter of dispute as to who owns the lan-
guage, it is likely that Chewa ethnohistory has involved a cyclic alternation
between the three groups and Chewa dominance. There is also lack of consensus
regarding the name Mang’anja. Banda (1975) and Mchombo (n.d.) maintain that
it is a Portuguese corruption of Nyanja. The Portuguese encounter with South
African ethnic groups like the Ama Tchangane, Ama Xhosa led them under the
influence of Portuguese phonology, to velarise the palatal ny // to ng /ŋ/
thereby giving rise to a non-existent ethnic group Mang’anja, a people who were
no other than Chewa.
There is little evidence in support of this patriotic statement that needs to be
examined in the light of the available historical and oral evidence adduced by
Schoffeleers, who argues that:
we have some evidence in Portuguese documents of the 17th Century that
the present ethnic designations were already used at that time. The names
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 83
Nyanja and Mang’anja occur already, although it is not quite clear whether
they were also used as ethnic names. (1972: 6)
This statement makes more sense than Banda’s since the Mang’anja are
mainly found in the Shire Highlands and not the Lake Shore. Most likely they
called themselves by a different name like the rest. The dialects Chewa, Nyanja
and Mang’anja are still present in Malawi but not those of Ntumba, Mbo5 and
Zimba which can be found in Mozambique or Zambia (Henriksen, 1978: 249).
According to Pachai (1972), in Malawi these groups mixed with the Ngoni who
are mainly found in the areas these groups once occupied.
Tumbuka (Zone N, Group 20)
Tumbuka is a dominant ethnic and regional lingua franca in the northern part
of Malawi. Tumbuka was (1947–68) the northern regional language for educa-
tion and broadcasts until Dr Hastings Banda banned it in favour of Chichewa. It
has the status of a second language for most northerners (Kayambazinthu, 1995).
Tumbuka is broadly distributed in three of the five districts in the northern re-
gion and, according to the 1966 census, it was a language of 9% of the total
population. The origins and diversity of the language stem from areas of settle-
ment and Bryan (1959) identifies eight dialects: Tumbuka, Nkhamanga, Henga,
Phoka, Wenya, Fulirwa, Lakeshore and Senga.
The area that covers the Rumphi and Mzimba Districts and extends as far west
as the Luangwa valley in the modern Lundazi district of eastern Zambia also ex-
perienced a steady influx of Tumbuka migrants from 1700 to the middle 1800
(Vail, 1972; Phiri et al., 1992).6 Pachai (1973) suggests that the Tumbuka are the
oldest ethnic group in northern Malawi and were basically pastoral and
matrilineal people. According to Vail (1972), and Phiri et al. (1992) the Tumbuka
were organised into a loose confederation under their ethnic chief whose eco-
nomic and cultural life changed with the coming of traders under their leader
Mlowoka. For example, the Phoka inhabit the Nyika Plateau and the fringe lands
between the Plateau and the lake shore; the Nkhamanga group are found in the
Nkhamanga Plains, the Henga in the Henga Valley, the Wenya and Nthalire in
Chitipa District and the Fulirwa between Chitimba and the southern part of
Karonga. Below the Phoka are settled the Lakeshore people, so called because
they settled along Lake Malawi. Phiri et al. (1992: 612) further state that the
Nsenga, the present day inhabitants of Lundazi district, seem to have evolved
into a tribe as a result of interaction between Tumbuka groups and Luba-Lunda
immigrants from the west. Their language is akin to that of the Tumbuka with
whom they share clan names. Like the Maravi, the Tumbuka geographical settle-
ment also caused the present distinct dialects that are mutually intelligible.
In the 1780s Tumbuka economic and cultural life changed with the coming of
Mlowoka, who had knowledge and experience of external trade. He stayed in the
area and traded with locals in beads, cloth and ivory. Through economic power,
Mlowoka established a loose confederation under the Chikulamayembe dynasty
at Nkhamanga but his influence was confined to this area and the areas con-
trolled by his trading associates (Katumbi, Mwalweni, Jumbo and Mwamlowe)
(Vail, 1972).
84 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
also settled and established his political power over the Nyiha, west of Ulambya.
Phiri et al. inform us that the Mambwe and Namwanga linguistic groups mi-
grated into the Kameme chiefdom. The linguistic interaction between the
indigenous groups and the migrants clearly summarised by Phiri et al. (1992: 626)
who argue that:
the modern language situation reflects something about the numerical
strength of the various immigrant parties who founded chieftaincies as
well as the means by which they assumed power and later governed the
people. Cilambya and the language of Kameme are dialects of the indige-
nous Nyiha while Kyangonde and Kinyakyusa are dialects of the Ngulube
people’s language. In other words, the Mwaulambya and Kameme and
their followers were assimilated linguistically while in Ungonde and
Unyakyusa, the indigenous people were assimilated by the immigrants.
Modern Chisukwa is a dialect of Ndali (a linguistic group north of the
Songwe) understood by the Nyiha speakers and relatively easy to learn
[sic] by the Ngonde than Nyiha proper. Chisukwa thus forms a bridge be-
tween Nyiha and Ngonde languages.
What is interesting and worth noting is that Chitipa (where most of these lan-
guages are spoken) is the most linguistically heterogeneous district in Malawi.
86 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
ers (who belonged to the conquered group). Even during the march, Ngoni was
already a changed language through the accumulation of ethnic groups that
swelled their armies. The Nguni remained a minority and the captives, the ma-
jority. Vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar were all altered in turn by
various assimilated groups so that the characteristic Nguni clicks were dropped
and new vocabulary and prefixes adopted (Spear, 1972). Even though they re-
mained Ngoni ethnically, linguistically they became either Chewa or Tumbuka
and their languages had a significant impact on the languages they mixed with,
leading to distinct dialects. Their settlement patterns followed those of the con-
quered but their political structure and names remained (Mtenje & Soko, 1998).
Among the Tumbuka, Ngoni was retained for some time because of the Ngoni
policy of segregation, primarily by the older Ngoni, and in Emcisweni
(Mpherembe’s headquarters) Ngoni was retained well into the twentieth cen-
tury (Spear, 1972: 31).11 The language however, has undergone some
considerable changes.
Dialect modifications such as the gradual elimination of the clicks and the
substitution of ‘r’ for ‘l’, the double consonants ‘dl’ and ‘hl’ characteristic of
Nguni language were lost as well, pronoun forms of the verb were altered
and there was large scale borrowing of vocabulary from Tumbuka.
(Werner, 1906: 35)
Tumbuka gradually took over because of intermarriage, i.e. there were an in-
creasing number of Tumbuka mothers within Ngoni society (Kishindo, 1995;
Read, 1936). It is clear from Ngoni historiography (Elmslie, 1899; Fraser, 1914;
Read, 1956; Kishindo, 1995; Mtenje & Soko, 1998) that cultural dominance in core
areas other than language was still there. For example, the Ngoni Ingoma dance
and war gear, their paying of the bride price, patrilinealism and Ngoni ceremo-
nies were still their pride and have continued unabated (Mtenje & Soko, 1998).
Whilst they remained culturally Ngoni, linguistically they became Tumbuka.
The Ngoni language was basically dead and Donald Fraser (1914: 189) wrote:
‘There are large districts in which it is an unusual thing to find even an old Ngoni
who speaks the pure language of his fathers and one seldom hears it from the lips
of a young person’.
Apart from factors like intermarriage and minority group status, one can also
speculate that the Ngoni did not enforce their language on their subjects. For a
militant group as powerful and aggressive as the Ngoni not to enforce their lan-
guage on their captives is surprising. One probable explanation for not doing so
can be found in their lack of concern for and promotion of their language, cou-
pled with the tenacity of the Tumbuka language. One byproduct of the Ngoni
policy of segregation and lack of control over their subjects in the periphery was
the breakaway of the Tumbuka. One group settled at the end of Lake Malawi in
Karonga District where they dwell to this day, ‘an island of Tumbuka language
and culture in a sea of Ngonde people’ (Vail & White, 1989: 153).
Yao (Zone P, Group 20)
The Yao form the third largest ethnic group in Malawi and their language was
spoken by 13% of the total population in 1966. Yao dialectal variation also stems
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 89
country. Lomwe historiography points to the fact that they migrated in small
groups and their migration dates back to about 1760 (Rashid, 1978) even though
their main impact was not felt until after 1895 (Vail & White, 1989: 167). The
Lomwe derive their name from Lomwe Hill in Mozambique and they are akin to
the Lolo (Boerder, 1984; Soka, 1953). Nurse (1972), from lexicostatistics, suggests
that the Lolo were the forebears of the Lomwe. Soka also records that the Lomwe,
who today inhabit Zomba, Mulanje, Thyolo, Chiradzulu and Machinga Districts
belonged to five dialectal subdivisions: Muhipiti, Makua, Meeto, Nyamwelo and
Mihavani. Another group, the Khokhola (people of the woodlands) crossed the
Ruo River and settled in Mulanje, whilst another section, the Athakwani (named
after a hill) also settled in the same area.
Rashid (1978), who did research on the relationship between one branch of the
Lomwe, the Mbewe, and the Yao and Chewa, argues that there was a great deal
of interaction between the Yao, Lomwe and Nyanja contributing to a multiethnic
society, primarily Nguru12 and Nyanja in origin among whom the Yao language
was gaining popularity. Through interethnic interaction and the ivory trade, the
Lomwe adopted the
language of a numerically very small but prestigious trading elite … It may
have been an advantage in state building and assimilation that the lan-
guage being adopted was not a lingua franca of one of the major ethnic
groups … its use is linked to economic advantage and prestige. (Rashid,
1978: 20)
Even though this was the case in the early nineteenth century, later Lomwe
immigrants are generally treated as late arrivals in the Shire Highlands where the
Mang’anja and Yao had a strong foothold. This probably arose because they
came in not as militants or traders, like the other intruders, but as settlers in
search of land. The Lomwe settled in the Shire Highlands under the terms of
Thangata (a feudal system of labour in exchange for land) to both Yao lords and
later on British planters. The Lomwe provided a ready and permanent labour
supply under this system. Acculturation for the Lomwe like the other immi-
grants was that of language shift either to Yao or Chewa, as Murray (1932: 56)
observes:
The Anguru who have settled in Malawi are rapidly losing their tribal and
social characteristics. Of the children born in the protectorate, a few boys or
girls have their teeth filed and almost none of the girls have their lips
pierced for the lip ring. Most girls later adopt what are accepted as Yao
markings and wear a nose button and intermarry among the Mang’anja,
Anyanja and Yao. The language readily adopts Mang’anja words, some-
times in a more or less modified form … a verb within the Lomwe o instead
of ku for the infinitive and with the stress in the wrong place. But the major-
ity of the younger generation speak Nyanja or Shire Highland Yao with
considerable fluency.
From the Lomwe account it can be argued that the Lomwe were not invaders
like the Yao and Ngoni; rather they settled and lived as subordinates to their
lords, a position that has had and is having serious consequences for their lan-
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 91
guage and self-esteem. Culturally, the Chewa, Lomwe and Yao are matrilineal
and matrilocal whilst the Sena are the only patrilineal group in the south.
Some observations
This section has emphasised the emergence of multilingualism as a manifesta-
tion of historical events and the nature of society in Malawian history. From the
foregoing historical background we can trace trends of sociolinguistic change.
The sisteenth–eighteenth centuries were dominated by the Maravi or Chewa in
the southern and central regions of Malawi whilst other indigenous groups such
as the Tumbuka and other smaller groups dominated the northern part of the
country. One should look at this period of language contact as one of integration
and synthesis between the immigrants and the earlier inhabitants. Among the
immigrants themselves, it was a period of peaceful coexistence and stability,
with little language assimilation or language shift.
The nineteenth century Malawi was economically and politically dominated
by intruders (Yao, Ngoni, and British) who subjugated the indigenous ethnic
groups. What is interesting sociolinguistically is that prior to the advent of British
rule, there was a trend toward language maintenance by the indigenous groups,
due to their being numerically stronger, and towards language shift among the
intruders regardless of their political, military and economic power, due to their
being numerically small. Factors such as the numerical size of the group, inter-
marriages, the nature of migration, the attitude of the immigrants and the
friendliness of the indigenous groups can be put forward as possible causes of
language shift. However, the continued existence of most of these immigrant lan-
guage groups shows that this was a period of integration without total or
complete synthesis. There are core areas where Yao, Lomwe, and a few Ngoni
can still be found and their effect on Chewa or Tumbuka dialects is evident.
Apart from language shift, we can also trace the development of lingua
francas, that is, languages that were adopted and used for purposes of inter-eth-
nic communication. These were mainly Chewa, Tumbuka and Yao, either
because they were indigenous and demographically favourably distributed
(Chewa and Tumbuka) or because of the economic advantage and the prestige
associated with them (Yao). The development of distinct regional languages,
Chewa in the central and southern regions, Tumbuka in the northern region and
Yao in the southern region can be observed; as can the development of geograph-
ical dialects of the various languages.
The coming of the British and the need for streamlining administration, lan-
guage for education and evangelism ushered in a different language — English.
This forms a different period altogether. Colonialism created and confined Ma-
lawi within its present borders and artificially separated linguistic groups from
each other, including the Chewa in eastern Zambia and western Mozambique
from those of Malawi, and the Yao and Lomwe in Malawi from those of Mozam-
bique. The Tumbuka from eastern Zambia were also cut off from those of
Malawi. The British invasion, unlike that of the African groups, was complete
and led to total European control over the country and contributed greatly to the
rise and spread of lingua francas in Malawi and the stratification between Eng-
lish and indigenous languages.
Conceptual framework
The phenomenon of language spread is defined by Cooper (1982: 6) as an in-
crease, over time in proportion to a communication network that adopts a given
language or variety for a given communication function. A distinction is also
made between increase of spread in number of speakers and number of func-
tions. This distinction is important in discussing Malawian languages with few
speakers but having a wider communication function. As stated by Von Gleich
(1994: 77), language policy spread has to be interpreted as a policy by a state or
government that aims at fostering the spread of a specific language within and
outside its boundaries in terms of who adopts what, when, why and how. Lan-
guages spread for a number of reasons, e.g. military conquest and religious
missionary activities (Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997: 67; see also Djité, 1988). These au-
thors have also observed that language spread can be a natural occurrence even
though language planners make it an explicit goal (see Ammon, 1992). In lan-
guage planning terms, language spread is the attempt to increase the number of
speakers, often at the expense of another language(s) leading to language shift
(e.g. Wardaugh, 1987). However, language spread can also be seen as an un-
planned language planning phenomenon (Baldauf, 1994). The discussion that
follows attempts to contextualise the rise of Chichewa and Tumbuka in Malawi
and explains the reasons for their spread. In discussing the spread of these two
languages the role of language-in-education policy in Malawi is central to the ar-
gument of both planned and unplanned language spread.
do not enter secondary school. For example, in 1996 the total enrolment in stan-
dard 1 was 2,887,107 pupils. Only 2% (N = 57,812) of these pupils made it to
secondary school and 0.13% (N = 3872) continued to the University (Basic Educa-
tion Statistics, 1996). Primary education is essential for one to climb the
educational pyramid and enter the ‘modern sector’. However, access to educa-
tion and the efficient passage of a pupil through the system also depends partly
on levels of regional development or on stratification factors such as class, ethnic-
ity and other reasons. Important issues affecting access and wastage include: sex,
household standard of living, parental education, occupation, income and pov-
erty (Welsh, 1985). Despite the educational growth rate,16 the government does
not provide equal opportunities for education for all its citizens in secondary
schools.
If differences in access and wastage in the primary and secondary cycle exist,
these should have direct consequences on the basic economic differences be-
tween regions, districts, communities, classes, ethnic growth and all other social
variables used to differentiate between groups in society. Conversely, this too
will affect people’s language learning and use.
Apart from regional disparities, the ratios also depend on whether one lives in
urban or rural areas. Those in the urban areas are at an advantage since
teacher–pupil ratios and education facilities are better than in the rural areas. The
pupils in Zomba, Mzuzu, Lilongwe and Blantyre had a teacher–pupil ratio close
to the 1:70 compared to the rural ratio of up to 1:203 (Basic Education Statistics,
1996: 20–21).
If educational statistics are reliable, one could argue that by the time pupils
complete the primary level, literacy in Chichewa has been established. Also,
many people in the north and other areas where literacy is high will have learnt
Chichewa. However, if those who drop out at the primary school level integrate
into their various linguistic groups (as is the case), the level of competence or ac-
quisition of Chichewa would be difficult to determine. They may lapse back into
their own languages and lose competence in the national and official languages
they have acquired at school, but do not use at home. This is coupled with a lesser
motivation for learning the national language which may not be as profitable as
English. Also, the nature of the system creates a small minority (3.4%) of an elite
group of urban dwellers (Malawi National Statistical Office [Preliminary Re-
port], 1987: 2) who speak English and or other European languages with varying
degrees of competence. Adult illiteracy rates stand at 58% for women and 28%
for men (World Development Report, 1997).
private or designated schools. Whilst the government controls the language pol-
icy in the former two, the latter category formulate their own policies and English
is the medium of communication.
In the preschools, there is no official language policy regulating language use.
In practice, however, three categories of language use can be identified. The ma-
jority of preschools use vernacular languages plus a bit of English. The second
largest group adopts a bilingual policy and use both English and a vernacular
language. The smallest number uses English exclusively for both teaching and as
a medium of communication. Rural preschools are likely to use more vernacular
than English whilst semi-urban preschools tend to adopt a bilingual policy and
the elitist preschools use only English, both as a subject and medium of commu-
nication.
In the primary schools, the current policy on paper stipulates that from Stan-
dard 1 to Standard 4 all teaching should be done in vernacular languages
prevalent in the area except in the two subjects, English and Chichewa which are
supposed to be taught in those languages respectively. From Standard 5 to Stan-
dard 8 all teaching is to be done in English except when teaching Chichewa.
English becomes the sole language of instruction from Standard 5 up to univer-
sity level. The number of hours devoted to the languages varies according to the
prestige attached to the language. The number of hours assigned to each lan-
guage is presented in Table 2.
Entrance into university demands a credit in English. All teaching is done in
English except for French, Latin and Chichewa. English is also compulsory in the
first year, that is, all first year students have to take an English for Academic Pur-
poses skills course for four hours per week in the five constituent colleges of the
University of Malawi, and must pass English in order to proceed to the next year.
Table 2 illustrates that Malawi adopts a bilingual language policy in education
and that as the students progress into the upper years the role of English in-
creases and that of Chichewa diminishes.
Source: Personal communication with the Controller of Programmes, Radio One, Malawi
Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) 22 January 1998.
tively reaching the masses (which are largely illiterate) with important
socioeconomic messages. However, it is presumed under the monolithic belief
that most Malawians understand Chichewa, which is not true (Kamwendo, 1994;
Ntonya, 1998), that there need only be limited use of other Malawian languages.
The local newspapers also typify bilingual language usage in Malawi (see
Chimombo & Chimombo, 1996) but, unlike radio broadcasts, English is the dom-
inant language for publications. The data in Table 4 reveals that although some
newspapers publish in both Chichewa and English, English is the dominant lan-
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 101
guage and only those papers or sections of the papers which are geared to rural
population are produced in Chichewa and sometimes a bit of Tumbuka and Yao.
The two factors which account for the dominance of English vis-à-vis Chichewa
are affordability of the papers and literacy. Newspaper costs are unaffordable for
an average Malawian. Secondly, English dominates the spheres of elite Malawi-
ans’ everyday life in reading and writing. Most educated Malawians prefer to
read and write in English than in Chichewa or any other vernacular language be-
cause English (and not the vernaculars) is the language in which grammar and
writing are thoroughly and formally taught in school (Kayambazinthu, 1995).
Out of all the papers, only two papers are predominantly in the vernacular, a
government paper and a church paper aimed at disseminating information in the
rural areas for free. As in Samoa (Baldauf, 1990: 261) the data show that the print
media in Malawi foster English language usage.
The predominance of English can also be seen in other media areas such as
films and the availability in large numbers of books in English in the libraries and
bookshops. The illiteracy rate and the affordability of the papers necessitate that
newspapers cannot be a medium of general information and dissemination of
political ideas among the masses. Both the print and electronic media in Malawi
Chinyanja over other Malawian languages stems from these nineteenth century
practices to simplify the country’s linguistic heterogeneity and administrative ef-
ficiency by applying different horizontal and vertical modes of communication.
Missionary penetration itself also shaped the spread of Chinyanja and
Tumbuka, and their usage. That is, the missionary preference for Chinyanja in
the south and Tumbuka in the north actually organised their spread over areas
where they had never been spoken before and now had to be acquired as second
languages. The emergence of Tumbuka was entirely triggered by the
Livingstonia Mission. As agents and settlers in the northern part of Malawi, they
used, imposed and spread Tumbuka as the mandatory language of colonial edu-
cation in the northern part of Malawi.
guages within their spheres of influence for evangelism and education. For
example, the Universities Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) in the Southern Re-
gion used Nyanja and Yao and so did the Livingstonia Mission Society (LMS).
When LMS moved to the northern part of Malawi, they were hoping to use
Nyanja and English for two reasons: (1) Nyanja was the language in which scrip-
tural writing had already been produced; and (2) English was the language of
‘the high’ culture (Elmslie to Laws, 1892; see also Rahman, 1995). Thus, as early as
1901 Nyanja language was regarded as ‘a common ground or lingua franca, en-
riched by such words as may be adopted from other languages’ on grounds of its
literary heritage (Jack, 1901: 34). Nyanja was already being used by the planters,20
the government and the people themselves in the south. However, the situation
in the north was different because of the decline of Ngoni and the rise of
Tumbuka. The mission accepted the situation and abandoned the policy of using
Nyanja as a neutral way of overcoming linguistic disunity in the north (Turner,
1933; Vail, 1981).
The systematic reduction of Malawian languages to writing using the Roman
Alphabet, which started with the Christian missionaries, contributed greatly to
the development of some languages. This had the effect of elevating the status of
some languages which were ultimately chosen vis-à-vis others. As Doke (1961a:
52) notes:
apart from some elementary school readers, catechisms and hymn books,
the development of Bantu literature in this period was confined to the
translations of scripture. The Bible translation work … is of immense im-
portance. Just as the English vernacular translation of the Bible by
Coverdale in 1535 was of inestimable value in the ultimate standardisation
of literary English, so have the early Bantu vernacular translations laid the
foundations of literature in a number of these languages.
The translation of the Bible or parts of it using a phonetic or Roman alphabet
were done in Nyanja (western and eastern), Ngoni, Yao, Nkhonde/Nyakyusa,
Tumbuka, Lomwe, Nyiha, Tonga. Apart from Bible translations, a number of
publications also came out during this period (see Kishindo, 1990, 1994;
Kayambazinthu, 1995). Both Kishindo and Kayambazinthu note that major lin-
guistic analyses were done on Nyanja, Yao and Tumbuka in that order. This
language development had a significant impact on the status of these languages.
Since different missionary bodies translated the Bible or parts of it into dialects
according to where they were settled, coordinated efforts began towards a uni-
fied dialect of Nyanja.21 In 1900, a joint Bible Translation Committee was formed
with the purpose of coming up with a Union Version of Nyanja that could be
used by all missionary groups. The committee chose to unify Chewa and
Mang’anja dialects and this resulted in the publication of Matthew in 1901, the
New Testament in 1906 and the whole Bible in 1922. A revised version of this Bi-
ble was printed in 1936 (Doke, 1961b; Heine, 1970: 62). It is clear that different
mission groups promoted different dialects: the UMCA elevated the
lesser-known dialect Nyanja (eastern or Likoma dialect), the Dutch Reformed
Church (DRC) Chewa and the Blantyre Mission (BM) elevated the popular dia-
lect Mang’anja.22
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 105
sion), and they were ready to experiment with a new one.24 The Ngoni, on the
other hand, invited the mission to stay in their land for political and economic
reasons but at the same time feared the possible corrosive power of the word of
God upon their traditional military ethics (McCracken, 1972). Instead of sending
their children to school, they only sent the children of their Tumbuka slaves (Vail,
1981; Vail & White, 1989). Through their embrace of an education which had a
substantial English language component, the Henga were well on their way to
developing an educated petty bourgeoisie with values shaped by Victorian mis-
sionary teaching and examples (Vail & White 1989: 154). The Henga became the
teachers in the local schools, and by 1909 Tumbuka was being used in local
schools in the district, having largely displaced other languages (McCracken,
1972: 118). By 1914 the use of Tumbuka was widespread (through imposition) in
the mission’s sphere of influence, apart from the Tonga who continued to use
their own language.
As the Tumbuka embraced education, their language gained respectability;
and as the early elites with new educational opportunities, their language could
no longer be seen as the language of the slaves only. Rather it was the language of
a rapidly expanding group of educated and progressive people (Vail & White,
1989: 154). As Vail & White have noted, the mission’s press confirmed the status
of the Tumbuka language by pouring out thousands of texts in Tumbuka. For the
Tumbuka, this was a psychological symbol of their rising respectability and
self-esteem, whilst for the Ngoni, it was their adopted language within a larger
context of competing languages. During the political struggle, Tumbuka became
the northern regional language (Vail, 1981).
However, the situation in the central and southern part of Malawi was differ-
ent: education was less effective. In the south the planters wanted to run their
estates or their workers without government intervention or missionary interfer-
ence. Consequently, missionary work was barred from the estates and the
network of schools that were established in the north did not develop in the south
(Vail & White, 1989: 167). Among the Yao Islam became the main blocking factor.
As Alpers (1972: 175) observes: ‘the Yao embraced Islam because they regarded it
as the most amenable way of modernising their societies, especially of acquiring
literacy for their people … every Muslim village had its own Koranic schools’. Is-
lam in Africa had first offered a way of advance beyond rigid tribalism and still
provided a possible alternative for the African who sought some status and dig-
nity vis-à-vis the Europeans (Shepperson & Price, 1958: 407). Kishindo (1994: 133)
argues that the development of schools and consequently of Yao as a lingua
franca, unlike that of Tumbuka, was a consequence of complex and shifting atti-
tudes of the colonial government influenced by Christian missionary
antagonism to Islam.25 While this is true to a greater extent (especially the period
Kishindo quotes (1912) and thereabout),26 this does not explain the favourable at-
titude the government had towards the Yao which will be shown later in this
monograph. It can be argued that the linguistic environment itself in the south-
ern part of Malawi, coupled with the early development of Nyanja, did not allow
for the development of a competing lingua franca since Nyanja had for a long pe-
riod already occupied that position.27 As observed by Greenberg (1972: 201), once
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 107
Nyanja was the dominant language and a lingua franca, the government chose
Nyanja as their language for administration and promoted it through a series of
publications.30 Thus, Nyanja became the official language of the police and the
army. Using early-educated Nyanja elites as agents, the language was carried to
other areas where it was not spoken in both Malawi and Zambia (Heine, 1970: 61)
and Zimbabwe.31 The Nyanja acted as intermediaries between Europeans and
Africans. ‘On account of lack of skilled workers in the neighbouring territories to
serve as clerks, overseers, artisans and specialists, the Nyanja soon spread them-
selves into Zambia and Zimbabwe, taking the language beyond its borders’
(Heine, 1970: 61).
The government also required officers of the colonial agricultural, veterinary
and forest service to have a thorough knowledge of the language for administra-
tion. The colonial government reinforced the significant position of Nyanja by
making it a language for examinations in the civil service. All new entrants to
these posts were to write a higher standard examination in Chinyanja as a prece-
dent to the first efficiency bar or proscribed bonus (Kittermaster, 1936a: 4).
Chinyanja also received international recognition when it was included in the
syllabi of the Cambridge School Certificate for both Nyasaland (Malawi) and
Northern Rhodesia now Zambia in the late 1940s: ‘Two of the vernaculars,
Chibemba and Chinyanja, have been accepted for about twenty years as subjects
for the Cambridge School Certificate Examinations’ (Mwanakatwe, 1968: 21).
Chinyanja was also being studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies of
the University of London using Malawians as informants (Kishindo, 1990: 65).
Thus Nyanja became widespread as an important lingua franca in both Zambia
and Malawi due to the government policy.
Another language promoted by the government (but not so much as a national
or regional lingua franca) was Yao. Rashid (1978) argues that the interaction be-
tween the Yao, Lomwe (Mbewe group) and Nyanja contributed to a multiethnic
society which was primarily Nguru and Nyanja in origin, among whom the Yao
language was gaining popularity. Through this interethnic interaction and ivory
trade, the Lomwe adopted
the language of a numerically very small but prestigious trading elite … It
may have been an advantage in state building and assimilation that the lan-
guage being adopted was not a lingua franca of one of the major ethnic
groups … its use is linked to economic advantage and prestige. (Rashid,
1978: 20)
Thus the rise of Yao can be traced to trade. Politically, the British embraced the
most traditional and conservative chiefs, the Yao, as instruments of indirect rule
(Vail & White, 1989: 170). These two authors also argue that the colonialists for-
mulated ethnic theories and stereotypes of African differentiation. This is
substantiated by the favourable attitude towards the Yao unlike the other ethnic
groups; while to the whites the Lomwe were ‘gangsters, irregular soldiers, cring-
ing-starving unclothed refugees … drunken, slothful and vicious … They were
candid bandits, their prey human flesh and blood and having gorged eyes like
hyenas, they then returned to Manguru for the most part replete’ (Nyasaland
Times, 13 July and 6 August 1942). The Nguru (Lomwe) ‘are represented among
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 109
the idle and criminal classes to a disproportionate extent’ whilst the ‘Yaos are in-
telligent and quick, making excellent servants, while as soldiers, they have
proved of inestimable value; they also speak perhaps the finest of all Central Af-
rican languages’ (Murray, 1922: 55–7, 95). Compared to the Yao the Nyanja ‘are
industrious, quiet and peace loving people but have not the physique nor the
brains of the Yao nor the agricultural perseverance of the Nguru … He is easily
impressionable’ (Murray, 1932: 83). These stereotyped images of Lomwe, Yao
and Nyanja were to remain powerful, particularly of the Lomwe, into the early
1980s (Vail & White, 1989: 173) and contributed greatly to the decline of the lan-
guage.
Vail and White argue that after the war official support for the political and
economic authority of the Yao ruling elite continued to grow and this further led
to the growth of an alliance between the British administrators and the Yao. As a
mark of respect for a people with real history, in marked contrast to other local
Africans, Abdallah’s The Yaos was published in both Yao and English by the Gov-
ernment Press, with the aim of writing ‘a book that would tell all about the
customs of we Yaos, so that we remind ourselves whence we sprang and our be-
ginnings as a nation’ (Abdallah, 1919: Preface). Note that the Yao looked at
themselves as a nation within a multilingual protectorate. This documentation
was certainly not a consolidation of personal power base as Kishindo (1994)
might suggest.
ported the people, it also stood to gain from the policy economically. They did
not have to publish new books or train new teachers. So for both economic and
educational reasons Tumbuka stayed.
The advent of colonialism, the introduction of Christianity and education had
the effect of elevating the status of two indigenous languages as official lan-
guages. From a sociolinguistic point of view, this also changed the existing
culture and the value of these languages vis-à-vis the rest. Among these lan-
guages, Nyanja was an important lingua franca that dominated colonial
administration for vertical communication, setting an important trend as urbani-
sation developed, coupled with the fact that industries were located in the
Nyanja areas. English continued to be an important educational and official lan-
guage for horizontal and vertical communication and therefore a language of
high educational attainment that consequently led to better employment oppor-
tunities.
Exploring the relationship between the imported language and Nyanja, Eng-
lish had more prestige than Nyanja. Thus language stratification had already
taken root. Firstly, through the attitude of the whites themselves who looked at
their language as a language of high culture, implying that the indigenous lan-
guages and their cultures were less prestigious. Thus English became the
language of higher education, parliament and law, of the elite, and in general of
superiority and power. Secondly, as the indigenes themselves attained educa-
tion, the practice was perpetuated as they looked down upon themselves and
their culture in favour of the foreign language and culture. As Roscoe (1977: 4)
has argued:
Colonial conditions produced a situation whereby functional literacy in a
European language for all practical purposes came to be equated with the
ability to speak English. As a result, the African was deliberately made to
look upon his language as ‘primitive’ and to look at the knowledge of Eng-
lish as the golden means of breaking out of the old peasant pattern into the
money economy and white collar comfort of the coloniser.
Thus, from the colonial times Nyanja and other languages were a stepping
stone to the ultimate goal of acquiring English. When Nyasaland (Malawi)
gained independence in 1964, the country inherited that colonial policy.
during Banda’s era was handled under the Chichewa Board which he estab-
lished in 1972 and mandated to look into the expansion of Chichewa and its
purification, befitting its role as a national language in Malawi (see Chichewa
Board 1984 Malawi Congress Party Convention Fliers Ref. No. CD/4/25/104).
The Board was set up with the aim of:
• providing a new Chichewa dictionary (see A brief history of the Chichewa
Board (1970–71) Ref. No. ADM/1/40:1) to replace the existing ones which
were inadequate not only because they were compiled by non-native
speakers but because they were unrepresentative since they were preoccu-
pied with the Mang’anja dialect;
• providing guidance to language users in education, media and publishing;
• encouraging as well as carrying out research work with the aim of stand-
ardising the description of Chichewa, the results of which would be
reflected in the media publishing and the materials used in the educational
institutions (A brief history of the Chichewa Board 1970–1971: 1; Kishindo,
1990: 67).
The reform process during Banda’s era can be likened to the Turkish
(Dogançay-Aktuna, 1995) and French Academy views of language. In Malawi,
however, unlike in Turkey, it was not religious factors, but rather political, as
well as Banda’s personal preferences that prevailed. Reform took the shape of
purification and the removal of all words that were not in Kasungu Chewa, the
Chichewa that Banda spoke. Banda saw language as an integral part of national
building and elevating Chichewa to become the national language was equated
with the unification of the diverse Malawian population. At the same time Banda
did not believe in authentication of other Malawian languages.
Banda’s interest in Chichewa is traced back to 1937, when he acted as an infor-
mant to Mark Hannah Watkins who published A Grammar of Chichewa, a Bantu
language of British Central Africa in 1937.33 Banda’s continued interest is also seen
in the number of lectures he delivered in the early to mid-1970s (1972–1976) at
Chancellor College, University of Malawi, on various aspects of the language
(see Banda, 1975). Banda, who was the ‘highest authority on Chichewa matters’
(Kishindo, 1990: 67), took a purist attitude to language preservation or reform.
‘Chinyanja would first have to be standardised into a real Chinyanja, a real
Chichewa’ as it had been spoken in his youth and was still spoken in the villages
of the central region. He did not want the anglicised ‘Chi-mission’ or
‘Chi-Heaven or Chi-planter’ which was currently in the town’ (Hansard, 1963:
844). Thus the ‘correct’ form of Chichewa was that of the Chewa dialect under-
stood by him as opposed to the popular Mang’anja dialect of the southern region.
He stressed it in his speeches and public Bible readings. As Vail (1981: 147) has
observed:
the message in the late 1960s and 1970s was clear. The Chewa people and
the Chewa culture was the core of modern Malawi by right of being the
most ancient and least compromised by colonialism, and Malawi culture
would be considered synonymous with Chewa culture.
Like Turkish language reform, Malawian language reform was centralised
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 115
and privilege. The dominance and limited access to English from the colonial
times to the present has created an elite group.
The use of English in Malawi can be conceptualised on a proficiency contin-
uum. At one extreme of the continuum are members of the small intellectual
Malawian elite who have received their formal education to university level or
other higher levels of education. Their proficiency in English is near native
(Kayambazinthu, 1994).34 According to my 1992 data these elites maintain and
regularly use their knowledge of English in their professional environments,
where they typically occupy the higher ranks of the political, administrative and
academic institutions. At the other extreme of the proficiency continuum are the
completely unschooled, who do not use English at all or have limited knowledge
of English in the form of word expressions or trade and joking phrases used by il-
literates, especially the vendors at markets and by some comedians.
A wide range of proficiency marks the area between the two extremes.
Codeswitching and borrowing in the form of words or phrases is common
(Kayambazinthu, 1994, 1998). Since level of education is an important correlate to
the learning of English in Malawi (Kayambazinthu, 1994), the education figures
given earlier in the paper are indicative of an education system with a very high
drop out that gives rise to this lack of access to high proficiency in English. Girls are
particularly susceptible under this system. The effects of these historical gender-re-
lated asymmetries are seen in men having higher proficiency and use of English
than women (Kayambazinthu, 1994). From experience, there is a general outcry in
Malawi on the gradual decline of standards and level of expression in English as evi-
denced by data in Table 5. Most employing organisations complain about the
students’ standard of expression as do University of Malawi external examiners’ re-
ports. The causes of this drop in standards may be attributed to the education system
itself, lack of resources (textbooks) and the high pupil–teacher ratio.
With respect to the population’s English usage patterns, Kayambazinthu
(1994) reports that the number of households in which English served as the ex-
clusive means of interaction was negligible (2%), even though use increased with
codeswitching (14%) in the home. One would therefore argue that English has a
very minor role to play in the home context where the Malawian languages flour-
ish. Although the spread of English is confined to the few elites, its functional
spread and importance in Malawi cannot be denied.
As already argued, English dominates Malawians’ reading and writing prac-
tices, as well as through codeswitching or codemixing. In the 1968 Constitution,
English was identified as the country’s official language. As an official language,
English is confined to the institutional, formal and written patterns of interac-
tion. At the level of horizontal communication, English is the medium of
interaction in all legislative, administrative and judicial institutions in Malawi. In
the legislative assembly, English is the medium of communication for debates
and speeches in the Malawian parliament, making it difficult for those whose
proficiency is low to fully and meaningfully participate in the debate. It is also the
only language in which the constitution of Malawi and all other legal texts are
written. At the administrative level, all written correspondence between officials
as well as oral contacts in formal contexts such as in meetings and the like, are in
English (Kayambazinthu, 1994). In the judicial system, all laws and decrees, as
well as written reports, prosecutions and trials are in English. Overall, all forms
of horizontal communication at an institutional level are typically the domains of
English. At the formal socioeconomic and political decision making level, Eng-
lish is the exclusive language of government matters, only to be abandoned
when disseminating the information to the masses. By virtue of its confinement
English is not a language of mass communication but of power and prestige,
hence its limited spread but crucial role in the running of the country. Table 6 in-
dicates the domains of official language use during Banda’s era.
English is the main language of the court beyond the lower courts. In the mag-
istrates courts and high court, interpretation services for people who do not
understand English is available. All laws, statutes, decrees, directives, rules and
regulations, contracts and documents pertaining to them are written in English,
making them inaccessible to the average Malawian and empowering the elite.
Kishindo (1998) observes, now they are dying a natural death at least within the
Ministry of Education programmes.
The foregoing discussion has contextualised the spread of Chichewa and Eng-
lish within colonial and neocolonial practices. The dissemination of Chichewa
can be seen as a deliberate or explicit policy to promote and spread the language,
using education and the mass media as implementation agents. The Kamuzu
Banda phase shows that direct, forceful and unambiguous decisions were made
about the language questions without proper consultation (surveys, etc.) or
guidance and evaluation of the programme. For fear of its inadequacies in plan-
ning, evaluation of the policy was guarded and undemocratic. Amendments to
the educational policy, broadcasting, etc., are clear examples. There was also a
deliberate and active denigration of repression of the development of other lan-
guages apart from Chichewa (e.g. see the mandate for establishing the Chichewa
Board and Chichewa Department at Chancellor College), hence their restricted
use and spread. This denigration has resulted in language shift, especially
among the Yao and Lomwe, as evidenced by the failure of their youth to acquire
proficiency in these languages (see Kayambazinthu, 1989/90, 1994, 1995). The
Banda era was also characterised by the neglect of ‘open’ research into Malawi’s
rich multilingual and multicultural heritage. The study of other Malawian lan-
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 119
guages was hampered and neglected. Also the teaching of these languages as
second languages was prohibited and English which is an exclusive second lan-
guage was promoted. The development of Chichewa into a neutral lingua franca
was hampered by the purist attitude prescribed by Kamuzu Banda who saw the
Chichewa of Kasungu as the model Chichewa or the standard variety. Whilst a
standard dialect needs to emerge, studies have to be done to establish it.
Chichewa needs to be allowed to continue borrowing from other languages in
Malawi to broaden its base. The policy decisions made during the Banda phase,
though explicit, deliberate and to some extent practical, were politically directed
and representative of particular political positions and cultural values of a partic-
ular ethnic group, the Chewa. The introduction of other languages on the radio
has come about only because of the current language policy in Malawi that forms
the basis for the discussion in the next section.
May 1994 through a multi-party general election. Their policy making has been
ad hoc and reactive. On 25 June 1994 the president directed that Tumbuka be rein-
troduced on the radio without prior identification of resources and training of
personnel (Kishindo, 1998). Similarly, on 15 November 1996 the presidential di-
rective to introduce Yao, Lomwe and Sena for news broadcast on MBC radio also
preceded personnel training, as was evident in the failure of a Yao newsreader to
read the news.36 On 13 September 1997 the president, at a political rally in Nkhata
Bay, directed the introduction of Tonga on the radio upon a request from Chief
Fukamapiri (a Tonga).
On 31 July 1995, a cabinet directive dissolved the Chichewa Board and re-
placed it with the Centre for Language Studies (CLS) which came into operation
on 1 April 1996. The directive was implemented by the Ministry of Education and
Culture and the Department of Statutory Corporations that mandated the Uni-
versity of Malawi, Chancellor College establish a Centre for local Malawian
languages. The Centre was mandated with the responsibility of promoting and
developing Malawian languages. The Centre’s objectives are:
• to establish orthographic principles of Malawian languages;
• to develop descriptive grammars for Malawian languages;
• to compile lexicons of Malawian languages;
• to promote and preserve Malawian languages
• to teach various languages of socioeconomic and political relevance to Ma-
lawi;
• to provide translation, interpretation and editing services and to promote
research in language studies.
(Chancellor College ‘Proposal for the establishment of a Centre for
Language Studies’ Ref. No. CC/2/1/3/1)
The Centre therefore provides research and consultancies in both Malawian
and relevant foreign languages such as English, German, Portuguese and Span-
ish.37 Apart from this, the Centre also offers services such as translation,
interpretation, editing, and conducting short courses in both Malawian and
non-Malawian languages in collaborating with foreign research centres. It is
doubtful that the Centre will be able to fulfil its mandate given budget cuts and
the irregular funding it gets (Deputy Director of CLS, 1998, personal communica-
tion).
The introduction of all these languages can be accounted for by the new politi-
cal orientation or Zasintha political philosophy. Kishindo (1998: 264–5) who
believes that the introduction of Tumbuka was for political expediency rather
than serious linguistic concerns, questions the introduction of a minority lan-
guage such as Tumbuka, which ranked fourth in the 1966 census, instead of the
elevation of Lomwe or Yao which ranked second and third respectively. Accord-
ing to Kishindo (1998) the introduction of Tumbuka could only be justified on the
basis that Muluzi was trying to win political favours in the northern region
where his party had polled badly (7% of the total votes) during the general elec-
tion.38 However, contrary to Kishindo’s argument, Tumbuka though a language
of about 6% northerners, mainly in Rumphi, Mzimba and part of Karonga —
since its imposition in schools by the Livingstonia Mission in the 1940s — has and
122 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
would have sustained its regional lingua franca status if it was not for its ban in
1968 that limited its prospects. Kishindo’s argument is a misrepresentation of the
linguistic situation in Malawi, where neither Lomwe nor Yao are learnt as second
languages in their areas, where Chichewa is learnt as the main lingua franca.
Lomwe, as evidenced by two surveys, is a dying language and does not have the
number of speakers indicated in the census (Kayambazinthu, 1989/90, 1994;
Matiki, 1996/97). Secondly, Tumbuka in the north is learnt as a second language
by 64% of the population in a linguistically heterogeneous region. Tumbuka is
the only language that has regional lingua franca status in the north as affirmed
by the recent Tumbuka survey. In my view, Malawi has only two lingua franca
zones, that is, the central and southern regions of Malawi are dominated by
Chichewa whilst the north uses Tumbuka. The political overtones for the promo-
tion of Tumbuka cannot be doubted but the pragmatics of it cannot be denied
either.
A significant directive on education policy came on 28 March 1996, introduc-
ing a three plus or minus language formula. The Secretary for Education stated
that:
The Ministry of Education would like to inform all … that with immediate
effect, all standards 1, 2, 3 and 4 classes in all our schools be taught in their
own mother tongue or vernacular language as a medium of instruction.
English and Chichewa will however, continue to be offered as subjects in
the primary curricula. In the past Chichewa was used as both a medium of
instruction and subject, making it very difficult for beginners to grasp
ideas. However, English will be used as a medium of instruction beginning
in standard 5. (Secretary for Education’s Letter. Ref. No. IN/2/14.)
The justification39 for this directive is based on hearsay and systematic re-
search elsewhere, not in Malawi, as the circular revealed:
You may wish to know that research has revealed that school children learn
better and faster if they are taught in their own mother tongue or in their
own vernacular language during the first 4 years of their formal education
than when they are taught in a second language as a medium of instruction.
It is for this reason that this policy is being instituted.
This policy typifies a policy-by-decree approach that was not based on any re-
search or proper planning despite the fact that it is the only policy document that
assigns a role for the vernacular languages in Malawi other than Chichewa in the
national education system. It should be noted, however, that this directive pre-
ceded the training of teachers, preparation of materials and resources and
general research into the current language situation and attitudes in Malawi. Be-
cause of the impromptu nature of the directive it is not surprising that the
government is failing to implement the policy. The ministry continues to post
primary school teachers where they are needed regardless of whether they know
the language of the community or not, thus contradicting the declaration and its
intentions. The failure of the plan is related to the lack of adequate background
planning before the policy was decreed. The policy also contradicts other rele-
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 123
sue is the unilateral emphasis on native languages in schools rather than learning
them in families and during preschool education. It is doubtful that Lomwe chil-
dren who do not learn the language in their homes will pick it up in schools.
Msonthi’s (1997) BEd dissertation on the vernacular policy in Malawi concludes
that parents are not in favour of vernacular languages in schools. They would
rather have their children learn English, the prestigious socioeconomic lan-
guage. Similarly, the 1996 Yao survey also revealed that parents would favour
the strong use of English (which would make them clever) or Chichewa in
schools rather than Yao (see also Bwanali (1998: 10) on Chichewa as a communi-
cation tool). Also, the policy seems to treat the issue of mother tongue use as a
monolithic problem. In areas where three languages prevail which one will be
used and what criteria will be used for selection? Will the teacher’s proficiency
determine it or its wide usage in the area? How will the system cater for pupils
with insufficient knowledge of the school language?
It is clear from the discussion that the current policy is giving higher priority to
ideological and prestigious issues rather than practical objectives in planning for
language in education. The needs of the communities are parallel with the gov-
ernment policy. If the general public is complaining about the decline of the
standards of English (the cherished language) what will happen when the num-
ber of hours are reduced because of the proliferation of languages of instruction?
The government, which is one of the poorest and most debt ridden in the third
world, has to realise that it cannot sustain such a policy, hence its failure to imple-
ment it. One would also question whether the standard pattern of creating and
developing literacy language (i.e. alphabets, school textbooks, formation of na-
tional elites), and popularising them through the media is always the way to go.
Probably efforts should be spent on teaching and learning the ethnic language in
its oral mode first in the villages or urban schools and creating conditions for the
preservation of the language in its traditional domains before the formal school
system as Chauma et al. (1997) suggest.
formed in 1998 by Mr Thole, a Ngoni, who is also the chairperson. The associa-
tion has more than 100 members comprising Ngoni chiefs, journalists and some
intellectuals. The objectives of the Association are to:
• revive the language which is not being passed on from their forefathers to
younger generations;
• bring unity to the Ngoni from both central and northern region;
• foster Ngoni identity.
The association’s activities include the drafting of a constitution, revival of the
Ingoma dance using old Ngoni songs as provided by Dr Soko, a Malawian Ngoni
and French linguist. The Association runs a club at the Mzuzu museum, which
practises old songs and also provides entertainment to museum visitors, Ngoni
classes which have produced a handout in Zulu/Ngoni language using two
books: Learn Zulu by C.L.S. Nyembezi and A Zulu Comprehensive Course by A.T.
Cope, both bought from South Africa. Thus, the Ngoni want to go back to their
roots — are taking a purist attitude towards Ngoni revival — instead of concen-
trating on Mzimba-Mpherembe-Ekwendeni Ngoni that has survived the
century.42 The association is hoping to have village-based clubs where Zulu
learning lessons will be offered and teachers will be identified by the chiefs. At
the moment they have two volunteer teachers who have learnt Zulu up to O level
in Zimbabwe and South Africa. The association has not liaised with the govern-
ment or the Ministry of Education.43
It is well documented that the recent political changes in Malawi have affected
positively the role of other indigenous languages in Malawi. The sudden wave of
democratisation and liberalisation following the collapse of Dr Banda’s Malawi
Congress Party machinery stimulated non-Chewa Malawians to raise their na-
tional consciousness and to activate their long suppressed ethnic movements.
Apart from political movements, the democratisation process has included lin-
guistic movements. It is difficult to judge the impact of such movements on the
current state of affairs in Malawi. However, concessions from the government
have now been obtained in the form of the right to use language in education, on
the radio and in the newspapers. At the same time, the legal functions of these
languages have increased, allowing official services and documents to be pro-
duced and circulated in them. Even so, the lack of official status and all other
necessary supporting institutions such as vernacular language schools, materials
for teaching, mass media, or norms for linguistic standardisation, makes these ef-
forts less worthwhile.
English on the one hand, and Malawian languages on the other, the latter cate-
gory being treated as a block. This lack of direction in a multilingual country like
Malawi strengthens English and gives it a stranglehold in these domains. In ad-
ministration; there are no official instructions at all regulating the choice of
language in oral contracts, which is similar to the situation in jurisdiction, where
the instructions only refer to orality, not to the languages to be used in this oral
component.
It must be stressed that the absence of any explicit government policy does not
imply that language in Malawi is in no way affected by the political realm. In
practice, there exists a set of linguistic practices applied in domains which are to
be situated outside of the government’s official legislation but which are undeni-
ably close to the political authorities and which have a distinctively semi-official
and institutional character.
Chichewa is the working language of the president and all who are involved
in mass communication. The prominence of Chichewa is a product of the interre-
lationship between implicit activities and the outcome of a consciously modelled
policy. This does not imply however, that the unintended results are less tangi-
ble. These invisible activities are making quite an impact on Malawian society.
For example, both Presidents Banda and Muluzi, though they have not given
Tumbuka the official status of a northern region lingua franca, have indicated its
status by accepting the use of translation into Tumbuka when in the northern re-
gion. In July 1998, a Nkhonde chief who does not speak Tumbuka addressed
President Muluzi in Nkhonde, and the interpreter interpreted in Tumbuka, a re-
gional language he assumed a Chewa and Yao-speaking president should
understand. In other words, Tumbuka’s regionality and interethnicity is further
entrenched. In the south and the central region, Chichewa is the only language
used in political or presidential discourse.
The Bible Society in Malawi continues to follow its policy of translating the Bi-
ble and Jesus Films into various vernaculars in Malawi such as Tumbuka, Yao,
Lomwe, Sena, Tonga, Nkhonde and Braille. Other language planning agents in-
clude the British Council in Malawi and the French Cultural Centre which are
both engaged in the spread of their languages by providing courses, expertise
and training in English and French respectively. Islam is seeing a revival in Ma-
lawi and the Islamic Centre has just completed the translation of the Koran not
into Yao, but in Chichewa (Quran Out, The Nation, 14 July 1998), the language of
wider communication in Malawi.
This section of the monograph has attempted to contextualise the historical,
social and political ecology of the current language planning and implementa-
tion in Malawi. The section has focused on the evolution of change in Malawi and
the perceptions taken by the government and the people. The next section will fo-
cus on language maintenance and prospects in Malawi.
cioeconomic value of the language(s) and migration. The social contacts between
the various groups produce stable or unstable bilingualism, codeswitching and
loanwords. Where shift is occurring it tends to be unidirectional to Chichewa in
the central and southern part of Malawi and to Tumbuka in the north. This sec-
tion discusses the implications of the various language policies followed in
Malawi for the maintenance of Malawian languages. Data on Lomwe, Yao,
Chichewa and Tumbuka will be used to illustrate the current patterns of lan-
guage use and intergenerational transmission of languages from which planners
can draw some insights for future rational planning.
I am using the term language shift according to Holmes (1992: 65) and Fasold
(1984). The former defines language shift as a process by which one language dis-
places another in the linguistic repertoire of the community and the result of the
process, whilst the latter adds a temporal aspect and describes language shift as a
long-term, collective result of language choice. Language shift means that a com-
munity gives up (consciously or unconsciously) its language completely in
favour of another (Fasold, 1984: 213). Language maintenance is the opposite of
language shift.
The Ngoni
In Part I, I indicated that Ngoni is a dying language that is not being transmit-
ted to children in the various Ngoni settlement areas. Only a small pocket of
Ngoni speakers can be found in Ekwendeni and Mpherembe in Mzimba district.
According to Soko (1998, personal communication), a Ngoni, in these two areas,
Ngoni is even spoken by the children. However, as there is no quantitative sur-
vey data to give the exact figures on Ngoni, its decline can only be discussed
based on qualitative reports. Both Kishindo (1995) and Mtenje and Soko (1998)
attest to the decline of the language, which, as reported by the chairperson of the
Abenguni Association, is not being passed on to the younger generation. The cul-
tural aspects of the Ngoni, especially the oral traditions, are still alive and
distinguishable (Mtenje & Soko, 1998: 15), but cultural preservation did not in-
clude the language. The Ngoni are linguistically either Tumbuka or Chewa
depending on their settlement areas. Factors such as intermarriage, nature of
conquest and assimilation of captives; and the fact that Ngoni, compared to
Tumbuka or Chichewa, was an aristocratic language not available for everyday
communication (Kishindo, 1995: 52) account for the fact that the language is dy-
ing. Hopefully the activities of the Abenguni Association will be properly
funded and will focus on linguistic research to revive the dying language.
The Lomwe
The dispersion of the Lomwe from Mozambique and their migration into Ma-
lawi due to Portuguese brutality, their advanced stage of assimilation where
they settled among the Nyanja and Yao in the Shire Highlands, longstanding
negative attitudes towards the use of Lomwe by both the Lomwe themselves and
other ethnic groups, the perceived difficulty of the language, make the Lomwe
an interesting case study of language shift. Lomwe has been well surveyed and
both rural and urban Lomwe data are presented to show how the Lomwe have
shifted from their language to Chichewa.
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 129
The discussion of Lomwe language shift revolves around the interplay of both
external and internal factors and the pressures that were brought to bear on the
people and the language. According to Kulik (1994: 4) shifts in language are not
caused by languages as such, they are rather caused by shifts in the values and
goals of the speakers of the language (see also Holm, 1993). Lomwe historiogra-
phy and cultural practices are bases from which to understand their process of
language shift. Lomwe historiography has already been presented in Part I of
this monograph. According to Tew (1950) the Lomwe doubled in number be-
tween 1921 and 1931 increasing from 120,776 to 235,616. In 1945, they were
379,638, an increase of 144,022 or 61%. According to the 1966 Census report, the
Lomwe formed the second largest ethnic or linguistic group (14.5%) in Malawi
and they stood at 476,306, an increase of 20% over a period of 21 years. Their
growth rate had slowed.
The evolution of negative attitudes towards the Lomwe language and the
identity crisis of the Lomwe can be better understood by examining not only the
values and attitudes of the Lomwe people but also those of the non-Lomwe eth-
nic groups. Labov (1966, 1972) defines a speech community as the sharing of
norms and values and the homogeneous usage of forms and elements. Hymes
(1972, 1974) adds that members of a speech community share strong feelings of
belonging to a local territory and of participating in an interactional network in-
side this territory (also see Milroy, 1987). Both historians (Boerder, 1984;
Chipendo, 1980/81; Rashid, 1978) and sociolinguists (Kayambazinthu, 1989/90,
1994, 1995; Matiki, 1996/97) have confirmed by empirical evidence the evolution
or change in Lomwe usage from the days of settlement to the present situation.
The questions that can be raised include: Does there exist a Lomwe speech com-
munity? Is there a Lomwe culture that can be attached to language preservation
and aspects of identity? What has really distinguished the Lomwe from the other
ethnic groups that they settled amongst? Apart from the distinct family sur-
names, language, and dances, what were the Lomwe core cultural values
(Smolicz & Secombe, 1985)?
According to Chipendo one side effect of mission education, which used
Chichewa and English as mediums of instruction was the dying out of the
Lomwe language. After their arrival and prior to the 1960s the Lomwe language
was fluently and frequently spoken and meetings were held in Lomwe. How-
ever, when writing and doing research in 1980, Chipendo (1980/81) noted that it
was mostly the old people who spoke the language in Mthiramanja area and that
the youth communicated in Chichewa. Chipendo indicated that this was due to
the fact that the young people learnt everything in English and Chichewa only,
and no Lomwe was spoken at school. Chichewa replaced Lomwe even at home
because it became less and less of an advantage to use and preserve. The Lomwe
began to view their language as a severe handicap to socioeconomic advance-
ment, Chichewa being dominant at work, political and commercial activities or
domains. According to one 70-year-old lady, shifting to Chichewa was a way of
weakening the traditional stigmatisation towards themselves and especially
their children (1992, personal communication).
Makonokaya (1981: 12), who studied the Lomwe of Lirangwi, reported his re-
spondents saying: ‘We teach them Lomwe, but when they go out and meet
130 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
friends who speak Chichewa, they easily forget what they had been taught. Most
of the time our children laugh at what we teach them. I do not know what is awk-
ward about our language. This prevents them from learning how to speak
Lomwe’. However another respondent had a different view that sheds light on
the conscious loss of Lomwe: ‘It would be difficult for the children to learn
Chichewa after acquiring Lomwe as their mother tongue’. To eliminate such
problems the informant said, ‘we prefer teaching them Chichewa at an early
stage so that they should be able to grow up with Chichewa as their first lan-
guage’. The children (N = 39) themselves said they were not interested in
learning Lomwe because ‘most of our friends don’t know how to speak Lomwe.
Now for us to have easy communication with them we prefer learning
Chichewa. Moreover, in our schools, we are not taught Lomwe but Chichewa’
(Makonokaya, 1981:12).
Recent data collected at different times by different researchers exemplify lan-
guage shift. Kayambazinthu’s 1992 survey44 collected data in three main cities in
Malawi (Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu) and involved 107 Lomwe speakers
born mainly in the southern region of Malawi, in Lomwe-speaking areas but now
living in the cities. Both observation and survey techniques using a questionnaire
were used as data collection tools over a period of three months. Respondents
were purposely selected on the basis of being Lomwe households. Matiki’s 1995
study (Matiki, 1996/97) was carried out in rural areas of Lomwe-speaking vil-
lages in Thyolo, Mulanje and Chiradzulu; and involved 180 respondents. It also
employed observations and the questionnaire was the main data collection tool.
Respondents’ age, education and place of birth were correlated with language
competence and use. While accepting that each set of data is representative of the
particular groups in question, at that particular time and situation, the two
groups are still comparable in certain important ways. Thus, some similarities
and contrasts can be observed from the data especially on fluency and frequency
with which respondents used Lomwe. Patterns of language use across four gen-
erations and the actual language use in domains was revealing.
Data analysis revealed that the majority of rural (50%) and urban (70%) the
Lomwe acquired Chichewa as their first language. Data further showed that only
40% of rural Lomwe and 9% of urban Lomwe acquired Lomwe as a first lan-
guage. Both Kayambazinthu (1995) and Matiki (1996/97) report that during
fieldwork most Lomwe reported having acquired both Chichewa and their eth-
nic language simultaneously during childhood within their neighbourhoods
before reaching school age. Thus, childhood bilingualism was a common phe-
nomenon. Societal bilingualism has been cited as a crucial stage or precursor in
the processes leading to language shift (Lieberson, 1972). Lieberson (1972: 1981)
noted that almost all cases of societal language shift came about through
intergenerational switching. Since intergenerational switching requires the ear-
lier generation to be bilingual, the proportion of a population that is bilingual
constitutes an ‘exposure to risk’ that one of the languages might eventually be
lost (Lieberson, 1972: 242), as was and is the case with the Lomwe.
The parental language acquisition pattern was rather different. Rural data
showed that most parents (mothers, fathers and grandparents) spoke Lomwe,
whilst urban data showed the reverse. Very few of the urban respondents (16%)
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 131
and their parents (father 6%, mother 4%), children (12%) and spouses spoke the
language or used it as a home language (14%). Matiki’s data on intergenerational
bilingualism showed that the first generation of parents and grandparents of the
50–82 age cohort and parents of the 35–49 age cohort, was monolingual in
Lomwe (51%) followed by those who were bilingual in both Lomwe and
Chichewa (37%). Monolingualism in Chichewa was minimal (12%) amongst this
group. The second (72%) and third (76%) generation were mainly bilingual in
Lomwe and Chichewa; and if they were monolingual it was mainly in Chichewa.
By the fourth generation, bilingualism in Chichewa and Lomwe was still the
dominant pattern (59%) but monolingualism in Chichewa was rising rapidly
(41%). By this stage, no one claimed to be monolingual in Lomwe. Matiki
(1996/97) observes that from the first to the third generation, the number of
bilinguals in Lomwe and Chichewa increased by a little over 100%. By the fourth
generation, however, the percentage of these bilinguals decreased by 17%. The
Lomwe used Chichewa (76%) more regularly than Lomwe (33%). These data il-
lustrate that the Lomwe have overwhelmingly shifted from monolingualism in
Lomwe in the early twentieth century through bilingualism in Chichewa and
Lomwe to monolingualism in Chichewa in the late twentieth century. The data
show that Lomwe and Chewa contact did not lead to stable bilingualism but to
displacement.
Data on competence and frequency of use of Lomwe revealed that most re-
spondents could speak (41%) and understand (50%) Lomwe but could not read
(46%) or write it (54%). Their skills in speaking (69%), understanding (71%), read-
ing (59%) and writing (59%) Chichewa were far superior to their abilities in
Lomwe. It is obvious that the respondents were more fluent and literate in
Chichewa than in Lomwe. More important is the comparatively high level of
mastery of Lomwe by the rural Lomwe compared to urban Lomwe. The urban
respondents could not speak (65%), understand (43%), read (71%) and write
(79%) Lomwe at all. This pattern reflects the literacy policies followed by both the
colonialists and the neocolonialists who did not provide opportunities for the de-
velopment of Lomwe reading and writing skills.
Data on how frequently respondents used Lomwe revealed that Lomwe was
not used regularly (33%) compared to Chichewa (76%). This tallies with their
competence in the language as well. Lomwe use was split between very little
(31%) and regularly (33%) which means that it was a language that was depend-
ent on speakers’ availability. Of the 107 urban Lomwes, 43% claimed never to use
the language or to use it sometimes (43%). Chichewa was usually used (68%).
Even though the rural Lomwe show more competence in the language and to
some extent use the language more than the urban Lomwe, they are similar in
their higher competence and use of Chichewa than their language.
Data on respondents’ actual language use in various domains: home, neigh-
bourhood, school, religion and media use revealed the significant and dominant
use of Chichewa over Lomwe, whether in the rural or urban areas. Literature on
language shift has documented the fact that shift can be detected from the home
domain and if parents are passing or not passing the language to their children.
Even in the family domain, the inability of the Lomwe to maintain the home as an
intact domain for the use of their language has been decisive in language shift. It
132 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
can be observed that respondents in the two surveys reported to speak only or
mostly in Lomwe to parents and older relatives. The proportion claiming the use
of Lomwe with brothers and sisters or siblings fell substantially among rural
Lomwe and was almost non-existent among urban Lomwes. These results are
comparable with the generational decline in Lomwe usage.
Romaine (1995: 42) states that the low usage of an ethnic language in the home
domain is symptomatic of a more far-reaching disruption of domain distribution
and pattern of transmission. Fishman (1991) emphasises the significance of
intergenerational transmission. He proposes a scale to measure the degree of dis-
ruption and shift which a community has experienced in the use of its language.
He calls this the Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS). Fishman
proposes that only when a language is being passed on in the home is there some
chance of long-term survival. Otherwise efforts to prop up the language else-
where (e.g. school, church) may end up being largely symbolic and ceremonial.
The low usage and mastery of Lomwe, especially among urban Lomwes and ru-
ral Lomwes, to some extent reflects the low priority given to the language in
homes, community and schools. This tallies with Chipendo’s observation of the
non-reciprocal use of Lomwe between parents and their children. The high use of
Chichewa indicates the tolerance Lomwe adults have of Chichewa. They do not
mind its use; neither do they reinforce Lomwe with their children. Urban data
showed a similar trend even though it showed a more complete shift towards
Chichewa and only few respondents used Lomwe to older brothers and sisters
(4%) and older relatives (7%). None of the children were spoken to in Lomwe and
there were no Lomwe exchanges between husbands and wives.
Due to the nature of their immigration, interaction and settlement, the Lomwe
experienced stigmatisation. First, they were nicknamed the Nguru,45 a stigma-
tised Yao description of those people who lived on the fringes of Yaoland and
could not speak the Yao language properly (Bandawe, 1971). Secondly, due to
their settlement patterns, the Lomwe were seen as less intelligent and more igno-
rant than the Yao.46 An attempt to revive this flagging Lomwe image resulted in
the creation of the Lomwe Tribal Association in the 1940s to try to regain the dig-
nity of the Lomwe. This dignity unfortunately did not include the revival of the
flagging language. Even during this recent period of ethnic consciousness, a
Lomwe group has not yet been set up.
Right from the settlement days the Lomwe were not a coherent group. Use of
Lomwe began to decline slowly, the low status of the Lomwe and the low pres-
tige of the language accelerated the process. Urbanisation and industrialisation
at the beginning of the twentieth century transformed the communities. These
developments made it possible for the Lomwe to escape their poverty and find
better paying jobs and provide their children with educational advantages.
These economic and social processes fostered assimilation into the Chewa cul-
ture and had negative consequences for the growth of Lomwe language. The
proclamation of Chinyanja as the sole and obligatory lingua franca in Malawi
and medium of instruction in schools, alongside English as an official language
since the 1920s, gave no opportunity for the development of Lomwe script in
schools or its extended use in other domains apart from the home. Nyanja domi-
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 133
The Yao
Another language that has been undergoing shift is Yao. The earliest Yao sur-
vey carried out in the Malindi and Domasi areas in 1987 (Kayambazinthu,
1989/90) revealed that Yao was the dominant mother tongue (77%) and most fre-
quently used language in the home (72%). However, in both Malindi and
Domasi, Chichewa was the main lingua franca outside the home domain and bi-
lingual acquisition and use of Chichewa and Yao was the norm. Yao was
confined to intraethnic communication. The 1992 urban survey however, re-
vealed that the Yao were shifting to Chichewa. Of the 112 Yao interviewed, 14%
learnt it as their first language and both Chichewa (35%) and Yao (37%) were
their best languages. Chichewa was also the respondents’ most frequently used
home language (61%) and that of their children (71%). Thus, in the urban areas
Chichewa was the dominant lingua franca except when talking to ethnic friends,
siblings and neighbours who spoke the language.
Another Yao survey was carried out in 1996 (9–30 April) Kishindo et al. (1997)
with the aim of investigating the current attitudes to Yao among Yao native
speakers of Mangochi, Machinga, Dedza, Salima, Nkhota Kota, Blantyre, Zomba
and Chiradzulu. The survey specifically wanted to find out:
• whether native Yao speakers in these Yao-speaking areas would favour the
introduction of Yao as a medium of instruction in primary schools; and
• the Yao speakers’ attitudes to the national language, Chichewa. The survey
also wanted to find out if Chichewa has made headway since it was made
the national language, as a lingua franca for different ethnic groups or was
ever used between members of the same ethnic group.
To test these questions, data were collected from 862 randomly sampled sub-
jects from the Yao-speaking districts already named over a period of three weeks.
The results showed that 93% of the total sample could speak Yao and that Yao
was the mother tongue of 83% of the respondents. Ninety-five per cent of these
respondents could also speak Chichewa and only 5% were monolingual in Yao.
Most of the respondents (66%) used Yao more frequently more than Chichewa
(3%) and other languages (4%). Sixty-two per cent of the respondents were in fa-
vour of Yao becoming a language of instruction in Yao-speaking areas and the
Yao in general had a strong and positive attitude towards their own language.
However, the results also showed that the least educated were the ones who
were in favour of Yao in schools, unlike the educated who favoured English
(Kishindo et al., 1997: 13).
The de facto position of Chichewa as a lingua franca in Malawi is seen in the fol-
lowing figures. Respondents (94%) reported that they liked speaking Chichewa.
Fifty per cent of the total population interviewed, in response to the question:
‘Which language they would prefer as a language of instruction in schools?’,
gave a bilingual answer. Fifty per cent chose Chichewa followed by Yao (47%)
and English (11%). Yao was selected for the radio by 59% of the respondents, fol-
lowed by Chichewa (41%). Overall, Yao was the language the respondents
134 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
wanted for reading (54%), radio (41%) and health extension work. In all these ar-
eas, Chichewa was the next most favoured language. Age grading, however,
showed a different pattern. That is, the younger generation (5–20 years old = 49%
and 21–35 year olds = 19%) preferred to speak Chichewa, unlike the older gener-
ation of 46+ (17%) who liked to speak Yao.
The Tumbuka
Surveys done on Tumbuka in urban areas and within its region revealed high
use of the language and its maintenance. The survey I carried out on 400 respon-
dents in Rumphi and Karonga Districts in 1991 revealed that Tumbuka was
highly used both as a home language and an interethnic language. Another
Tumbuka survey was carried out on 1732 respondents in 1997 by the Centre for
Language Studies.47 Data was collected through interactive interviews in all five
districts in the Northern Region of Malawi: Rumphi, Mzimba, Nkhata Bay,
Karonga and Chitipa. The authors observed a high competence in Tumbuka. The
report indicates that about 76% of the respondents who took a vocabulary and
comprehension test of Tumbuka showed clear understanding of Tumbuka. The
vocabulary test showed a pass rate of 96%. Interviews with teachers showed a
high approval rating and acceptance (from 59% to 72% in all districts) of
Tumbuka as both a subject and medium of communication. This showed that
teachers in the northern region are prepared to teach in Tumbuka and that
Tumbuka is a de facto regional lingua franca.
Tunbuka was the language most frequently spoken at school in both Karonga
(51%) Rumphi (100%) and Mzimba (94%). In Chitipa, Lambya (41%), Sukwa
(29%) and Bandia (29%)48 were commonly spoken. In Nkhata Bay, Tonga (92%)
was prevalent. Chichewa was the dominant language for radio broadcasts and
newspaper articles in Nkhata Bay, Chitipa and Karonga, unlike Rumphi where
Tumbuka use was the same as Chichewa (50%). This further indicates the
regionality of Tumbuka and Chichewa as a national lingua franca. Recognising
the power of English, most respondents opted for English in Parliament followed
by Chichewa then Tumbuka. Most of the pupils interviewed (59%) wanted to
learn in English followed by Chichewa. Their desires seem to reinforce the two
long-standing subjects and mediums of communication, and suggest that they
have become more established school languages than Tumbuka, which was mar-
ginalised for nearly 30 years. The results also showed favourable liking for
Chichewa in radio, newspapers, church and hospitals especially in Nkhata-Bay
and to some extent in Karonga. Tumbuka was favoured for radio, newspapers,
church and hospitals in Rumphi, Karonga and Mzimba (Centre for Language
Studies, 1998).49
Observations
The distribution of speakers according to age groups serves as a reliable indi-
cator of the chances for the preservation of a language. The data in all the surveys
showed that the level of competence in the native language was lower among the
younger generation and all the sociolinguistic surveys give that uniform picture.
The complete absence of native speakers among children, or among people be-
low 30–40 seen in Lomwe reflect the lower use of Lomwe and Yao especially in
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 135
the urban areas. However, when considering these figures one should also ac-
count for conservative patterns of behaviour and that when people grow older
they sometimes learn the language. Also to be taken into account is the preserva-
tion of languages such as Yao and Lomwe in the rural areas. Despite its ban in
1968 Tumbuka is still thriving in both rural and urban areas.
The results of these surveys point to three important issues:
(1) Malawi has two lingua franca zones: Chichewa in the centre and southern
region, and Tumbuka in the northern region.
(2) Of the two lingua francas, Chichewa is the de facto national lingua franca in
Malawi and Tumbuka is the de facto northern regional lingua franca by vir-
tue of being the language that is best understood by the majority of people in
the region.
(3) The elevation of Chichewa and the teaching of English and Chichewa only
in schools have had a major impact on coexisting languages such as Lomwe
and Yao to some extent, which are in decline. Vernaculars continue to fulfil
intraethnic communication.
These results have further implications for language planning in Malawi.
What Malawian planners need to do is to ascertain the role of minority languages
especially in the health sector, agricultural extension and community develop-
ment.
Future prospects
This monograph has raised a number of issues that Malawi needs to address
for language planning purposes:
(1) In Malawi, conscious and deliberate language planning in response to
sociopolitical and economic problems has been ad hoc and has not been pre-
ceded by any research into the linguistic situation. If the move towards
pluralism is to be effective, surveys and linguistic analyses need to be done
to determine and establish standard varieties of the languages involved.
(2) Historically, Malawi has planned for trilingualism by deliberately neglect-
ing second language education in schools in indigenous languages other
than Chichewa. Malawi has also practised linguistic imperialism by pro-
moting English, associated with social and economic mobility at the
expense of Chichewa and other Malawian languages; and by using
Chichewa as a stepping stone to the ultimate goal of acquiring English. If
Malawian planners intend to vernacularise the education system then there
is need to tie vernacular education to job opportunities, which is not done at
present. Cases of language shift testify to the active and deliberate denigra-
tion and repression of some Malawian languages during the colonial and
Banda eras.
Language planning in a multilingual and multicultural country such as Ma-
lawi is a complex process that needs serious consideration rather than ad hoc or
reactive measures. As an emergent underdeveloped country, Malawi needs to
address national concerns, pedagogical concerns and social or human rights con-
cerns. Within the Zasintha philosophy the latter and the former issues are
136 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
fulfilled, but the various logistical programmes and pedagogical issues have not
been fulfilled. While a pluralistic alternative has many appealing features, it also
brings its own pluralistic dilemmas. Bullivant (1981: ix) argues that even in the
most enlightened and tolerant societies, pluralistic options can potentially func-
tion as ideal methods of controlling knowledge/power, while appearing
through symbolic political languages to be acting solely from the best of motives
in the interests of ethnic groups themselves. The government’s commitment to
multilingualism is commendable but is prohibitively costly.
The current recognition of six languages on the radio, the introduction of other
vernaculars in schools and the protection of minority languages is a commend-
able idea, but it raises a number of questions that remain to be answered.
Malawian planners have to realise that status planning decisions will have to be
reflected in corpus planning decisions. The implementation of specific language
policies will be problematic politically, economically and educationally. Where
should the line be drawn? If equity is the criterion, then all languages should be
treated equally, an undertaking that the government cannot afford. Would the
president refuse the Ngoni if they agitate for it to be broadcast on the radio? The
emerging picture from the survey of literature on language planning in Malawi,
newspaper debates and the various surveys this monograph has reviewed
shows that nationally, the selection of Chichewa as national language and Eng-
lish as the official language is not in question.
Vernacularisation touches at the core of Malawian authentication of its multi-
culturalism and multilingualism. It was evident at the launch of the Malawian
National Long Term Perspective Studies (Malawi Vision 2020) workshop in No-
vember 1997, that Malawians do not like their cultures nor their produce,
favouring external products. The authentication of Malawian languages and
their ascendancy to fulfil that role or that status demands that Malawians accept
that what they have is as good as what they can import, including languages. At-
tached to vernacularisation should be the economic benefits for the use of
Malawian languages, breaking the monopoly of English as the catalyst for socio-
economic development. However, Malawi also needs to tackle global issues and
English will still be needed as a global language.
The roles of both the national language and the official language programmes
need to be clearly delineated, with lexical and orthographic development being
attached to status planning. The popularity of English among both the educated
and uneducated as the language to learn shows that English has a positive profile
in Malawi. However, if access to scientific and technological information is em-
bodied in English, as is the case now, then one can only hope that the government
will check English’s role as a stratifying tool or linguistic boundary, to make it
more accessible to everyone through free primary education.50
Pedagogically, the use of vernaculars in early primary school is both educa-
tionally sound and pragmatic. The role of vernaculars as stepping stones allows
the children to adjust to the school system and helps them to understand con-
cepts they would have found otherwise difficult to understand in English (see
also Chauma et al., 1997). So, should the Ministry then post people according to
their district of origin? This would raise political eyebrows as it did in the Banda
era and would also go against teachers’ aspirations and motivation. The Ministry
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 137
Conclusion
This monograph has attempted to trace and contextualise the historical, social
and political ecology of Malawian language policy formulation and implementa-
tion from the colonial period to the present situation.54 In an attempt to present
the history of language planning in Malawi I have proceeded to present more
than an overview of the history. The processes, conflicts and the different lobby-
ists behind language planning in Malawi are focused upon. Further, the
complexity of the issues in language planning and the reactive and ad hoc way
that has perversely characterised language planning is shown. During the colo-
nial period consultation and lobbying for languages shaped the language policy.
However, the post-colonial period is marked by spontaneous planning without
consultation and decisions are connected to the socioeconomic and political en-
vironment in which they were made. Hopefully the future development of
language policy in Malawi will be systematic and directives will be based on real
research, not on vested interest.
Acknowledgments
Some of the material in Parts I and II of the monograph was covered in my PhD
thesis submitted to La Trobe University, Australia. I would like to thank Pascal
Kishindo for valuable comments on the earlier draft of this paper and for provid-
ing me with valuable sources on language issues during the Referendum Period
138 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
(1992–93) in Malawi. Thanks also to Isabel Phiri for providing salient articles. I
am grateful to Moira Chimombo and Dennis Kayambazinthu, in that order, for
suggestions and editorial help.
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Dr Edrinnie Kayambazinthu, De-
partment of English, Chancellor College, University of Malawi, P.O. Box 280,
Zomba, Malawi (ekayambazinthu@unima.wn.apc.org).
Notes
1. The figure was given at the Malawi population day (11 July 1998) organised by Minis-
try of Health in conjunction with the NSO. The national census was held in 1998, the
first census in Malawi since the 1966 census to include a question on home languages.
The census however, was not expected to find out about ethnic composition for one to
determine language maintenance or shift in the country.
2. Bailey (1995: 34–35) has an interesting discussion of whether one should use the ver-
nacular language prefix in English for Bantu languages. He recommends the omission
of the prefix.
3. I am using Guthrie’s (1967) classification of Bantu languages.
4. During the colonial period up to 1968, Chichewa was known as Nyanja. In all the in-
formation on languages where Nyanja appears as a language, it should be read as
Chichewa. This is distinct from Nyanja as a dialect of Chichewa. In Zambia, the lan-
guage is still known as Nyanja.
5. Personal correspondence with Monica Masonga, a Zambian.
6. Vail (1972: 150) on the basis of Tumbuka cultural differences, states that the Tumbuka
came from three different areas. Those in the south derived from a mixture of
matrilineal peoples of Chewa origin. The northern zone was peopled either by groups
who immigrated from the patrilineal system in southern Tanzania and northeastern
Zambia or by those who immigrated from matrilineal areas to the west at a relatively
later date and adopted a patrilineal system of descent and inheritance.
7. Guthrie (1967) does not classify some of these languages.
8. According to Kishindo (Personal Communication, 1998), there are two Bibles in the
two ‘dialects’ and the textual comparisons leaves one in no doubt that they are the
same language.
9. Personal communication with Dr Matembo Mzunda, a Lambya speaker and lecturer
at Chancellor College, 1991.
10. Personal communication with Peter Lino, a native speaker of Sena. Also, even though
I am a fluent Chichewa speaker, I cannot understand Sena news items on the radio.
11. Personal communication with Mazganga Lino, a Ngoni.
12. Nguru has become a derogatory name for the Lomwe. The use of this term is now
banned in Malawi.
13. The British were not necessarily the first Europeans to make contacts with Malawians
since prior to the British the Portuguese had already been trading with the Malawians
but did not take full control of the country.
14. This discussion is based mainly on the 1966 census data because to date, it is the only
comprehensive language survey done on Malawian languages. The 1987 census col-
lected data on literacy in the official language (English) and the national language
(Chichewa) but excluded all other languages.
15. Vail and White (1989: 180) state that the figure was exaggerated. ‘President Banda was
able to lump together the various dialect groups of the southern region — Chipeta,
Nyanja and Mang’anja, even Lomwe to produce a national population that was …
more than 50 percent Chewa. Banda’s deep concern for a paper majority for the
so-called Chewa was demonstrated when he ordered the University of Malawi to no
longer use the services of the University of London’s distinguished linguist, Prof.
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 139
Wilfred Whiteley, after he had observed in a report prepared for the University of Ma-
lawi that the number of Chewa speakers was clearly exaggerated in official estimates’.
16. In 1964 when the country gained independence about 359,841 (approximately 10.5%
of the total population (N = 3,275,181) pupils were enrolled in primary school. By 1996
the enrolment rate had grown to 2,887,107 pupils (24.3%) due to free primary educa-
tion (Basic Educational Statistics, 1996).
17. Personal communication with the principal education methods adviser for French sit-
ting in for the language adviser. Ministry of Education and Culture, 16 January 1998.
18. MASAF is a microlending programme for socioeconomic development of rural com-
munities in Malawi. Privatisation refers to programmes announcing which
companies are being privatised and when people can buy shares.
19. Dr W.M. Turner of LMS states that historically, the experience of the missionaries was
that for the first 25 years of its work in Nyasaland, Chinyanja was insisted on as the
medium of instruction in schools … It was because it was obvious that the policy was
failing educationally to reach the mass of the people in the north (my emphasis) that the
mission council decided to use the local vernacular and pass them on to English. Since
that decision was taken, the advance made in education has been both rapid and con-
tinuous, and the education given in the Livingstonia Mission has won a high
reputation not only in Nyasaland but in the adjoining territories. (Turner to Chief Sec-
retary, Zomba, 29 July 1933). The discussion on colonial discourses and language
policies is based on my archival research, especially File Nos.: S1/1008/19,
S1/449/32, S1/235/32, S1/510/30 at the National Archives of Malawi in January 1992
and the University of Malawi Library, Chancellor College, Zomba.
20. White fortune seekers who acquired huge pieces of land for growing coffee and tea in
the Shire Highlands in the late nineteenth century.
21. For example, Laws translated Mark’s Gospel in western Nyanja dialect and in 1866
completed his version of the New Testament in the same dialect. At the Blantyre Mis-
sion David Scott brought out Matthew and Mark in 1892, the Gospels in 1893 and
certain Epistles in 1894 in the Mang’anja dialect (Doke, 1961b: 122). Bishop Mackenzie
of the UMCA at Likoma Island translated Mark in 1891 and Archdeacon Johnston the
Psalms in 1893 in eastern Nyanja or the Likoma dialect. The New Testament was com-
pleted in 1898 and the whole Bible in 1912 by Archdeacon Johnston and Miss K.H.
Nixon Smith. This version is still used by this mission (Doke, 1961b: 122).
22. Price (1940: 132) and Heine (1970: 62) note that the move towards union Nyanja did
not gain a foothold because the contrast between the two dialects had already deep-
ened far too much and speakers of each dialect felt that each other’s dialect was
represented beyond its merit.
23. Local mission presses included the Livingstonia Mission Press (Presbyterian), Likuni
Press (Catholic), Montfort Press (Catholic), Malamulo Publishing House (Seventh
Day Adventist) Hertherwick Press (Presbyterian) publishing mainly in Nyanja and
Yao (Pachai, 1971: 55) and the Government Printer. All these helped in the distribution
of books to agencies and schools.
24. Vail (1981: 126) states that in 1893 there were 10 schools with 630 pupils, and by 1901,
there were 55 schools with an average attendance of 2800 pupils.
25. When the colonialists were deciding on a lingua franca for Malawi, the other two alter-
natives, apart from Nyanja, were English and Kiswahili. From the Church of Scotland,
James Alexander argued that ‘personally, I would not favour Kiswahili, not merely
because it would mean uprooting and replacing the vast output of Chinyanja litera-
ture put out by the government and various missions, but also because of its
association with Mohammedanism (Islam)’. Letter from Church of Scotland Mission,
Blantyre, Nyasaland, 12 September 1932. To the Director of Education, A.T. Lacey
from James F. Alexander.
26. James Alexander of the BMS wrote to the Director of Education T.M. Lancey that ‘in
our mission Yao was at first the language always used and of course remains the
mother tongue of a vast number of natives in these parts but at the beginning of this
century the official policy of the mission was to supersede Yao with Chinyanja … The
contention has been advanced by those responsible for the working of village schools
140 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
in our district that were Yao to be the medium of instruction, the women and girls
would come in far greater number to school. A contention that cannot be gainsaid but
which economically is impossible’ (James Alexander to T. Lacey (Director of Educa-
tion) 12 September 1932.
27. Language shift towards Nyanja in the Shire Highlands dates back to early settlement
without the intervention of the colonial government or missionaries due to the fact
that the Yao were a minority among the majority Nyanja (see the 1921 population cen-
sus report and Tew, 1950). My urban data collected in 1992 from 450 respondents
comprising Chewa, Yao, Lomwe and Tumbuka speakers in Blantyre, Lilongwe and
Mzuzu showed that only 3% of the respondents learnt Yao as a second language and
6% learnt it as a third language compared to Chichewa’s 49% and 30% respectively.
28. By 1904, 64% of the pupils receiving education in Malawi did so in Livingstonia’s
schools, whilst all those obtaining post primary training attended the Overtoun Insti-
tution (Alpers, 1972: 215).
29. By 1944, the name changed to the Nyasaland African Congress and in 1960 to the Ma-
lawi Congress Party (MCP).
30. For example, Sanderson’s and Birthrey’s An Introduction to Chinyanja was written pri-
marily for the increasing number of settlers in Nyasaland both official and unofficial,
requiring a working knowledge of Nyanja, whilst Thomson’s Military Nyanja was
written to provide a skeleton grammar and vocabulary for those engaged in learning
the language for military use, a memory fresher for those who have done so and to
serve as a handbook of mainly military terms for those who learn the language in civil
life.
31. It should be noted that Nyanja has a speech community in eastern Zambia.
32. On problems of standardisation of Nyanja see Young (1949), Mtenje (1980) and
Kishindo (1990). By Chinyanja was meant the Nyanja of southern region of Malawi
and central region and it did not include Lake shore Nyanja (Lacey to Chief Secretary,
A memoranda 17 April 1936).
33. Banda’s uncle, Chief Mwase of Kasungu, in collaboration with the colonial govern-
ment also acted as an informant to the colonial linguists in London when the
government was trying to elevate Chichewa as a national language and selecting the
dialect to be standardised.
34. Most educated Malawians find it very difficult to express academic and technical is-
sues in Chichewa or vernacular languages (see also Gonzalez, 1990, on bilingual
education in the Philippines). This was evident at the National Long Term Perspective
Study Conference (Malawi Vision 2020 Conference) in 1997 when the vice president
asked the resource persons to present their findings in both Chichewa and English for
the sake of the uneducated chiefs. While the presenters were very comfortable in Eng-
lish, they struggled to express the ideas in Chichewa or Tumbuka to the amazement of
the participants.
35. For a thorough discussion on this era and Banda’s iron fist rule characterised by lack of
freedom and lack of dissenting views, see Vail and White, 1989; Chirwa, 1998; Phiri,
1988; Chimombo, 1998 and Kishindo, 1998.
36. My personal communication with one MBC worker revealed that they got the direc-
tive two days before the three languages went on air. As such they were caught
unawares and were unprepared for the task. That this was a political ploy for the gov-
ernment to gain votes in a particular by-election is clear. This decision also affected the
time slot for Tumbuka which used to be aired at prime time, 7.10 pm to 9 pm to the an-
noyance of the Tumbuka listeners. The Tumbuka were quick to accuse the
government of tribalism and politicking. See for example, Chakachaka, L. ‘Why mis-
time Tumbuka’. Letters, The Star, 20 November 1996, and Manda, M. ‘Welcome Yao,
Lomwe, but’ Letters to the Editor, Malawi News, 7–13 December 1996. See also
Kishindo (1998).
37. This type of work has not yet been effected. The Centre has so far conducted the
Tumbuka survey (sponsored by the German Technical Corporation) and produced a
draft dictionary of Chichewa, revised Chichewa orthography rules, Malilime: Mala-
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 141
wian Journal of Linguistics, teaching manuals for teaching Tumbuka and Chichewa to
non-native speakers.
38. It is well documented in Malawi that the general elections were done along regional
lines (see Chirwa, 1998; Kishindo, 1998 among others). The regionalistic and ethnic
tendency clearly showed when Tom Chakufwa Chihana, a Tumbuka from the north
and candidate for the Alliance for Democracy (AFORD) won over 85% of the votes
from the region against his 8% from the centre and 7% from the south. Dr Banda, a
Chewa from the central region and an MCP candidate got 70% of the votes in his re-
gion against 16% from the south and 9% from the north. Elson Bakili Muluzi, a Yao
from the southern region won 75% of the votes in the southern region against 23% in
the centre and 7% in the north (Kishindo 1998: 265).
39. The secretary for education explained in a press release in The Nation newspaper of 25
June 1996: 13 that ‘The fact has however remained that although other languages were
banned as mediums of instruction in Standard 1–4, many teachers teaching in the re-
mote rural primary schools, have used and are still using the commonly spoken
languages in their schools as mediums of instruction in Standards 1 to 4 making learn-
ing more meaningful to pupils. The teachers, however, make sure that School
Inspectors do not find them doing so, otherwise they quickly switch over to Chichewa
at the sight of the School Inspectors. The new policy is trying to grant teachers the free-
dom to use languages commonly spoken in the area where schools are situated. Yet
teachers will be posted according to the need of that particular district or region that is
regardless of whether one knows the language or that area or not’.
40. Kishindo (1995: 56) footnotes that in 1994 people in Chitipa were calling for the aboli-
tion of literacy classes in Chichewa. They wanted to learn in Tumbuka. ‘Recently,
literacy instructors in Chitipa have asked the department of community services to
teach adults in Chitumbuka which they claim they understand better than Chichewa’.
‘Instructors push for Chitumbuka’, The Nation, 3 October 1994. In another situation,
adult learners wanted literacy classes to include English!
41. Pascal Kishindo, lecturer and Head of African Languages and Linguistics Depart-
ment, says he initiated this movement with the aim of forming clubs that could discuss
orthography issues and creative writing in the various languages. However, the initial
idea was hijacked and the association turned into a political forum for frustrated Yao
politicians. When he pulled out, the association also died.
42. According to Dr Soko, an Associate Professor of French and a resource person to the
Association, Malawi Ngoni is closer to South African Xhosa than South African Zulu.
He says that when a praise poet from Mzimba (Malawi Ngoni) presented his epic
poem at a conference, the Zulu delegates understood only half of what he was saying
and a Xhosa delegate understood everything. Dr Soko confirms this from other Mala-
wian Ngonis living in South Africa near the Xhosa who also confirm the close mutual
intelligibility between Xhosa and Malawian Ngoni. Therefore Malawi Ngoni is closer
to original Nguni than Zulu (see also Mtenje & Soko, 1998). Probably the Malawian
Ngonis need to study Malawian Ngoni rather than using Zulu texts. The early mis-
sionaries also mistakenly assumed that Ngoni equals Zulu.
43. The whole movement was initiated by Mr Thole, a senior museum curator at Mzuzu
Museum by virtue of being Ngoni, his job and interest in the language and its culture
(personal communication with Mr A.W. Thole, Chairperson, Abenguni Revival Asso-
ciation).
44. My survey, unlike Matiki’s, took a comparative approach and studied the language
use of four major linguistic groups in Malawi: the Chewa, the Lomwe, the Yao, and the
Tumbuka in that order. This should be borne in mind when interpreting the data.
45. The origin and use of this word is still contentious. Some authors such as Tew (1950)
referring to it as originating from a hill near where the Lomwe came from and some
Lomwe claiming it as a dialectical variation of Lomwe (Kishindo, personal communi-
cation, 1997).
46. ‘The Anguru are naturally a wild and low-caste race whose ignorance makes them at
once savage and timid. The immigrant Anguru rarely or never form communities of
their own when settling in British territory but prefer to attach themselves to promi-
142 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
nent Yao or Anyanja chiefs in return for whose protection they usually perform a
certain amount of menial labour. The status of these Anguru strangers in a Yao or
Anyanja village is somewhat peculiar. They are often described by other natives and
indeed describe themselves as “akapolo” (slaves), a misleading term … although their
racial inferiority causes them to be held in some measure of contempt and relegates
them naturally to an inferior position as compared with more intelligent tribes’
(Murray, 1910: 107–108).
47. The results of this survey should be understood from the point of view that given the
population in the northern region and the sample obtained, on which the results are
based, is far from representative. Given the nature of the project that was undertaken a
higher sample would have yielded more significant and elucidating results than is
given. The survey interviewed 1105 primary school pupils, 194 primary school teach-
ers, and 433 parents/guardians. The sample was skewed towards pupils.
48. A newspaper reporter who visited Chitipa recently says that he was surprised to see
that most people in the district could hardly converse in Chichewa despite having
been born and brought up in the country. There were also very few people who dis-
cussed issues in Tumbuka. Although there are several dialects in Chitipa (he
exaggeratedly cites 20) people are able to understand each other, that is, they do not
need a lingua franca because the various languages are mutually intelligible. The mu-
tual intelligibility is questionable but probably, Chitipa being a small district, most
people have maintained their languages but at the same time they have learnt each
other’s language to the extent that they can understand each other. His argument is
however flawed in that he assumes that being born and bred in Malawi means one au-
tomatically learns Chichewa. At the same time his article raises the important
question of how far spread are Chichewa and Tumbuka and Chitipa in the remote vil-
lages of Malawi (Ntonya, 1998).
49. The resistance to Tumbuka by the Tonga and the Ngonde is historical. Refer to the co-
lonial debates which also show the two groups resisting Tumbuka and favouring
Chichewa in their areas. The resistance stems from the rivalry of the two ethnic groups
with the Tumbuka. The Ngonde hated the Tumbuka because the latter collaborated
with the Arab slave traders (Mlozi) during the slave trade when Mlozi plundered the
Ngonde villages. For the Tonga, according to Wiseman Chirwa (personal communi-
cation, 1998), Tumbuka is associated with the Ngoni who also subjugated the Tonga
through their raids. Later on though, the Ngoni provided ready labour to the Tonga.
As such the Tonga do not hold the Ngoni in high esteem.
50. The president’s speeches which used to be monolingual in Chichewa, have of late
tended to be bilingual or containing codeswitching between English and Chichewa
(Kishindo, 1998, personal communication), probably as a way of signalling his multi-
ple identity of being a Malawian (Chichewa) and educated (English).
51. See Kamwendo, 1994; Kulemeka, 1995; Chauma et al. 1997. As Kishindo (Personal
communication, 1998) rightly points out, Malawian intellectuals harbour contradic-
tions at the personal level. Most intellectuals will send their children to exclusive
schools where English is the main language and speaking a vernacular is an offence. It
seems Malawian intellectuals pay lip service to vernacularisation and have no confi-
dence in the government school system. The intellectuals also realise that English is a
prestigious language they cannot disregard.
52. One of the daily papers reported a meeting where shareholders were angry with the
way their constitution was written. The legalese was beyond them and they called for
simple language that they could all understand and participate in discussion. These
were not village or uneducated people but educated Malawians. What more with the
uneducated?
53. The author runs a communication skills course for the Malawian Parliamentarians
under the sponsorship of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in con-
junction with Malawi Parliament. The debates in the newspapers also indicate that
most MPs do not know why they are in Parliament and their participation leaves a lot
to be desired.
The Language Planning Situation in Malawi 143
54. For more details see Kishindo (1990, 1992), Vail (1981), Vail and White (1989),
Kayambazinthu (1995).
55. Tables 1 is based on the 1966 census data.
56. The new recommendation from the syllabus committee gives equal number of hours
for English and local languages, i.e. five hours each, to give more time to Chichewa
and other Malawian languages (Professor Moira Chimombo, personal communica-
tion, 1998).
57. The improvement in 1996–1997 may be due to changes in the evaluation of testing.
Students are writing multiple question tests than essay type (Moira Chimombo, per-
sonal communication, 1998).
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The Language Situation in Mozambique1
Armando Jorge Lopes
Modern Languages Department, Faculty of Arts, PO Box 257, Eduardo
Mondlane University, Maputo, Mozambique
Introduction
The aim of this paper is to provide a preliminary survey of the language
planning situation in Mozambique. This attempt explores the highly topical
issue of language planning in the particular context of the lingua franca sta-
tus of Portuguese in Mozambique, and the political and educational
tensions between this and the commitment to multilingualism by segments
of society and research institutions. The paper draws on experiences from a
range of language institutions, educational bodies, individual researchers,
organisations and ministries involved in language planning and language
policy activities.
To date, no general book on the language planning situation in Mozambique
has been published. This is not surprising in a country that became independent
only 23 years ago and since then has had to face enormous challenges with a
grave shortage of qualified human resources. Such a context does not mean,
however, that nobody has been thinking about language planning issues. In fact,
researchers have written papers and participated in several national and interna-
tional scientific gatherings in this general field.
Because I have been thinking about and working on the issues for a long
time, and probably dreaming about them too, I accepted the invitation to
write for the series with great pleasure, and at the same time with the under-
standing that this was an ideal opportunity to draw up a first compilation on
the matter. However, the whole undertaking came to be more complex than I
had originally anticipated. Available information was widely dispersed and
unsystematic, and insufficient exchange of ideas in published form between re-
searchers has somewhat limited my elaborations on a few of the points
instantiated in the questions developed by the series editors. As a result, the
paper is a synopsis in some places, although I have been fairly comprehensive
in several others. It should also be seen as an invitation to compare and a chal-
lenge to query.
I have presented several topics, which are developed in this paper, at several
places in recent years: the Maputo LASU Conference (1991) on the role of linguis-
150
The Language Situation in Mozambique 151
Table 1 cont.
Language and variants Number of speakers
Ciyao 374,426
Ciyao 310,496
Jawa 63,930
Shimakonde 371,111
Shimakonde 325,223
Cimakwe 37,422
Shindonde 8,466
Gitonga 319,836
Ekoti 102,393
Kimwani 29,980
Kiswahili 21,070
Kiswahili 14,963
Mgao 6,107
Swazi 7,742
Cisenga 3,584
Zulu 3,529
Source: Inquérito Nacional aos Agregados Familiares sobre Condições de Vida, Resultados
Gerais. Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Maputo, Moçambique, 1998.
Katupha (1984) — more in line with Marinis — refers to eight, albeit not quite the
same language groupings as those indicated by Marinis. On the other hand, for
Ngunga (1987), who challenges his predecessors’ association of Nyanja with
Sena as two dialects of one language, it would be premature to state categorically
any number of languages said to be spoken in the country.
Given the current state of affairs, and until such time as the whole matter has
been clarified and a consensus reached, I have suggested (Lopes, 1997b) that the
1989 Report on the Standardisation of Orthography of Mozambican Languages,
emanating from the first seminar on the field held at the Eduardo Mondlane Uni-
versity (UEM), should constitute the major source of reference. The language
map presented on page eight of the Report identifies 20 Bantu languages, which
are reproduced here in Figure 1. Several sectors of the society took part in the
event, and the Report was elaborated by experts from different institutions, in-
cluding UEM’s NELIMO (Núcleo de Estudo das Línguas Moçambicanas — Unit for
the Study of Mozambican Languages) and INDE (Instituto Nacional do
Desenvolvimento da Educação — National Institute for Education Development).
From March 1996 to April 1997, the National Institute of Statistics carried out a
national inquiry on household living conditions. The Final Results (INE, 1998) in-
clude information on language, especially figures for mother-tongue speakers
per province, sex, age group, and the urban/rural divide. The list of languages is
long, but it is obvious that many of these languages constitute variants of certain
language groups. On the basis of prior language/dialect classifications, and fun-
damentally the 1989 Report, I have attempted to rearrange the presentation of the
National Inquiry Results as shown here in the Tables and Figures. The reported
spelling of each Bantu language follows the spelling adopted by the 1989 Report.
154 Language Policy and Planning in Africa
Source: Inquérito Nacional aos Agregados Familiares sobre Condições de Vida, Resultados Gerais.
Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Maputo, 1998.
(1,620,100 speakers), the largest language, represents 13% of the country’s total
population (12,070,000); and the latter — with 40 languages — where the largest
language, Fang (169,650), accounts for 16% of the total population (1,069,000).
Ghana (having 73 languages) is the country with the least high linguistic diver-
sity. The largest language, Akan (7,000,000 speakers), represents 46% of Ghana’s
total population (15,310,000). Thus, the comparison across different countries
shows that the country where the largest language represents the smallest pro-
portion of population is considered as the most linguistically diverse.
Mozambique, where Emakhuwa accounts for 24.8% of the total population,
ranks among the 15 most linguistically diverse countries in Africa. This means
that, on a numerical basis, no Mozambican Bantu language can claim majority
language status at a national level. This is not in itself a bad thing. Any situation
where no language group is in a position to exert hegemony over the country as a
whole may well constitute a contributing factor to relative political stability. But,
of course, Emakhuwa constitutes a significant numerical minority nationally, be-
cause no other language comes close to it in size, or is widely spoken in at least
three out of the country’s 11 Provinces (Figure 1).
It should be understood, however, that high linguistic diversity-based analy-
ses are merely attempts to show how prevalent the phenomenon is, and do not
attempt to define minority status. The kernel of the traditional majority–minority
model, as it has been applied to situations of high linguistic diversity, should
probably not be based primarily on numbers, but rather (and perhaps especially)
on social and power relationships. Further, it should also take into account the di-
mension of language spread beyond national borders, as Liphola (1988: 34) is
keen to remind us:
Ciyao and Shimakonde (Chi-Yao and Chi-Mákonde in the original), among
others viewed as ‘minority’ languages, could claim majority language rec-
ognition, if one were to take account of the fact that these languages
‘violate’ geographical borders south of the United Republic of Tanzania.3
Indeed, the notion of ‘minority’ language in a country like Mozambique,
which shares linguistic groupings across six geographic borders and where some
are quite sizeable is controversial to say the least, and adds little to the ‘major-
ity–minority’ language debate, from a language rights viewpoint. The languages
Kiswahili and Shimakonde spread north to the neighbouring state of Tanzania.
Ciyao spreads to the Republic of Malawi and Tanzania. Cinyanja spreads to Ma-
lawi, Tanzania and the Republic of Zambia. Elomwe and Cisena are also home
languages in Malawi. Cishona spreads to the Republic of Zimbabwe.
Xichangana is shared by the Republic of South Africa, where it is known as
Shangaan (or also Tsonga). The same is true of Zulu. As for Swazi, it is shared by
the Kingdom of Swaziland, where it is termed siSwati.
On the political and legal fronts, Mozambique is an exoglossic state, because
Portuguese rather than an indigenous language has been declared the country’s
official language (see Article 5 of the 1990 revised version of the Constitution of
the Republic). Portuguese is the only medium of government-controlled na-
tional communication in the areas of administration and education, and has also
been referred to as the symbol of national unity. According to the National In-
The Language Situation in Mozambique 157
Source: Inquérito Nacional aos Agregados Familiares sobre Condições de Vida, Resultados Gerais.
Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Maputo,Moçambique, 1998.
The Language Situation in Mozambique 159
As for literacy, Portuguese has enjoyed primacy over other languages. Even
during the period (1964–74) of the armed struggle for national liberation and In-
dependence (conquered in 1975), the Mozambican Liberation Front (Frelimo)
used Portuguese in adult literacy activities. Recently, the educational authorities
have experimentally introduced Bantu languages in adult literacy campaigns as
well as in primary schooling. (A pilot project began in the Provinces of Tete and
Gaza in 1992 and terminated in 1997.)
Mozambique’s communication with the outside world is basically carried out
by means of two languages, Portuguese and English. Through Portuguese, the
country communicates mainly with the other four Portuguese-speaking African
countries (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and Príncipe), and
with Portugal and Brazil. An approximate population of 200 million speakers
shares this language. With most of the world, the Mozambicans make use of Eng-
lish, which is here considered the first foreign language. English is a lingua franca
in each of the states bordering Mozambique and a common language for
inter-communication among them. Both Portuguese and English are the two of-
ficial languages of the Southern African Development Community (SADC
Treaty, 1992) which integrates 15 countries, but, in practice, English has func-
tioned as the major working language. French, which used to be the primary
foreign language in the colonial educational system, is now enjoying a comeback
at the pre-university level and could, in the future, become Mozambique’s sec-
ond most important foreign language.
Table 4 Study plan (and weekly hours) for primary education* (Grades 1–7)
Subjects 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Portuguese 12 11 10 10 9 6 5
Mathematics 6 6 6 6 6 5 5
Natural Sciences 2 2 3
Biology 3 4
Geography 2 3 3
History 2 2 3 3
Aesthetic & 2 3 3 3 3 4 4
Working Education
Physical Education 2 2 2 2 2 2 3
Total 22 22 23 25 27 26 27
Subjects 8 9 10 11 12
(Groups for 11 and 12)
Portuguese 5 5 5 4 4
English 3 3 3 5/3 5/35h/wGroupAbelow
Mathematics 5 5 5 5 5
Biology 3 3 3 4 4
Physics 3 3 3 4 4
History 2 2 2 4 4
Geography 2 2 2 4 4
Chemistry 3 3 3 4 4
Drawing 2 2 2 3 3
Physical Education 2 2 2 2 2
French 4 4 for Group A only
Total 30 30 30 combinations under A, B, C below
ondary level are as follows: 540 hours in ESG1 (17% of the total load in the study
plan), 288 hours in ESG2 for Group A (19%), and 288 hours (17%) for both Group B
and Group C.
English is taught at secondary level (both ESG1 and ESG2), totalling five years
of instruction. It is also a compulsory subject (English for Academic Purposes) in
the first two years (total load: 256 hours) of most courses administered by the De-
partment of English of the Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), the major
higher education institution in the country.
The total time-load for English is as follows: 324 hours in ESG1, which repre-
sents 10% of the total load in the study plan for this level, 360 hours in ESG2 for
Group A (24%), and 216 hours (12%) for both Group B and Group C.
French is taught in ESG2, Group A only, with a total teaching load of 288
hours, which corresponds to 19% in the study plan. French is also an optional
subject (either French or English) in the Social Sciences course at the UEM, and
may eventually be reintroduced at the Faculty of Arts in the near future.
With regard to the Bantu languages, these are taught only at the UEM:
Emakhuwa and Xichangana in linguistics (four semesters) and history (one se-
mester) degree courses. Experimentally, the National Institute for Education
Development (INDE) has been carrying out a bilingual project since 1993, involv-
ing three primary schools in Tete (with the language Cinyanja) and two primary
schools in Gaza (with Xichangana). The adopted ‘gradual transition to L2’ model
uses the Bantu language as medium of instruction in the initial years of primary
schooling, as a stage towards a later introduction of Portuguese-only classes.
Mozambique is a country with a young population. School age Mozambicans
(5–24 years) represent more than 50% of the country’s total population. Unfortu-
nately, the national educational system is not yet capable of absorbing all those
who ought to be attending primary education (Grades 1–7), defined by the state
as compulsory. It should be noted, however, that the government has made con-
siderable efforts in rehabilitating and expanding educational infrastructures and
in training staff with a view to responding to pressing needs and challenges in
the educational sector. The numbers of school children and youths attending
public schools in 1997 were as follows (Directorate of Planning, 1997):
2,180,334 in EP1 (Grades 1–5);
199,126 in EP2 (Grades 6–7);
58,048 in ESG1 (Grades 8–10); and
7037 in ESG2 (Grades 11–12).
This represents a real pyramid, and also one in which most EP1 children are
rural, most EP2 adolescents are semi-rural, studying mainly in seats of districts,
most ESG1 youths attend school in provincial capitals and major provincial dis-
tricts, and finally, ESG2 students who can do their schooling only in provincial
capitals (and not even in all yet).
In terms of language exposure, there are thus about 2.5 million pupils who are
now using Portuguese as a medium of instruction, as well as doing this language
as a subject. Of this total, about 65,000 are also learning English, and some 5500
learning French. These figures stand for the main public stream (General Educa-
The Language Situation in Mozambique 163
tion), but there are some additional 140,000 students who attend night classes,
technical and professional schools, adult education programmes, and also attend
private education (authorised by a government decree in 1990). There are now
some 50,000 pupils in primary and secondary private schools but ‘numerically,
the pupils attending private education amount to only 2% of the number who are
studying in the public sector’ (Directorate of Planning, MINED, 1996: 57). As for
higher education, there are some 8000 students attending this level, of which
two-thirds are at the Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), a public institution
created in 1962 under the name of ‘Estudos Gerais’ and later designated Univer-
sity of Lourenço Marques until 1976, when it received its current name. In
addition to UEM, there are two other public higher education institutions — the
Pedagogical University, UP (created in 1986) and the Higher Institute of Interna-
tional Relations, ISRI (1986) — and three private institutions, namely the Higher
Polytechnic University Institute, ISPU (1996), the Catholic University of Mozam-
bique, UCM (1997) and the Higher Institute for Science and Technology of
Mozambique, ISCTEM (1997). They are all based in Maputo, except for UCM
which is located in Beira. The UP has established branches in the cities of Beira
and Nampula, and ISPU in the town of Quelimane. A seventh higher education
institution, which is to be set up in the town of Angoche in Nampula Province,
will be called Mussa Bin Bique University. It has been announced that this future
institution will primarily operate as a cultural centre for the teaching of Arabic.
Following the changes in overall national policies and the end in 1992 of the
16-year war which devastated the country, including the destruction of 50% of
primary schools in the rural areas and several teacher training centres, the gov-
ernment, with the support of the international community, has embarked on
specific rehabilitation and restructuring programmes. National education policy
advocates an expansion of access to all levels, with a special focus on primary ed-
ucation, as well as the improvement in the quality and relevance of the education
offered. Simultaneously expanding the system and improving the quality of ed-
ucation poses a dilemma, and that is why the government has strongly
encouraged various sectors in society to participate in the process. But problems
related to coverage, effectiveness and relevance are immense. According to the
Ministry of Education (MINED), the average pupil–teacher ratio in primary edu-
cation is 50:1, drop-out and repetition rates in the order of 20%. The quality of
education is not only prejudiced by overcrowded classrooms, but also by insuffi-
cient quantity of school books and teaching materials, and, especially, by the
teachers’ poor living conditions and, at times, their inadequate professional
training. The quality of education is, above all, a function of the quality of the
teacher, since s/he ‘creates the learning environment and mediates between pu-
pils and contents’ (MINED, 1994: 15). Fortunately, teacher training and in-service
training are being taken seriously by several teacher training centres and the
Teachers’ Upgrading Institute (IAP), as well as the Pedagogical University
which is particularly responsible for pre-service training of teachers for second-
ary education.
According to MINED sources (personal communication), parents are not call-
ing the use of Portuguese as a medium of instruction into question. Furthermore,
the drive towards the acquisition of higher-level skills in Portuguese can be testi-
164 Language Policy and Planning in Africa
fied by the vast numbers of readers who attend the Portuguese Cultural Centre,
as well as by the attendance figures recorded in Portuguese Literature History
courses held periodically (Lopes, 1995).
The psychological and pedagogical arguments advanced for an hypothetical
scenario of mother-tongue (i.e. Bantu) instruction in Mozambique are not clearly
understood by parents, even by middle-class adults (personal communica-
tion/MINED authorities). Since Portuguese is the official language, most parents
tend to see it as the means to ensure their children’s future, to acquire a profes-
sion and to climb socially, as well as a means to link them up with Mozambicans
who speak a different mother tongue. Other views elicited from parents are that
through Portuguese their children can gain good grounding in Science and
Mathematics. This, of course, shows that if the government were to be interested
in introducing a more rational language-in-education policy, it would have to
prioritise programmes leading to consciousness raising and improvement of at-
titudes towards indigenous languages among parents and pupils. As Lopes has
suggested:
The educational authorities must succeed in explaining to parents, teachers
and children the implications of teaching and learning through a certain
medium of instruction (mother-tongue, language of wider communica-
tion, or both),and succeed in convincing them of the pedagogical and
cultural advantages associated with promotion of mother-tongue educa-
tion, and with promotion of individual and societal bilingualism. (1997a:
25)
Results of language awareness programmes (as shown by Braz, 1995) and of
bilingual experiments can indeed be positive, as the assessment of views of par-
ents whose children have just completed the first level of primary education
(Grades 1–5) following a bilingual project reveals ‘the parents are in favour of bi-
lingual education, and want it for their schooling-age children’5 (INDE, 1997: 4). I
shall deal with aspects of this experimental project and its recent evaluation by
INDE in Part III, under language policy implementation in a context of experi-
mentation.
Now, if parents’ views with regard to Portuguese can be understood as being
pragmatic, given the current state of affairs in terms of the existing official lan-
guage policy, their views on the importance of English, on the other hand, are
candidly favourable. For example, according to MINED sources (personal com-
munication), many parents have voiced their interest in seeing English
introduced at a much earlier stage in the educational system. At the same time,
parents tend to send their children to specialised schools (mostly private) with
intent to strengthen the skills and knowledge of English acquired in the second-
ary schools. Willingness in learning and developing the English language is also
manifested by the enormous demand (youths and adults) for tuition with the In-
stitute of Languages (IOL), a public institution created in 1979 in Maputo, and
now with branches in the towns of Inhambane, Beira and Nampula. ‘On average,
more than 3000 students enrol for English Language classes at the IOL’ (Nahara,
1995: 29). The IOL offers a wide variety of services and is ‘the biggest single em-
ployer in the ELT business’ (Nahara, 1995: 30).
The Language Situation in Mozambique 165
the 1990 Constitution under which freedom of the press is guaranteed, and more
particularly since the 1991 Press Law, the media scenario in the country has
changed considerably. ‘The Government in accordance with the liberalization of
media control and ownership, relinquished full control of the previously State
owned newspapers’ (Palmer, 1996: 5). And also as a result of the Press Law, a
number of private newspapers, with special reference to A4 size publications
distributed daily by fax, have emerged and circulate mainly in Maputo. Notícias,
the only broadsheet newspaper, and the tabloid-format weeklies like Domingo,
Savana, Desafio and Campeao enjoy national circulation, primarily in urban areas.
Notícias and Domingo, in particular, are said to be ‘pro-governmental’ in their edi-
torial view, whereas Savana, Demos, Fim de Semana and the fax publications are
referred to as ‘independent’. (Table 5 summarises details on the print media.) The
press, which is essentially an urban phenomenon, makes almost exclusive use of
the Portuguese language. The sole publications in English are the monthly Mo-
zambique File produced by the National News Agency (AIM), and the privately
owned bi-weekly Mozambique INVIEW.
* By subscription;
** By subscription. The number of copies distributed by fax varies between 300 and 500, but total
circulation figures, which include multiple photocopying, are in the order of a few thousand.
cities, and plans to introduce satellite transmissions in the near future will make
virtually any corner in the country capable of receiving the signal. In 1995 the ‘…
populational (signal) coverage was estimated to be around two million people’
(de Maia, 1995: 116).
TVM programmes are in Portuguese, with the exception of Portuguese subti-
tled foreign films and series, usually in English. Mozambican artists singing in
Bantu languages are also allocated some time in this public television station.
Viewers in the capital city Maputo can also tune to RTK (Rádio Televisão Klint), a
private Portuguese language station. But, unlike TVM, this Mozambican station
also broadcasts a few films (mostly in English) undubbed and without Portu-
guese subtitles. Worthy of note is RTK’s initial experimentation with major
newscasts in both Portuguese and a Bantu language. Shortly, RTK will also oper-
ate in Quelimane, while a third Maputo-based TV station (Televisão Miramar) is
due to start broadcasting in the near future. The estimated number of television
receivers in the country is 80,000.
Radio is the most important and effective mass medium in the country. Radio
broadcasting includes coverage of areas that are not reached by other media. The
major station, Rádio Moçambique (RM) founded in 1933, is public. In fact, RM
continues to be the largest and most important social communication institution
in the country. RM broadcasts nationally in Portuguese, and locally in Portu-
guese and in Bantu languages. There is roughly one radio per 25 inhabitants.
RM is undoubtedly the national institution that has contributed most to the
development and dissemination of the various Bantu languages. The Macomia
National Conference (Frelimo, 1975) and the 1st National Information Seminar
(MINFO, 1977) had emphatically defined the study and dissemination of ‘na-
tional’ languages as crucial, as well as the role assigned to RM in using and
promoting them. RM coverage include 12 Bantu languages in addition to Portu-
guese, but the Provincial broadcasting stations’ current situation regarding
language choice, trained staff, equipment and working conditions requires re-
structuring and expansion (Sitoe et al., 1995). Working in collaboration with the
Institute of Social Communication (ICS), these RM Provincial branches have in
the past proved to be equally useful in propagating pedagogical programmes
prepared by the Ministry of Education. ICS and RM were also pioneers of the
country’s first community radio experiment carried out in Xai-Xai in 1983 (de
Maia, 1995). ICS has recently been authorised by the Council of Ministers to ex-
plore several community radios, namely those located at Ulónguè, Maputo Zona
Verde, Manhiça, Moamba, Mocuba and Mutarara.
In addition to its national service in Portuguese, RM operates a Maputo city ra-
dio station (Rádio Cidade) as well as a Radio Mozambique external service in
English. There is also talk of an eventual comeback of a rehashed LM Radio,
which, in the colonial period, used to serve commercial needs of audiences in
Maputo and South Africa — an important source of income for RM. With large
economic and social projects now emerging between Mozambique and South
Africa, as is the case with the Maputo Development Corridor linking the regions
of Maputo and Witbank, the media, and radio in particular, could equally be-
come an important cross-border vehicle of information and leisure. RM should
168 Language Policy and Planning in Africa
not lose sight of Mozambique’s position and role within the English-language re-
gion of southern Africa (Ronning, 1997).
In the aftermath of the 1990 Constitution (Article 74), a number of independ-
ent radio stations have emerged. As RM no longer holds the monopoly of radio
broadcasting, several other entities, both private and cooperative, have regis-
tered with the authorities and are operating (a couple still await authorisation),
namely Rádio Miramar (Maputo, Beira and Nampula), RTK (Maputo and
Quelimane), Rádio Projecção (Maputo), Rádio-Sim (Maputo), Coopimagem
Rádio (Maputo), Rádio Capital (Maputo), Rádio Terra Verde (Maputo), Rádio
Progresso (Maxixe), Rádio Maria (Massinga), Rádio Pax (Beira), Rádio Encontro
(Nampula), Nova Rádio Paz (Quelimane) and Rádio São Francisco de Assis
(Nangololo).
(2) government and society should strive towards making the majority of
Mozambicans adopt Portuguese as a second language.
As for (1), and leaving aside terminological incongruities (after all, aren’t local
languages also Mozambican?), I cannot, obviously, agree with promotion of an
individual’s multilingualism (Portuguese, ‘Mozambican language’ and ‘local
language’) through the proposed line of action, the described purpose of which is
‘to create incentives to reward the knowledge and use of Mozambican lan-
guages’. In fact, it does look more like a ‘carrot and stick’ type of policy. You can
only aspire to eventually becoming a head in public administration in a Province
(i.e. a reward or the ‘carrots’) if you know three languages; but should all these
multilingual skills not be present in yourself, all you are then likely to get is
‘stick’, i.e. you cannot be appointed for headship, even if you are bilingual and
meet professional criteria for eligibility.
As for (2), and though the intention underlying the formulation might have
been sound, in the sense of aiming for the widest possible spread of the country’s
official language, it seems to be unfair, restrictive and unpredictable to hint that
the majority of Mozambicans ought to adopt Portuguese as a second language.
While it is certainly true that Portuguese is not a first language for the majority of
Mozambicans who can speak it, this condition might not necessarily be the abso-
lute and sole outcome with regard to the future generation of children and
youths acquiring (and learning) two languages in parallel — the so-called first
language acquisition bilingualism. Each child will acquire her own social iden-
tity and will, within this framework, develop her personal identity. This process
might depend on different variables, including parental influence, age, habitat
(rural/urban), tutoring quality and, perhaps most importantly, the child’s learn-
ing spontaneity drive. Last, but by no means least, the criteria for ethnic and
glossic definitions, from a human rights viewpoint, should not just be validated
by others, by the state or government. The individual should equally have the
right to self-identification. That is why a necessary balance must be struck be-
tween exo-definitions and endo-definitions, and emphatically so when
authorities attempt to address far-reaching national issues.
The recommendations of the National Conference on Culture formed the ba-
sis of the government’s Culture Programme for 1995–1999 (Conselho de
Ministros. República de Moçambique, 1995). The government shall apply a lan-
guage policy which ascribes Portuguese with the role of official language and
language of national unity, and it also commits itself to codify and standardise
the national languages and to proceed with ongoing studies with a view to intro-
ducing them in formal education, in addition to other functions.
This very context has recently led to the approval in the official gazette by the
Council of Ministers of Mozambique’s ‘Cultural Policy and its Implementational
Strategy’ (Conselho de Ministros. República de Moçambique, 1997). With regard
to the subject of national languages (Section 3.2.6.), the content is, in general, sim-
ilar to that presented in the Cultural Policy Proposal document, alluded to and
discussed above. However, the approved cultural policy is less prescriptive than
the previously debated proposal of 1993. The policy calls for an intimate collabo-
ration between institutions and the relevant departments involved in language
planning, and defines the following prospective actions:
The Language Situation in Mozambique 173
tion, Portuguese, as a subject, was introduced in the last quarter of Grade 2, and
the respective mother tongues continued to be taught as subjects in Grades 4–5.
According to Matavele and Machaul (1998: 5), the project produced 23 primer
titles in mother tongues and 10 titles in Portuguese, 13 other titles (seven in
mother tongues) as supplementary readers, and translated handbooks (11 titles
for Mathematics and one for Natural Science). In November 1997, INDE organ-
ised an ample debate to assess the results of the experiment. The report of the
meeting includes a good account by Zaida Cabral on the political, psycho-peda-
gogic, socioeconomic, sociolinguistic and cultural motivations justifying the
bilingual project, a description of major achievements and difficulties experi-
enced during the five-year period and, finally, a presentation of possible
solutions for the detected problems. Here, only two aspects of the assessment —
one positive, the other less positive — shall be focused upon.
The global efficacy of the project was 3.5 times higher than the efficacy re-
corded for the normal lower primary mainstream in the national system (SNE).14
The Report (1997: 4) states the following:
… the results are very encouraging: the rate of success is good, there is a
great deal of interaction between teachers and pupils, and the level of con-
tent learning by pupils is better. Besides, parents are in favour of bilingual
education and want it for their schooling-age children.15
However, only moderate satisfaction with the project is in order, because the
conditions under which the project was implemented were quite different from
those in SNE’s normal schools. It should not be forgotten that this PEBIMO pro-
ject enjoyed a special sponsorship by the UNDP and the World Bank. But it is true
that the Report also addresses a few thorny issues, one of which has to do with
the adopted model, in particular the transition from the L1 to the L2 medium of
instruction:
One of the difficulties with the adoption of this model relates to the fact that
it has not provided enough oral competence in the L2 so as to permit a grad-
ual and well succeeded transition to the L2.16 (p. 4)
And the Report concludes the section on this problem in this way:
The ‘ideal’ model, depicted in the last Figure on Annex C-3, … reveals the
teaching, from the beginning, of the second language, the gradual transi-
tion from L1 to L2, and the maintenance of L1 as a subject … INDE has
suggested this model as the best for future adoption.17 (p. 5)
Of course, I can only be but pleased to see that my earlier criticism in connec-
tion with such problems proved to have been constructive.
A delay of a few years in the use of Portuguese as a medium of instruction
may result in subtracted competence in this language in later grades, and
may prove to be hard to make up, especially in the case of L1 Bantu-speak-
ing children … The ‘initial bilingualism model’ stands a better chance in
reducing the risks of future Portuguese incompetence eventually incurred
by the ‘gradual transition model’. (Lopes, 1997a: 28)
The Language Situation in Mozambique 175
In the ‘initial bilingualism model’, the change-over to the L2 occurs after a pe-
riod in which Portuguese, together with Bantu, has already been used as
co-medium of instruction. Indeed, a major advantage of the ‘initial bilingualism
model’ over the ‘gradual transition model’ is that it reduces risks of under
achievement in the proficiency of Portuguese in later grades, because this lan-
guage is equally used as a medium of instruction, from the beginning of primary
education. (Lopes, 1997a: 31)
But at the present stage of the project development, I feel that I would like to
contribute three new elements for consideration with regard to the model:
(1) That programming of Portuguese co-medium of instruction in Grade 1
should aim at no less than one-third of the total allocated time for use of and
exposure to both Bantu and Portuguese together (i.e. at least, one-third for
Portuguese and two-thirds for Bantu as co-media of instruction).
(2) That the use of Portuguese as a co-medium in subjects such as Physical Edu-
cation and Aesthetic Education — and however important as they may be
—should not be solely restricted to these subjects.
(3) That, as need arises for the project to be also extended to schools where class-
mates are predominantly L1 Portuguese-speaking, programming time for
Portuguese as a co-medium in Grade 1 should be two-thirds, and Bantu
one-third. Of course, when arrived at the point of the changeover to Portu-
guese-only classes (Grade 5?), both L1 Bantu-speaking and L1
Portuguese-speaking children should reveal identical competence in their
command of Portuguese. This feature of a potentially widened model, obvi-
ously, calls for an appropriate model design and implementation, including
careful planning of activities.
The roots of the rationale underlying my ‘initial bilingualism’ proposition are
to be found in Machel (1979: 13) when she stated:
We know what our objective is: to introduce the child and the adult into a
necessary bilingualism, in which the language of unity and the mother
tongue may develop side by side.18
In fact, and despite the prevailing strong emphasis on Portuguese at the time,
the openness that some authorities evidenced around the bilingualism question
in the 1970s was influential in regard to activities which were then and later de-
veloped by educational structures such as the ‘Comissão de Elaboração de
Textos’ (CET) — operating as early as 1976 and as a precursor of INDE, founded
in 1980.19 But the first truly large undertaking, which attempted to investigate a
particular form of bilingualism in Mozambican schools, was the G. Meijer-led
1982 INDE project on ‘Bilingualism, cognitive development and pre-school ex-
perience of Mozambican children’. Baldo’s (1987) study on how children’s L1
discourse patterns ought to be taken account of in classroom activities for the
learning of L2 oral skills was one of the several research examples that branched
out of the original project. Today’s INDE, which is possibly the major national
language planning research institution and definitely the key educational
think-tank, owes a great deal to those early post-Independence efforts men-
tioned above.
176 Language Policy and Planning in Africa
On the adult literacy planning front, and in the course of the liberation strug-
gle, Frelimo used adult literacy as an effective means to mobilise the people in the
liberated zones. The 1975 Mocuba National Plenary document (Frelimo, 1975b),
produced during the transitional government period before Independence, re-
fers to an illiteracy rate of about 90%. On the other hand, the 1975 Ribaué
document on literacy (Frelimo, 1975a), whilst reflecting the objectives, tone and
practice of the liberation movement in the previous decade, also indicated the
new challenges awaiting post-Independence Mozambique: literacy understood
as a means to liberate the creative initiative of the Mozambican people, as well as
a means through which the popular masses are to achieve their complete Inde-
pendence and initiate national reconstruction. Portuguese had been the medium
used, and such practice was to be emphasised by the late President Machel who,
at the launching of the National Literacy Campaign in 1978, delivered the follow-
ing words:
The spread of the Portuguese language is an important medium among all
Mozambicans, an important vehicle for the exchange of experiences at the
national level, a factor consolidating national consciousness and the pros-
pects for a common future. In the course of the war, some people asked:
‘Why are we continuing with Portuguese?’ Some will say that this National
Literacy Campaign aims at valuing Portuguese. In which language would
you like us to launch this Literacy Campaign? In Makwa or Makonde, in
Nyanja, Shangaan, Ronga, Bitonga, Ndau, or in Chuabo?20 (p. 7)
Portuguese-medium literacy planning prevailed until the end of the 1980s,
and the results were felt to be mixed. Positive in some instances, but unsatisfac-
tory in several others. It is hard to give a balanced assessment of the whole project
because most activities were deeply affected by the war. However, it is also quite
likely that the exclusive use of Portuguese in several literacy campaigns might
have been a major source of a series of failures. In this context, Veloso (1994) has
reported that adult literacy activities through the medium of Portuguese had
hardly been efficient, especially among peasant women, and that, as a result, the
Ministry of Education and UNICEF had jointly decided to embark on a
mother-tongue type of programme, subsequently followed by L2 Portuguese
teaching input. The ‘Women’s Bilingual Education Project’, as the new attempt
became known, took off in 1990 and focused on languages such as Cisena,
Xichangana and Cindau.
The project, which produced over 20 manual titles and several other materials,
seems to have developed reasonably well. Mother tongue literacy experiences
are a welcome and adequate cultural and cognitive development, and may prove
to be more useful to those intervening in the socioeconomic and political facts of
daily life, particularly to Mozambicans in the countryside, who constitute the
majority of the country’s population. It may still be argued, however, that the ra-
tionale underlying the various literacy programmes is substantially improved
literacy skills in Portuguese, i.e. literacy used as a means rather than an end in it-
self, as Lopes (1992: 23–4) puts it:
It is thought that by acquiring literacy skills in the mother tongue in the first
place, their transfer to the official language will be smoother and, hope-
The Language Situation in Mozambique 177
of formal education and literacy have simply remained as pilot projects. The
main problem is that status decisions are primarily political matters, and authori-
ties, in general, tend not to move or, at best, to move at a glacial pace when faced
with issues like the maintenance, expansion or restriction in the range of uses of a
language for particular functions. Disenchantment with this state of affairs was
eloquently manifested by both Filmão (1992) in his draft paper, presented to a
Coordinating Council at the Ministry of Culture, and Honwana (1994) in his arti-
cle published in Jornal de Letras.
The crux of the matter in language status planning in developing and multilin-
gual nations lies in official recognition. In spite of the great value attached to the
bilingual experiments, languages will only truly be recognised, promoted and
have fundamental rights, if they can enjoy official status. This position was de-
fended by Lopes in his address to the World Congress in Kwaluseni in 1994
(published in 1997b), by Firmino and Machungo (1994) in their draft paper,
which introduced the nuance of regional official status for the Bantu languages,
and also by Firmino (1997) who has equally suggested a primary statutory posi-
tion for Portuguese.
Today, I still maintain the same view held in 1994, especially manifested
through a proposal for an improved type of language policy constitutionally.
Such a proposal for the case of Mozambique is based on the following premises:
(1) Language is basic to identity.
(2) Fulfilment of basic human needs for development includes the rights of citi-
zens to identify with, and properly learn and use their own mother tongue.
(3) The citizens’ right to use mother tongues in official situations and, conse-
quently, all languages spoken natively by Mozambicans should enjoy
official status.
(4) The right to adequate learning and use of a language of wider communica-
tion as a link and unity language at the national level, and as a means of
communication with world nations and communities using that language.
(5) The increasing need to intensify learning and use of foreign languages for
the major purpose of responding to regional and international challenges in
communication, cooperation, science and technology.
As for the country’s internal language functions:
(1) Portuguese should retain its statutory function as a link and unity language
at the national level.
(2) Bantu languages should gradually be used co-officially (with Portuguese)
in, at least, the following domains: initial literacy, lower and upper primary
education (Grades 1–5 and 6–7), adult literacy, culture, public administra-
tion, justice (emphatically in court rooms), Parliament, rural development
and agriculture, health care, child nutrition, family planning, small scale in-
dustry, mass media, and religion.
(3) The Mozambicans’ native Asian languages, which must equally enjoy offi-
cial language status, should function in prioritised domains.
The following points are suggested as formal and constituent provisions that
would contribute to improve current Mozambican language policy — a proposi-
The Language Situation in Mozambique 179
(3) Kiswahili in Tanzania or Afrikaans in South Africa were not particularly de-
veloped languages when they gained official language status in their
respective countries. In fact, it can be argued that their status, acquired in the
past, indeed accelerated their development and promotion. On the other
hand, Krio in Sierra Leone, like Kiswahili in Tanzania, was originally a tiny
language, but promotion efforts have turned this language into a large and
developed lingua franca.
Certainly, the test of any new future proposal put forward lies with the ability
of politicians and policy makers to achieve the very difficult task of striking the
best possible balance between goals of efficiency/nationism and those of authen-
ticity/nationalism. Or as Webb (1994: 259) puts it with regard to a certain past
proposal in South Africa, it is important to recognise ‘… the extremely difficult
task of balancing the need for effective government with the sociocultural and
psycholinguistic needs of the country’s citizens’. The new South African policy
of 11 official languages and the ongoing implementational attempts surely con-
stitute a fresh reference point. And in the educational sphere, the work by the
Catalan bilingualism planners (e.g. Miguel Strubell) showing how they promote
Catalan, as well as Gaudart’s (1992) account and discussion of bilingual educa-
tion in Malaysia could prove to be insightful to Mozambican applied linguists,
particularly language planners in national institutions.
Some of the most active language planning agencies operating in the polity are
the Eduardo Mondlane University, especially through NELIMO, the Ministry of
Education through INDE, and the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport through
ARPAC (Arquivos do Património Cultural). Equally active are Rádio
Moçambique, several religious denominations — which increasingly translate,
edit and publish liturgical texts in different Bantu languages, Summer Institute
of Linguistics/Sociedade Internacional de Linguística-programa de
Moçambique (SIL), Friedrich Ebert Foundation, the North-South Austrian Insti-
tute and various Mozambican non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Some
of these and other Foundations and Associations produce or support production
of materials for civic education and electoral purposes, and pursue adult educa-
tion goals. There are equally several cultural organisations, interest groups and
religious denominations which have been involved in aspects of the language
planning process, mainly for Portuguese, Xironga, Xichangana and Cisena.
Since INDE has already been discussed at some length, the main work under-
taken by the other major planning agencies will now be considered.
Under E. Rzewuski’s initiative, and in association with M. Katupha as its
co-founding member, NELIMO was set up within the Faculty of Arts of the Edu-
ardo Mondlane University in 1978. At the outset, NELIMO first undertook to
draw up a bibliography on the Bantu languages of Mozambique as well glossa-
ries of scientific and technical terms in some of those languages for the Ministry
of Information, especially the Social Communication Office. Later, it set up a re-
search project on the description of Bantu languages with a view to teaching
them in free courses and in a linguistics degree programme at the Modern Lan-
guages Department of the Faculty of Arts. In this respect, leitores (teaching
assistants) underwent special training, while a series of works were gradually
being produced for the first experimental courses, namely the Cadernos Tsonga,
The Language Situation in Mozambique 181
the handbook Byi Xile and the Cadernos Emakhuwa. The project on language de-
scription also contemplated lexical work that was later to be used in the
compilation of a Kiswahili-Portuguese dictionary and a Xichangana-Portuguese
dictionary produced by Sitoe (1996). A major task awaiting further future devel-
opments is a detailed dialectological survey, and the subsequent elaboration of
more sophisticated language maps and an atlas. Lack of human, material and fi-
nancial resources hindered the development of a few projected activities in the
past. The future of NELIMO is promising in, at least, human terms, since it can
count now on a group of specialised Mozambican linguists, recently returned
from their doctoral training abroad. Finally, it must be reiterated how instrumen-
tal NELIMO’s work has been with regard to the 1988 event on the
standardisation of the orthography of several Bantu languages, the articulation
with INDE and the National Directorate of Adult Education, and the collabora-
tion with Radio Mozambique.
In addition to INDE and NELIMO, the Archives of Cultural Heritage/ARPAC
is a language planning agency equally worthy of mention. Linguistics and eth-
no-linguistics are two of this institution’s major areas of interest and research.
The Organic Statutes of ARPAC, approved in 1993 by the Council of Ministers’
Decree 26/93, define national languages and linguistic studies, amongst others,
as constituent parts of ARPAC’s area of speciality (Conselho de Ministros, 1993).
The dossier-ARPAC on national languages published in 1992 constitutes a useful
compilation of writings on language that appeared in the press over the period
1975–92. ARPAC was one of the major organisers of the country’s First National
Conference on Culture held in 1993. It maintains close working links with both
INDE and NELIMO as well as with regional institutions. Its recent partnership
involvement with the South African-based Southern African Migration Project
(SAMP) is an example of the latter. SAMP recently commissioned a report as part
of a programme to understand the extent to which language rights have been ap-
plied to non-South Africans in the new South Africa, and in particular how they
have been observed by various state departments and officials. Reitzes and
Crawhall’s clear-sighted report entitled Silenced by Nation-Building: African Immi-
grants & Language Policy in the New South Africa published in 1998 will stimulate
debate and pave the way to the carrying out of similar research in other Southern
African countries, Mozambique included. Given ARPAC’s recent involvement
with SAMP, ARPAC is bound to initiate in the near future pioneering research in
an area of critical importance to Mozambique.
Radio Mozambique also undertakes language planning activities in close col-
laboration with several agencies, in particular with NELIMO. It is a major
propagator of both Portuguese and the Bantu languages. RM’s recent language
planning activities include the 1996 assessment of concepts and language used in
radio broadcasts, the groundwork for the 3rd Seminar on Mozambican Lan-
guages Broadcasting held in 1996 and the 1997 publication of a Glossary of
Political–Social Concepts in 17 Bantu languages and variants. The Austrian Insti-
tute for North–South Cooperation contributed actively to this kind of research
work and the joint publication of the glossary. And for RM’s future development,
the consultancy work on ‘Mozambican Languages in RM’ commissioned to
UEM’s Modern Languages Department (report by Sitoe et al., 1995) surely con-
182 Language Policy and Planning in Africa
Lopes (1998b) has suggested elsewhere that the norm broadcast by RM (Radio
Mozambique) could well constitute such a baseline. RM is one of the most re-
spected and prestigious mass media in the country, and its signal reaches most
parts of the territory. The Mozambican Portuguese variety broadcast by RM is
appropriately fit to function as a Standard of Mozambican Portuguese, both na-
tionally and transnationally, and would most likely meet with widespread
agreement among Mozambicans.
Obviously, there would have to be descriptions of the selected ‘standard’ form
for purposes of a more systematic learning of the language (da Silva, 1993). In the
first years after Independence, European Portuguese was said to be the model
that learners would have to aim at in education. But in the course of the following
years, practice showed that such an idealistic goal was not achievable, and even
no longer desired because it lacked the marks of an emerging national identity.
This situation has not as yet been seriously addressed, and as a result school chil-
dren learn a norm for which the educational system is unable to plan. Language
planners and educationalists, in general, ought to consider this matter seriously
and urgently, and more so in view of the millions of children who are now at-
tending school. Also, the long-term effects of the currently laissez-faire policy on
norm and standards may impact negatively on the future status and role of Por-
tuguese as a lingua franca and as a language of national unity. The words of
Craveirinha (1993), Mozambique’s greatest poet in Portuguese, seem to carry
part of such implication:
The major problem resides in the primary school, where ground is being
lost day after day … If nothing is done, we may lose this linguistic presence
within the space of a generation.26 (p. 7)
For various reasons — in addition to didactic, political and financial ones —
the national and international press has voiced concern over the future of the
Portuguese language in Mozambique, including the possibility of Portuguese
being overtaken by English. The matter has equally merited some attention in re-
search (e.g. Miguel, 1994). Three major reasons have been invoked in order to
justify the hypothesis of an eventual substitution of English for Portuguese: (1)
Mozambique’s recent membership in the Commonwealth; (2) Mozambique’s
sharing of borders with English-speaking countries; and (3) English is a powerful
tool for worldwide communication.
The historical and cultural influence of English-speaking peoples in the region
is visible in the country, and so are the marks of their language on both Portu-
guese and the Bantu languages. The language argument may indeed be used to
refute claims that the English language has had no tradition in Mozambique
(Lopes, 1998a; Magaia, 1997).
Mozambique’s accession to Commonwealth membership should enable both
Mozambique and the southern African region to build a future of regional eco-
nomic cooperation and integration. It is a fact that Mozambique is completely
surrounded by Commonwealth countries, and it is also true that Mozambique’s
application for membership was strongly supported by Mozambique’s neigh-
bours. These factors stem from no sinister philosophy of the Commonwealth nor
any evil aspect of the English language itself, but from the simple fact that the
188 Language Policy and Planning in Africa
future, it is difficult to imagine how English could take the place of Portuguese in
Mozambique.
Furthermore, two hundred million speakers around the world have turned
Portuguese into a pluricentric and dynamic language, thus creating pressures
that apply in all directions in the considerably extensive ecological system of Por-
tuguese. The Portuguese language in Mozambique is necessarily part (and not
an isolate part) of a complex ecological system, which extends through the Portu-
guese-speaking states of Africa and reaches into the Portuguese-speaking states
and communities in Europe, America and Asia. Surely, the influence of English
in Mozambique will increasingly be greater but, the interests of the elite, particu-
larly the business elite, in promoting English for their interaction with the
outside world will always be balanced by their continuing attachment to Portu-
guese as a language of national unity, and the Bantu languages as symbols of
ethnolinguistic identity and ties.
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Professor Armando Jorge Lopes,
Modern Languages Department, Faculty of Arts, PO Box 257, Eduardo
Mondlane University, Maputo, Mozambique (ling@ajlopes.uem.mz).
Notes
1. I wish to express my gratitude to Professors Robert B. Kaplan and Richard B. Baldauf,
Jr, the series editors, who kindly invited me to collaborate on their impressive lan-
guage planning project. I trust the reader will find this introductory study useful.
Thanks also to the following friends, former students, colleagues and authorities who
have assisted me throughout the 15-month period of research: Anwar Latif, Arlindo
Folige, Aurélio Simango, Delfina Mugabe, Julieta Langa, Samima Patel, Teresa Alfaro,
Vasco Nhussi, Directorate of Planning at the Ministry of Education (Director Virgílio
Juvane), National Institute for Education Development (Director Miguel Buendia and
staff) and National Institute of Statistics (Vice-President Manuel Gaspar). And, obvi-
ously, I am particularly indebted to Alda Costa and Jeremy Grest who gave the draft
manuscript a close and very educated reading. I, of course, accept full responsibility
for the translation of citations in the text, and for any errors that may occur in this vol-
ume.
2. Guthrie (1967/71) established language zones, as well as language groups within lan-
guage zones, for the purpose of grouping and classifying languages sharing common
phonetic and grammatical features. Fifteen zones, each identified by a letter of the Al-
phabet (A to S) were defined and each group of languages was assigned a number (e.g.
G40 stands for the Kiswahili Group which includes the languages Kiswahili and
Kimwani). The Zones in Mozambique have been defined by the letters G, N, P, and S.
Bantu languages can be found from the Cameroon mountains in West Africa down to
the River Tana in East Africa. Zone A languages are located in the northwestern region
of the continent. The term Bantu usually refers to typological and genetic relation-
ships and means men, peoples, persons. The Bantu family has been classified as being
among the major language families of the world. The term was first used by Bleek
(1862–69) who used a noun class system as a key distinguishing feature of a Bantu lan-
guage. All non-Bantu languages of South Africa, e.g. Khoisan, lack that specific
feature.
3. Chi-Yao e Chi-Mákonde, entre outras tidas como línguas ‘minoritárias’, poderiam
reclamar o seu reconhecimento de línguas maioritáras se se tomasse em contra o facto
de que essas línguas ‘violam’ as fronteiras geográficas a Sul da República Unida da
Tanzania.
190 Language Policy and Planning in Africa
4. The translations of the Christian Bible used in Western Zambezia originated in Ma-
lawi. The Bible was translated mainly by Catholic Missionaries from English into
Cinyanja. In the major Milange district, the Cinyanja Bible as well as sets of catechism
books in Cinyanja are widely used. Furthermore, Protestant leaders in Zambezia
would also like to have their own Cinyanja version of the Bible. Cinyanja is a language
with a long literary and educational history. In Malawi, it is possible that more books
have been published in Cinyanja than in English. Over two-thirds of Malawians can
understand and speak Cinyanja, Malawi’s major language — also known or referred
to as Cichewa.
5. Os pais estão a favor do ensino bilingue e querem-no para seus filhos em idade escolar.
6. (1) Na República de Moçambique, a língua portuguesa é a língua oficial. (2) O Estado
valoriza as línguas nacionais e promove o seu desenvolvimento e utilização crescente
como línguas veiculares e na educação dos cidadãos.
7. Não existe língua de maioria no nosso País. Escolher uma das línguas moçambicanas
como língua nacional seria uma opção arbitrária que poderia ter sérias consequências
… Fomos por isso forçados a utilizar o Português como a nossa língua de ensino e para
comunicação entre nós.
8. A necessidade de combatermos o opressor exigia um combate intransigente contra o
tribalismo e o regionalismo. Foi esta necessidade de unidade que nos impôs que a
única língua comum-a que servira para oprimir-assumisse uma nova dimensão.
9. A decisão de se optar pela língua portuguesa, como língua oficial na República Popu-
lar de Moçambique, foi uma decisão política meditada e ponderada visando atingir
um objectivo — a preservação da unidade nacional e a integridade do território. A
história da apropriação da língua portuguesa, como factor de unidade, nivelador das
diferenças, veio desde a criação da Frelimo em 1962.
10. Em vez de enfrentar racionalmente o problema da multiplicidade das línguas faladas
nos seus territórios, no âmbito geral do desafio da Modernidade-Tradição, os países
africanos não hesitaram em adoptar as línguas de antigos colonizadores.
11. A decisão da 11a. Sessão do Comité Central sobre o estudo das línguas moçambicanas
e sobre a criação de um órgão especializado constitui uma medida de grande alcance
cultural. Esta decisão aprofunda o debate sobre a cultura e abre perspectivas
importantes à comunicação social, à educação, à formação profissional.
12. Os elementos positivos da nossa vida cultural, tais como as nossas formas de
expressão linguística, as nossas músicas e danças típicas, as peculiaridades regionais
de nascer, crescer, amar e morrer, continuarão depois da Independência para florir e
embelezar a vida da nossa Nação. No há antagonismo entre as realidades da
existência de vários grupos étnicos e a Unidade Nacional.
13. A valorização social das línguas, o apoio aos centros de estudo das línguas
moçambicanas existentes ou a estabelecer; a codificação e padronização da ortografia
das línguas moçambicanas; e a selecção das línguas que, em cada província ou região,
deverão ser introduzidas no Sistema Nacional de Educação, assim como na actividade
política, social e económica.
14. In the SNE, out of a sample of 1000 pupils in first grade, only 63 graduated from first
level primary eduaction five years later (i.e. 6.3%). In terms of the PEBIMO Project, 38
out of 170 pupils in first grade managed to complete the five-year cycle of primary in-
struction (i.e. 22%), and without repeating any grade.
15. Os resultados são muito animadores: o aproveitamento é bom, há muita interacção
entre professores e alunos, os alunos apreendem melhor os conteúdos. Por outro lado,
os pais estão a favor do ensino bilingue, e querem-no para seus filhos em idade escolar.
16. Uma das dificuldades da adopção deste modelo relaciona-se com o facto de não ter
providenciado um desenvolvimento oral suficiente na L2 para permitir uma transição
gradual e bem sucedida para a L2.
17. O modelo ‘ideal’, representado na última figura no anexo C-3, … descreve o ensino da
língua segunda desde o início, a transição gradual da L1 para a L2 e a manutenção da
L1 como disciplina … Este modelo foi proposto pelo INDE como o melhor a ser
adoptado no futuro.
The Language Situation in Mozambique 191
18. O nosso objectivo sabemos qual é: introduzir a criança e o adulto num bilinguismo
necessário, em que a língua de unidade e a língua materna se desenvolvam lado a
lado.
19. I count myself among the fortunate ones who were privileged to contribute modestly
to the dramatic changes in education that occurred immediately after Independence.
20. A generalização da língua portuguesa é um meio importante entre todos os
moçambicanos, veículo importante de troca de experiência a nível nacional, factor da
consolidação da consciência nacional e da perspectiva do futuro comum. Alguns
perguntaram durante a guerra: ‘Para quê continuarmos com a língua portuguesa?’
Alguns vão dizer que a Campanha Nacional de Alfabetização é para valorização da
língua portuguesa. Em que língua é que vocês gostariam que nós desencadeássemos a
Campanha de Alfabetização? Em Macua ou em Maconde, Nyanja, em Changana,
Ronga, Bitonga, Ndau, em Chuabo?
21. Temos que considerar as outras línguas e temos que desenvolvê-las também ao
mesmo tempo que desenvolvemos o Português.
22. It is proposed that there be:
(1) compilation of a Lexicon of Mozambican-Portuguese Usage designed to be used
for reference purposes; and
(2) elaboration of a Concise Multilingual Portuguese–Bantu–English and Eng-
lish–Bantu–Portuguese Pocket Dictionary (with MP variants) designed as a pocket
companion for the student, the teacher and the reader, in general.
The goals of the proposed research would be to describe certain features of Portu-
guese usage which are uniquely characteristic of the Portuguese of Mozambican
speakers (lexicon), as well as to record in dictionary format both the non-common core
and the common core parts (especially the most frequent usages) of Mozambican-Por-
tuguese. The aims of the Lexicon of Usage would be to provide general readers,
teachers and students with a work of reference on Mozambican-Portuguese (MP), and
to develop their awareness of differences between MP and European Portuguese
(contrastive dimension). The aim of the Concise Multilingual Pocket Dictionary
would be to provide both Mozambican and English-speaking readers with a system-
atic list of the most frequent words in Portuguese (MP variants included) as used in
Mozambique. The proposed research is qualitative and corpus-based and shall pri-
marily make use of library resources, in particular the literature on non-native
language variety, lexicology and lexicography. The Lexicon should contain innova-
tions recorded among MP speakers’ writing and speech, including descriptions of
some infrequent items, especially if they exemplify a certain trend or pattern. The pro-
posed Lexicon should only consist of those MP items whose form and/or function are
different from European Portuguese (EP) items. That is to say, the non-common core
part of MP. A rough estimate of this part is 300–400 items, and the scope of the work
would be both microlinguistic (syntax, semantics and lexis) and macrolinguistic (dis-
course, rhetoric and idiom). The Concise Multilingual Pocket Dictionary would be
designed as a pocket companion for the student, the teacher and the general reader.
The dictionary would consist of one list of the most frequent Portuguese words in Mo-
zambique — both the common core and the non-common core parts of MP — one list
of the corresponding Bantu language items, and one list of English items compiled
into a handy volume, providing each of the lists with equal recognition. My estimate
for the original list is 5000 items. The items would be dealt with in Portuguese, Bantu
and English in such a way as to require no specialised knowledge of the grammars of
the languages involved in order to be able to use the dictionary. The format would be
straightforward and easy to understand, with directive words given in brackets, to in-
dicate the particular shade of meaning associated with the particular headword. The
selected content areas of the dictionary would specifically include such themes as for-
mal and informal economy, primary health care, family planning, gender, literacy,
education, culture, democracy, and topics in connection with water, housing and
communications.
23. As alterações da língua portuguesa têm uma lógica que ultrapassa o domínio
linguístico e que traduzem uma outra apreensão do mundo e da vida. Os
192 Language Policy and Planning in Africa
moçambicanos estão a superar a condição de simples utentes da língua portuguesa
para ascenderem ao estatuto de co-produtores desse meio de expressão.
24. Por um lado está a criação de novas palavras, resultantes de empréstimos (às LB/L1’s
dos falantes, ou outras como o Inglês) ou devidas à produtividade lexical (actuando
sobre bases-empréstimo ou sobre bases do PE). Por outro lado, está o uso de palavras
já pertencentes ao léxico do PE, às quais são atribuídos novos valores semânticos e/ou
diferentes propriedades sintácticas.
25. Lopes’ research was carried out during the period 1978–9. His 1979 contribution (pub-
lished in 1980) was sent for inclusion in a bilingual dictionary, following a request by
the Longman English Language Teaching Division Publisher to assist in adding some
Mozambican-Portuguese variations, where they existed, to a bilingual dictionary that
was then being compiled. The dictionary — intended principally for the speaker of
Portuguese not the speaker of English — was primarily aimed at the Brazilian market.
The original text was an English–English dictionary at an intermediate level — that is
for learners with between three and five years of learning English — to which Portu-
guese glosses had been added. Where the Portuguese word differs in Brazilian (BP),
European (EP) and Mozambican Portuguese (MP) this has been indicated. The dictio-
nary consists of 10,000 English headwords with English definitions and examples
followed by a translation of the headword in the meaning being defined in BP, EP and
MP.
26. O grande problema está na escola primária, onde se está a perder terreno todos os dias
… Se nada for feito, podemos perder esta presença linguística no espaço de uma
geração.
27. Neste momento estamos cercados desde o Norte até ao Sul por países de língua
inglesa. Convém-lhes que a sua língua avance em Moçambique e que nós fiquemos
numa posição dependente. Eles precisam dos nossos portos, e espero que não
fiquemos em posição de ter que ceder.
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The Language Situation in Mozambique 195
This monograph examines the language planning situation in South Africa, where
language has been instrumental in the country’s transition from colonialism to apart-
heid to democracy. In particular, it addresses, diachronically and synchronically, the
issues of language spread and use, language policy and planning, and language main-
tenance and shift. The monograph is divided into four parts. The first part presents
the language profile of South Africa to provide the background against which the
aforementioned issues will be discussed. The second part discusses language spread
and use, with a focus on language-in-education and the media. The third section
looks at language policy and planning, with a focus on South Africa’s new language
policy and on attempts currently being made to implement it. It shows that there is a
mismatch between the language policy and language practices, with the former
promoting additive multilingualism, and the latter showing a trend towards
unilingualism in English in virtually all the higher domains of language use. The
implications of this trend for the current language policy and for language mainte-
nance and shift are discussed in the final part, with special reference to the country’s
official languages.
As its name suggests, the Republic of South Africa is located at the southernmost
tip of the African continent. The country covers a total area of 1,219,080 km2
(470,689 sq. miles) – slightly smaller than Alaska, Peru, and Niger; slightly larger
than Colombia or the Province of Ontario, Canada. It shares borders with six
African countries: Namibia in the north-west; Botswana in the north; Zimbabwe,
Mozambique and Swaziland in the north-east; and Lesotho in the east. To the
south, South Africa is surrounded by two oceans, the Indian Ocean in the
south-east, and the Atlantic Ocean in the south-west.
South Africa is known to the rest of the world mostly for its now defunct,
divide-and-rule apartheid system, on the basis of which South Africa was
ruled from 1948 to 1994 and whose legacy is likely to haunt the country for
years to come. The ideology of rule, ‘apartheid’ or ‘separateness’, was
directed at ensuring that Baasskap, which the Dictionary of South African
English on Historical Principles (Penny et al. 1996: 36) defines as ‘domination,
especially by whites, of other groups’, remained in the hands of an Afrikaner
elite controlled by the secret society known as broederbond ‘sworn brother-
hood’. The latter’s mission was to protect and develop white economic, social
and cultural interests while dividing and ruling the majority African people,
the Coloureds, and the people of Asian descent (Indians and Chinese) (Prah,
1995). The architects of the apartheid system believed strongly that ‘cultural
attainments were racially determined and races were inherently unequal’
(Omer-Cooper, 1999: 974). To them, skin colour formed what Prah (1995: 36)
calls the physiognomic index for social stratification. Each racial group had to
have its own territorial area within which to develop its unique cultural
personality.1 This notion led to the partition of South Africa into what came be
known as tribal, mostly language-based, homelands for the African popula-
197
tion on the one hand; and separate, skin-colour-based areas for the Coloureds,
the Indians and the Whites (including the Chinese who were considered
honorary Whites), on the other. In regard to the homelands there was, for
instance, a Zulu tribal homeland for isiZulu speakers; a Ndebele homeland
for isiNdebele speakers; a Xhosa homeland for isiXhosa speakers; and a
Venda homeland for Tshivenda speakers. With this fractionalisation of the
African population into the tribal homelands, or ‘nations’ as the architects of
apartheid called them, the notion of ‘an African majority’ officially became a
fiction (Alexander, 1989; Prah, 1995). The homelands were reintegrated into
South Africa when apartheid died and a new South Africa was born in 1994.
The new South Africa comprises nine provinces: i.e. the North West province,
the Northern province, the Western Cape, the Eastern Cape, the Northern
Cape, the Free State, Mpumalanga, Gauteng, and Kwa-Zulu Natal (Figure 1).
According to the 1996 census figures, South Africa has an estimated multira-
cial population of 40,583,573 made up of Africans2 (76.7%); Whites (10.9%);
Coloureds (people of mixed race: 8.9%); Asians (2.%) and unspecified/other
(0.9%) (The People of South Africa Population Census 1996, 1998: 9). The 1996 census
does not make any projection about the population’s future growth. However,
according to the 1991 census figures, South Africa’s population is expected to
grow to 49.5 million people by 2005, and to 53.4 million by 2010 (Sadie, 1993). In
making these projections the 1991 census did not take into account the AIDS
pandemic, which is ravaging South Africa and so has serious implications for the
country’s population growth. According to press reports, in South Africa about
one in nine people is HIV-positive (Mail & Guardian, 27 July to 2 August 2001, p.
34); every day an estimated 1600 people are infected with the AIDS virus (Daily
News, 7 September 2001, p. 10) and about 150 children are born HIV-positive. All
these people add to the number of those who are already infected with the
disease. Currently it is estimated that there are four million people living with
AIDS in South Africa and these people account for a sizeable slice of the country’s
sexually active population. Therefore, contrary to the 1991 census projection, by
2010 AIDS-related deaths are expected to cut the population forecasts to 47
instead of the 53.4 million projected under a no-AIDS scenario (Sunday Times, 29
July 2001).
One of the characteristic features of South Africa is its linguistic diversity, a
fact that previous governments, and the apartheid Government in particular,
utilised to justify and legitimise their divide-and-rule policies, such as the
creation of ethnic homelands for the Blacks. This monograph addresses issues
relating to this diversity, with a focus on language spread and use, language
policy and planning, and language maintenance and shift and prospects espe-
cially for the country’s official languages. The discussion of these issues
draws in part on my previous work on language planning issues in South
Africa (Kamwangamalu, 1995, 1996, 1997b, 1998a,b, 2000a, b, 2001a, b) and on
the feedback on the papers presented on these issues at various professional
conferences.3
gual. It is estimated that about 25 languages are spoken within South Africa’s
borders. Of these languages, 11 have been accorded official status, including
English and Afrikaans – formerly the only two official languages of the state –
and nine African languages,4 Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda,
Xitsonga, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isiZulu, all of them newcomers to the new
South Africa’s official languages map (see Table 1). These were chosen because
the majority of South Africans, probably more than 98%, use one of these
languages as their home language or first language (Department of Education,
South Africa’s New Language Policy: The Facts, 1994: 4). Demographically, isiZulu
(23%) and isiXhosa (18%) are the most commonly spoken first home languages in
200 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
Source: The People of South Africa Population Census 1996, 1998: 12–3.
South Africa. The 1996 census reveals that Afrikaans (14.4%) and English (9%),
while widely spoken in all provinces, are less frequently used as first home
languages than some of the indigenous languages (The People of South Africa
Population Census 1996, 1998: 14).
The estimated 25 languages spoken in South Africa fall into three major
groups: European languages, African languages, and Asian languages. In the
discussion that follows each of these language groups will be described. Also, I
shall discuss briefly the pidgin languages that have emerged as a result of
contacts among the language groups under consideration, namely: Fanagalo,
Tsotsitaal and Iscamtho.
English
English came to South Africa via the British occupation of the Cape of Good
Hope, now Cape Town, in 1795, to the detriment of Holland, to control the strate-
gic Cape sea-route between Europe and Asia (Lass, 1995). In 1802 the British
returned the Cape to Holland, which had occupied it from 1652 until the British
invasion in 1795. But during the Napoleonic wars (1805–1815) the British occu-
pied the Cape again and embarked at once upon the creation of a colony that was
British in character as well as in name (Warwick, 1980: 12). This they did by,
among other things, intensifying the policy of Anglicisation they had introduced
earlier to the Cape during their first occupation of the territory. The policy of
Anglicisation ‘sought to replace Dutch by English in all spheres of public life’
(Davenport, 1991: 40). All official posts were reserved for the English speaking.
As Reitz (1900: 10) points out, ‘the Boers5 were excluded from the juries because
their knowledge of English was too faulty, and their causes and actions had to be
determined by Englishmen with whom they had nothing in common’. By 1814,
English was firmly established as the official language of the colony (Lanham,
1978). Dutch, and later its offspring, Afrikaans, were suppressed by the British
Government for ideological reasons. In education, for instance, Dutch children
had to be taught in English rather than in their first language, Dutch. In this
regard, Malherbe (1925: 414) notes that
The struggle for the recognition of the Dutch language and of the principle
of mother-tongue instruction has had a very long history in South African
education .... From the times of the founding of the English school of Lord
Charles Somerset (1822), of the establishment of Government Schools
(1839), of the 1865 grants-in-aid Regulations, the Dutch-speaking child was
at a disadvantage in the school with regard to his mother-tongue.
The Governor of the Cape, Lord Charles Somerset, conceived it as their honest
duty to anglicise the colonists as soon as possible because
202 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
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. Already Sir John Cradock had issued a notice that no
one who did not understand the English language would be appointed to
any post in the Civil Service. (Malherbe 1925: 57)
In furthering this aim to Anglicise the colonists, in 1822 Lord Somerset issued
a proclamation requiring the use of English for all official documents from 1825,
and for all proceedings in courts of law from 1828. Also, as Warwick (1980: 351)
notes, state-funded schools were required to use English as the medium of
instruction, teachers were expected to use their best efforts to promote Afrikaner
acceptance of British rule, and imperial history formed a large part of the curricu-
lum. The policy of Anglicisation struck at the heart of Afrikanerdom. The
Afrikaners resented this policy for they saw it as a threat to their language,
culture and identity. To counter this policy, they set up private schools where
Dutch or Afrikaans (as it was called from 1925) was the medium of instruction.
For the Afrikaners, as Hexham (1981: 132) puts it, maintaining their language,
Afrikaans, was essential to preserve their national identity. To them, the future
depended upon which language and culture would triumph in South Africa.
Also, it was felt in some sections of the Afrikaans-speaking white community
that Afrikaans was a gift from God to its white speakers, a view which van
Rensburg (1999: 86) says ‘is abundantly clear in Afrikaans dictionaries’; and that
God had not allowed them (the Afrikaners) to become Anglicised (Watermeyer,
1996). Afrikaner resistance against Anglicisation is, among other factors,6 said to
have contributed to the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, which the British won (see
e.g. Moodie, 1975). British heavy-handedness in South Africa is said to have
strengthened Afrikaner resistance (Skinner, 1998: 239). It is noted further that
contemporary Afrikaner oppression of other ethnic groups often simply mirrors
earlier British treatment of Afrikaners. The policy of Anglicisation lasted, in
theory, until 1910, when the Union of South Africa was formed, giving English
and Dutch7 equal status as the co-official languages of the Union. In practice,
however, the British never accepted parity between Dutch and English, espe-
cially in education. The British Government policy, for both political and
economic reasons, had laid down that English was a prerequisite for state aid in
education (Hartshorne 1995: 310). Also, according to a British official, quoted in
Headlam (1931: 514), ‘the principle of the equality of the two languages [Dutch
and English] had consistently been rejected by us [the British] from the first’.
Thus, it is not surprising that the Afrikaners complained that their language,
Dutch, did not receive the recognition guaranteed to it by the law, particularly in
education. Malherbe (1925) remarks that, in 1915, the Education Language
Commission was appointed to inquire into the working of the language Ordi-
nance of 1912 (by which Dutch and English were made the official languages of
the Union). The Commission found that ‘the law was not carried into effect, and
that the Dutch-speaking child was the sufferer’ (Malherbe, 1925: 415). This situa-
tion changed only after the Afrikaners came to power in 1948. The status of Afri-
kaans after 1948 will be discussed below.
English has a special status in South Africa both as a native language for some
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 203
(e.g. the younger generation of South African Indians and a segment of the white
population) and as a non-native language for others (e.g. the black population).
According to the 1996 census statistics, English is spoken as home language by
3,457,467 (9%) of the people including 1,711,603 (39%) Whites, 974,654 (94.4%)
Asians, 584,101 (16.4%) Coloureds and 113,132 (0.4%) Africans. It has a wider
distribution than most official languages, but the majority of its speakers are
concentrated in metropolitan and urban areas. Two provinces, Gauteng and
KwaZulu Natal, each have more than a million English speakers; these are
followed by the Western Cape province with more than half a million speakers.
In post-apartheid South Africa, English enjoys far more prestige than any other
official language, including Afrikaans. Its fortunes date back to the heyday of
apartheid, and especially after the Bantu Education Act of 1953 and the ensuing
Soweto uprising of 16 June 1976. These two events, to which I shall return later,
saw English become, in the minds of the majority of South Africa’s population,
the language of struggle against, and liberation from, the apartheid system,
whereas Afrikaans came to be perceived as the language of oppression, because
of its association with apartheid (Barkhuizen & Gough, 1996; Shingler, 1973). In
the new South Africa, English is the medium of instruction at most schools
throughout the country, except at historically Afrikaans-medium schools and
universities, where it competes for space with Afrikaans to accommodate Black
students’ demand for English-medium education. English is widely used in the
print media, on the radio, the television, and the Internet; it is the language of
science and technology, of job opportunities, of interethnic and international
communication and is the language most used for the conduct of the business of
the state. It is seen by many as the language of power, prestige and status, and as
an ‘open sesame’ by means of which one can acquire unlimited vertical social
mobility (Samuels, 1995). In short, English is, as some people put it, ‘a language
that can take you anywhere’ (Virasamy, 1997); and it is, in the words of Pakir
(1998: 104), ‘a language with no sell-by date attached to it’. Despite all its positive
attributes, in South Africa (and in other former British colonies on the African
continent), English has been accused of being a double-edged sword for the
following reasons.
(1) Although it provides access to education and job opportunities, it also acts
as a barrier to such opportunities for those who do not speak it, or whose
English is poor (Branford, 1996: 36).
(2) It is an important key to knowledge, science and technology, but it is
increasingly being seen as the major threat to the maintenance of indigenous
languages (Masemola & Khan, 2000: 11), as a remnant of colonialism and a
cause of cultural alienation (Schmied, 1991: 121), and as a vehicle of values
not always in harmony with local traditions and beliefs. (de Klerk, 1996: 7)
The implications of the multiple functions of English in South Africa (as
described above) for the maintenance and promotion of the indigenous
languages will be considered in the final part of this monograph.
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is spoken as a home language by 5,811,547 (14.4%) people including
2,558,956 (58%) Whites, 2,931,489 (82.1%) Coloureds, 217,606 (0.7%) Africans and
204 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
15,135 (1.5%) Asians (The People of South Africa Population Census 1996, 1998: 12).
The majority of Afrikaans speakers are concentrated in metropolitan areas and
urban centres in the Western, Eastern, and Northern Cape provinces. Pretoria,
the capital city of South Africa, also has a relatively higher density of Afrikaans
speakers (Grobler et al., 1990).
Although, like English, Afrikaans is described here as a European language,
its history is not quite the same as the history of English (Webb & Sure, 2000).
Unlike English, Afrikaans evolved from an ex-colonial language, Dutch, on the
African continent. In this sense, Afrikaans is not a European language in the way
English is. Although its major source is Dutch, Afrikaans is not (and never was)
spoken outside the African continent. As Skinner (1998: 239) observes, culturally
if not philologically, then, it might even be considered an ‘African’ language,
rather as Afrikaners can regard themselves as the ‘white African tribe’. Several
sources associate the presence of Afrikaans in South Africa with the arrival in
Cape Town in 1652 of approximately 180 Dutch settlers headed by Jan van
Riebeeck; they came to erect a re-supply station between Europe (Amsterdam)
and South-east Asia (Batavia) for the ships of the ‘Dutch East India Company’
(Vereenigde Oostindische Companie, VOC) (Maartens, 1998; Ponelis, 1993; Roberge,
1995). According to Grobler et al. (1990: 9), Afrikaans, as it is known today, origi-
nated from various 17th and 18th century Germanic languages that came into
contact on the Cape. Combrink (1978: 70) disputes this view, for its proponents
consider Afrikaans as a spontaneous development from the interaction of
Germanic languages only. Drawing on research into the evolution of various
aspects of Afrikaans, Combrink attributes the origin of Afrikaans to several
sources, among them the Dutch dialects, which constitute more than 90% of the
structure of Afrikaans; and several foreign influences (e.g. Khoi (also spelt as
Khoe) and Southern Bantu languages, French, German, Portuguese, Malay, and
English). Against this background, Combrink argues convincingly that ‘we are
now in a position to declare that Afrikaans was born of a polygamous shotgun
marriage involving several Dutch dialects, albeit under pressure of various
foreign influences’ (1978: 70). Like Combrink (1978), Roberge (1995) and Webb
and Sure (2000) also support the view that Afrikaans has a heterogeneous origin.
In Roberge’s (1995: 68) view, three physically, culturally, religiously and linguis-
tically distinct groups were primarily responsible for the formation of Afrikaans:
these include European settlers (from 1652), the indigenous Khoikhoi (also spelt
as Khoekhoe), and enslaved peoples of African and Asian provenance (from
1658). Similarly, Webb and Sure (2000: 39) point out that, because the Dutch
possessed the necessary regional power in the Cape, their language became the
dominant language and had to be learned by anyone who needed to deal with
them. Out of this, Webb and Sure note, grew Afrikaans, a form of Dutch found
mainly in the mouths of Dutch soldiers, sailors, Khoikhoi herders and labourers,
and the slave community of the Cape.
Afrikaans is characterised by a long history of struggle for its sociopolitical
rights, a history8 which cannot be covered within the scope of this monograph.
Suffice it to say that two developments at the turn of the 19th century have radi-
cally affected the political, economic and social context of the Afrikaans speech
community. These are (1) the shift in the economic base from farming to mining
after the discovery of diamonds (1870) and the hugely productive main gold reef
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 205
on the Witwatersrand (1886); and (2) the Anglo-Boer war of 1899–1902 (Hexham,
1981, Warwick, 1980). As a result of these developments and the Anglo-Boer War
in particular, the ideological battle between English and Afrikaans that had
started in the course of the 19th century intensified, and Afrikaans became the
focus of Afrikaner nationalism and competing ideologies (Ponelis, 1993: 52). For
the British and their English-speaking supporters, economic and political control
was the ultimate prize. For the Boers, their very survival as a distinct people was
at stake, and in the process of fighting the war, a national identity was forged
where previously local attachments had been paramount and a sense of commu-
nity diffuse and ill-defined (Attwell, 1986: 56). Put differently, the war renewed
and strengthened ties of kinship between Cape Afrikaners and their brethren in
the north of the country (Moodie, 1975: 39); it replaced an older fragmented polit-
ical order with a unified state (Ponelis, 1993: 53); it gave the Afrikaners a much
sharper image of themselves as a distinct people (Attwell, 1986: 79); and it
brought British imperialism sharply into focus as the single entity that the Afri-
kaner nationalism sought to mobilise against. The major unifying factor in the
Afrikaners’ struggle against British domination was the Afrikaans language
itself. Before the war, and indeed for some time afterwards, Afrikaans was
regarded as inappropriate for educated discourse (Moodie, 1975: 40). Rather,
Afrikaans was described derogatorily as ‘a kitchen language’ or kombuistaal
(Attwell, 1986; Watermeyer, 1996); as ‘a bastard jargon, ... the present atrocious
vernacular of the Cape’ (Ponelis, 1993: 60), used and suitable for communication
mainly between the Boers and their servants. Ponelis (1993: 60) reports that in a
leading article, published on 19 September 1857, an advocate for Dutch (which
was then the official language of the Cape) describes Afrikaans as follows:
The poverty of expression in this jargon is such, that we defy any man to
express thoughts in it above the merest common-place. People can hardly
be expected to act up to sentiments which the tongue they use fail entirely
to express. There can be no literature with such a language, for poor as it is,
it is hardly a written one.
These enduring sentiments, notes Ponelis, were the focus of the Afrikaner
ethnic movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that would strive to
attach to Afrikaans positive ideological content. The first meeting that laid the
ground for Afrikaans to replace Dutch took place in 1875 and was organised by ‘a
rebel society’ called the Genootskap van Regte Afrikaners (GRA) (The Fellowship of
True Afrikaners) (Combrink, 1978: 69). This meeting constitutes the foundation
of what came to be known later as the First Afrikaans Language Movement. Its
aims were to promote the interests of Afrikaans (Webb & Kriel, 2000: 21) and to
lay the basis for the political unity among white speakers of Afrikaans (van
Rensburg, 1999: 80). The years following the Anglo-Boer War saw various
sections of the white Afrikaans-speaking community (the clergy, journalists,
academics) rally to the cause of, and argue for, Afrikaans to be elevated to the
status of a language of culture. The rally for Afrikaans came to be known as the
Second Afrikaans Language Movement. This was part of a general defensive
reaction aimed at preserving Afrikaans as well as Afrikaner values and tradi-
tions from destruction by conquering power, Britain (Hexham, 1981: 128). The
case for the elevation of Afrikaans was made more forcefully by a leading Afri-
206 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
and cultures in South Africa. The reasons for the ability of Indians and other
South African Asians (e.g. Chinese) to establish such organisations, which
empower them to maintain their languages, are religion and affluence. In terms
of religion, most of these organisations use their respective community
languages (e.g. Tamil, Hindi, Telugu, etc.) to teach religion to the younger gener-
ations. For instance, Natal Tamil Federation teaches Tamil through, among other
media, the study of the Thevaram, that is, Hindu religious texts written in Tamil. I
shall return to the issue of language and religion later. In terms of affluence South
African Asians are, after the Whites and to some extent the Coloureds, arguably
among the most well-off ethnic groups in South Africa. Therefore, they are able
to set up organisations or schools that promote their respective languages. For
instance, Hindi Sikha Sangh teaches Hindi reading and writing skills; Gujarati
Khathiawad Association teaches Gujarati language and culture in Gujarati patasalas
(schools). In spite of all these organizations, as a result of discriminatory
language policies and of contact with economically more viable languages such
as English and Afrikaans, the Indian languages do not seem to have a bright
future in South Africa. Although the older generation of South African Indians
may be conversant in some of the Indian languages and use them as home
languages, the younger generation is largely monolingual in English.
The other segment of the Asian population in South Africa consists of the
Chinese, especially Cantonese speakers, who came to South Africa soon after the
second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902) to work in the gold mines (South Africa Year
Book, 1999). It is not known whether, like the South African Indians, the South
African Chinese have undergone complete language shift. However, it would
seem that the older generations are bilingual in English and Chinese, and use the
latter mostly for in-group communication. The majority of South African
Chinese are concentrated in Johannesburg, Witwatersrand and Port Elizabeth. In
accordance with current official language-in-education policy (see Language
Policy and Planning, below), schools in these metropolitan centres that have a
significant number of Chinese children offer Chinese as a subject in the school
curriculum.
S.44 respectively (also, see Guthrie, 1971). The term ‘Zone’ refers to a group of
languages ‘which have a certain geographical contiguity and which display a
number of common linguistic features as well’ (Guthrie, 1948: 28; for a summary
of these features see Guthrie, 1948: 67–70). Thus, linguistically there is no reason
to treat isiXhosa (S.41) as distinct from isiZulu (S.42), siSwati (S.43) or isiNdebele
(S.44); they could easily be regarded as a cluster of dialects (Guthrie, 1948: 29). As
a matter of fact, it is on these grounds that, about 60 years ago, a proposal was
made and recently revived that the two main language groups, the Nguni
languages and the Sotho languages (discussed below) should each be harmo-
nised internally (Alexander, 1989). That is, a single written variety common to all
the languages within each language group should be developed for use in school
textbooks and to facilitate closer unity between the language communities. The
language communities concerned (i.e. the Nguni and the Sotho) rejected harmo-
nisation on three grounds.
(1) They felt that developing a new language through harmonisation would
result in the loss of their respective native languages and sociocultural iden-
tity (Webb & Sure, 2000).
(2) Speakers of smaller languages within each group (e.g. Swati and Ndebele
for Nguni and Tswana for Sotho) saw harmonisation as a malicious attempt
to undermine their languages and assimilate them into the larger language
communities.
(3) Purists in each language group rejected harmonisation for, in their view, it
would erode the ‘purity’ of their respective languages. Besides, some critics
have characterised ‘harmonisation’ as ‘neo-Bantu linguistic engineering’,
arguing that ‘no sizeable group of people has ever been willing to learn an
artificial language which is not already the language of a speech commu-
nity’ (van den Berghe, 1990: 59).
Others see ‘harmonisation’ as arising from a fear or distrust of multi-
lingualism, thus projecting the latter as a problem rather than a resource (Heugh,
1996: 46).
* The people in these two categories are believed to include many members of the African
traditional religions.
*These figures include members of the Zion Christian Church, whose following rose from
2.7% of all Christians in 1980 to 7.4% in 1991.
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 215
members of the various religions practised in the country and Table 4 the
membership of the Christian churches. Subsequently, data will be presented
about the languages in which the various religions are practised.
In spite of this religious pluralism, in the apartheid era South Africa was
persistently declared a Christian country, underwritten by a particular Protest-
ant, national understanding of Christianity. The country’s inherent religious
diversity was not officially acknowledged, nor was its linguistic diversity, except
where this was convenient for the purpose of dividing and thus having political
control over the majority of the country’s population, the Blacks. Christianity,
says de Gruchy (1995: 28), developed in South Africa along two distinct paths. In
the first instance, it was the established religion of the European powers, both
Dutch and later British, who colonised the Cape from the mid–17th century
onwards. The second strand in the development of Christianity came as a result
of missions to the indigenous peoples of South Africa, peoples who were thought
not to have any religion at all (see later), and to those who had been brought to the
Cape as slaves from the east. The discussion that follows examines the role of the
church and religion in language promotion in South Africa, with a focus first on
Dutch, Afrikaans and English; and then on the African languages.
Dutch/Afrikaans, English and religion
The first white settlers to arrive at the Cape, the Dutch, were Protestants and
belonged to the Nederlandse Gereformeerde Kerk, or Dutch Reformed Church
(DRC). Their commander, Jan van Riebeeck, a ship’s surgeon by profession,
regarded the establishment and promotion of the Reformed religion as part of his
mandate. Reformed Christianity, which derived from the Swiss Reformation led
by John Calvin in the first half of the 16th century, had already become the estab-
lished religion in Holland by 1579, after that country had won its independence
from Catholic Spain (Chidester, 1996: 29). Against this background Jan van
Riebeeck and the company he headed, the Vereenigde Nederlandsche Ge-Octroy-
eerde Oost-Indische Companie, or the United Netherlands Chartered East India
Company, expressly forbade the practice of Roman Catholicism in the Cape. So,
the Dutch Reformed Church became the established church at the Cape of Good
Hope. Throughout the era of ‘Dutchification’ (see Language Policy and
Planning, below), Dutch was not only the language of administration in the
colony, but it was also the language of the Dutch Reformed Church. It provided
the medium through which church services and activities were conducted. As
will be pointed out in Part III, the status of Dutch changed when the British took
control of the Cape from them first in 1795 and then effectively in 1806; they
banned Dutch especially from administration and education and imposed
English (hence ‘Anglicisation’) throughout the colony. The British authority
used what Sundermeier (1975) calls the myth of the Chosen People to justify Brit-
ish imperialism in the colony. One advocate of this imperialism, Cecil Rhodes,
justified it religiously as follows:
Only one race ... approach God’s ideal type, his own Anglo-Saxon race;
God’s purpose then was to make the Anglo-Saxon race predominant, and
the best way to help on God’s work and fulfil His purpose in the world was
to contribute to the predominance of the Anglo-Saxon race and so bring
nearer the reign of justice, liberty and peace. (Sundermeier, 1975: 25)
216 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
In other words, the mythology of the Chosen People served, among other factors,
as justification for Anglicising the conquered territories. English was the
language not only of administration but also of the Anglican Church. With the
Cape now in British hands, the way was opened for a steady inflow of
English-speaking Christians belonging to various denominations including the
Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, Congregational, Catholic, and Baptist
churches (Prozesky, 1995a: 9). Anxious to promote English and to further reduce
the influence of Dutch, Lord Charles Somerset, governor of the Cape from 1814 to
1826, brought out Scottish Presbyterian ministers to serve in Dutch Reformed
churches and Englishmen to teach in country schools (Moodie, 1975: 5). Despite
these efforts, says Ponelis (1993), Dutch remained the language of the Dutch
Reformed Church, which was then the most powerful Dutch church in the Cape.
After the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), the ideological battle involving English
and Dutch (later Afrikaans) intensified and, as was pointed out above, Afrikaans
became the focus of Afrikaner nationalism. On the religious front, the battle
against Anglicisation was led by the ‘Doppers’, that is, conservative members of
the Dutch Reformed Church who considered themselves Christian Afrikaners
whose whole development came from, and was the fruit of, Christian principles.
Willem Postma, who introduced the term Doppers in his book of the same name
published in 1918, explains that the term comes from the Dutch domper, the
device used to extinguish candles. Like this device, the Doppers earned their
nickname because they fought to extinguish the ‘new light’ of the Enlightenment
(i.e. new ways of life introduced in South Africa by British imperialism through
its agents, e.g. missionaries, soldiers, settlers and officials) which threatened to
destroy Afrikanerdom. Accordingly, the Doppers were with heart and soul
anti-English. For them, the threat of Anglicisation meant destruction of their reli-
gion, culture and language. They shared the view, expressed by Professor W. J.
Viljoen of Stellenbosch, that, as a result of the defeat of the Boers by the British in
the Anglo-Boer War, ‘The Republics (i.e. the Orange Free State and the South
African Republic) have fallen and with them their independence, but our auton-
omy as a South African nation has been retained ... in two things: our Church and
our Language’ (Hexham, 1981: 135). The two republics, now lost to the British
Empire, inspired and became a rallying point for young Afrikaner writers,
constantly challenging them to true patriotism. This is discussed, in religious
terms, by Dunbar Moodie who says that ‘The Republics, like Christ, had come
and yet were to come. Even as Christ’s resurrection was the promised first fruits
of the final resurrection, so the Orange Free State and the South African Republic
were the first-fruits of a republican second coming’ (Moodie, 1975: 14). As far as
‘language and religion’ was concerned, Hexham (1981: 135–6) adds that ‘while
the return of the Republics was awaited, Afrikaans became the Holy Spirit of the
republican movement, the Doppers. It was their comforter; a symbol and seal of
the promised fulfilment’, and the sole instrument they had to ensure the survival
of their nation and religion.
So, the necessity of developing Afrikaans was seen by the Dopper leaders as an
essential part of their struggle to maintain a distinct Afrikaner identity and thus
preserve their own religious community. Put differently, to preserve their identity
as a religious community the Doppers realised how essential it was to preserve the
language, Afrikaans, which set them apart from the English. A Dopper writing in
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 217
the student magazine Fac et spera (Act and Hope) declared, ‘for our nation to
survive our language must survive’ because ‘it is our language which makes our
nation a separate nation’ (Hexham, 1981: 123). Another Dopper, writing in Het
Kerblad (lit: The Journal of Knowledge) (4 January 1905), summed up these rela-
tionships between the church, Afrikanerdom and language as follows: ‘We strug-
gle for the preservation of Afrikanerdom, our Nationality, our Religion, and our
Language’. To maintain Afrikaans was, therefore, not merely a national duty but a
religious one as well: ‘The soul of our private religious lives is our language’ (W.
Postma, in The Vriends des Volks (The Friends of the People (28 October 1910)). The
key to preserving their language was therefore religious: Postma adds, ‘Take away
our language and we will become Englishmen and accept their (i.e. the English)
religion’. The language, Afrikaans, would express the Afrikaners’ unique charac-
ter as a people, or volk, with its own culture, history and religion, since no national-
ity could be created without its own language (Giliomee, 1989: 34). Reaffirming
this religious legitimisation of the volk in 1944, the chairman of the Broederbond, J.C.
van Rooy, asserted that God created the Afrikaner people with a unique language,
a unique philosophy of life, and their own history and tradition in order that they
might fulfil a particular calling and destiny here in the southern corner of Africa
(Moodie, 1975: 110–11; Thompson, 1985: 29).
The Doppers‘ preoccupation with and view of themselves as a distinct race,
separate from the British and the Blacks, is said to have laid the seeds for
afschieding (separation), later to become known as apartheid (Moodie, 1975;
Villa-Vicencio, 1988). They were staunch advocates of this ideology of apartheid,
with some arguing for its implementation from 1905 onwards (Hexham, 1981:
180). Accordingly, the Doppers advocated teaching biblical history in conjunction
with national history so that one would succour the other and help create a
strong national consciousness among Afrikaners. The church, which until then
exclusively utilised Dutch rather than Afrikaans, was won over in the course of
the decade 1910–1920 and gave its approval to the translation of the Bible into
Afrikaans. In this regard, Ponelis (1993: 54) notes that a draft translation
appeared in 1922, followed by the final version in 1933. The church’s endorse-
ment of Afrikaans was followed, in 1925, by the recognition of Afrikaans as one
of the official languages of the state alongside Dutch and English.
The official recognition of Afrikaans prompted the state to begin systematic
and widespread translation into Afrikaans, which presupposed extensive termi-
nological research. A central bureau for translation and terminology was insti-
tuted in the civil service, assisted by similar bureaux in a host of government
institutions (the Departments of Transport, Postal Services, Mining, Defence,
Geological Survey, etc.) and parastatal organisations (the Broadcasting Author-
ity, the Energy Supply Commission (ESCOM)) (Ponelis, 1993). The Dutch
Reformed Church, and the Doppers in particular, saw themselves, as far as racial
matters were concerned, as the mouthpiece for all Afrikaners. In this capacity,
they declared: ‘It is the conviction of the majority of Afrikaans-speaking South
Africans and the majority of the Dutch Reformed Church that the only way of
insuring the continued survival of the nation is by observing the principles of
racial separation’ (Strassburger, 1974: 190). As might be expected, after the
National Party came to power in 1948, those principles of racial separation
supported by the Dutch Reformed Church were legislated in the Mixed
218 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
Marriages Act (1949), the Population Registration Act (1950), the Group Areas
Act (1950), and the Immorality Amendment Act (1950). Also, the Dutch
Reformed Church became more militant than the Government in demanding
total racial separation (Chidester, 1992: 199).
Conventionally, Protestant churches in South Africa have been separated by
language (Hofmeyr & Cross, 1986). Churches speaking Dutch, and later Afrikaans,
have been distinguished from English-speaking churches. The largest and most
influential English-speaking churches have been the Anglican and Methodist
churches (Hinchliff, 1963). Other churches that belong in this category of
English-speaking churches include the Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists
and Lutherans. Afrikaans-speaking churches include the Nederduitse Gereformeerde
Kerk (i.e. Dutch Reformed Church), the one with the largest followings; and two
Reformed churches, the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk (founded 1853) and the
Gereformeerde Kerk (founded 1859, also known as the Doppers) (de Gruchy, 1995:
28–32). The Reformed denomination churches remain the stronghold of Afrikaans,
but that language is poorly represented among Roman Catholic churches, which in
the main are English speaking. English is also said to be much stronger in the Charis-
matic denominations that are growing rapidly among Afrikaans speakers
(Hinchliff, 1963; Ponelis, 1993). Afrikaans-speaking churches, though small, lent
considerable support to the development of the ideology of white supremacy, Afri-
kaner nationalism, and apartheid. As a matter fact, Chidester (1996: 75) says that ‘the
Dutch Reformed Church was organized as a branch of government. It rejected social
equality of Blacks and Whites in South Africa, and promoted social differentiation
and spiritual or cultural segregation’. The following section looks at the role of the
church and religion in the development and promotion of African languages.
African languages and religion
In this section, the European traders and missionaries’ view about the people
of South Africa and their religious beliefs is presented to provide the background
against which language and religion interacted in this part of the world. This will
be followed by a discussion of the emergence and development of independent
churches and of the impact of missionaries on the development of African
languages in the region.
Earlier contacts between Europeans and the indigenous people of South(ern)
Africa began not with the first European settlers in the Cape, the Dutch of ‘Dutch
East India Company’, but rather with the Portuguese navigators in 1488, espe-
cially Bartolemeu Dias, whose raising of a cross at Kwaaihoek on the
south-eastern coast is the first known Christian act in South Africa (Prozesky &
de Gruchy, 1995). Almost a decade later, in 1497, another Portuguese sailor
named Da Gama gave a Christian name to the eastern coastal area, Tierra da Natal
(Land of the Nativity), for he sighted the area, the present-day Province of
KwaZulu-Natal, on Christmas day (Prozesky, 1995b). According to published
research, these early contacts between Europeans and Africans had nothing to do
with religion (e.g. Beck, 1989; Du Plessis, 1965; Greetz, 1973; Prozesky, 1995a). If
the account given by Du Plessis (1965) of how the Dutch East India Company was
founded is anything to go by, the contacts were based on commercial enterprise:
In 1648, the Dutch East Indiaman ‘Haarlem’ was stranded on the
north-eastern shore of Table Bay. The crew reached the shore in safety, and
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 219
made their way to the spot on which Cape Town was subsequently built.
On their return to Holland five months later, two of the wrecked mariners
named Leendert Jansz and Nicolaas Proot, drew up a document which they
entitled: ‘Remonstrance, in which is briefly set forth and explained the
service, advantage and profit which will accrue to the United Netherlands Char-
tered East India Company, from making a Fort and Garden at the Cabo de Boa
Esperance’ ... The man to whom was entrusted the task of carrying out this
important project was Jan van Riebeeck, a ship surgeon by profession, a
man who thus became the founder of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope.
(du Plessis, 1965: 19) (emphasis added)
It seems that, as Prozesky (1995a: 7) puts it, the European impact on South
Africa was, neither in its origins nor in its subsequent main line of development,
primarily motivated by religious conviction, and not especially by any great
missionary concern for the soul of Africa. Reporting back home on their contacts
with the indigenous people of South(ern) Africa, Portuguese, Dutch and English
traders asserted that Africans had no religion (Chidester, 1996: 15). This assess-
ment was echoed by early missionaries to South Africa. The London Missionary
Society, for instance, assumed that Africans provided a natural focus for Satan’s
attention, and saw them as ‘essential sinners, as people of wild birth and dark
colour who, in the order of things, lived like children unknowingly close to evil’
(Landau, 1995: xvi). Landau observes further that African worship of fetishes
was described, in the words of Godefroy Loyer in 1714, as neither a cult, nor a
religion, nor rational, because ‘not one of them [the Africans] knows his religion’.
As the Wesleyan missionary William J. Shrewsbury put it, the indigenous people
of southern Africa lived ‘without any religion, true or false’ (Chidester, 1996: 13).
J.T. van der Kemp wrote back to London in 1800 about Xhosa-speaking people he
stayed with in the eastern Cape: ‘I never could perceive that they had any reli-
gion, nor any idea of the existence of God’ (Van der Kemp, 1804: 432). Twenty
years after van der Kemp, the Methodist missionary to the Xhosa, William Shaw,
argued that they (i.e. the Xhosa) ‘cannot be said to possess any religion’, while in
the north, the Methodist T. L. Hodgson reported that the Tswana ‘appear to have
no religious worship’, ‘with no idea of a spirit’ (Cope, 1977: 155, 367). Like the
Xhosas, the Tswanas and other South(ern) Africans, the Zulus were also believed
to have no religion. For instance, the survivors of the shipwreck of the Stavenisee,
as reported by Simon van der Stel, the Cape Governor to the Netherlands in 1689,
had discovered an absence of religion among people in the eastern coastal
region: ‘During the two years and eleven months which they passed amongst
that people (i.e. the Zulus)’, the Cape Governor recorded, ‘they were unable to
discover amongst them the slightest trace of religion’ (Chidester, 1996: 118–19).
Further, Chidester notes that during the 16th and 17th centuries, travel reports
frequently coupled the lack of religion with the absence of other defining human
features, such as the institution of marriage, a system of law, or any form of politi-
cal organisation. In many cases, the diagnosis of an alien society without religion
was delivered bluntly in the assertion that such people were brutes and beasts in
comparison to Europeans (1996: 13).
This initial, sweeping denial of African religion, says Chidester (1992: 38),
represented South Africa as if it were totally open for missionary activity and
220 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
of the work of the churches. So the kind of language used in church and school
became the ‘standard’ among the new elite. Kritzinger (1995) points out that of
the larger churches, only the Dutch Reformed Church family (NGK) has an abso-
lute majority of speakers of a specific language, Afrikaans. The Anglican Church
family (AC) has 50% of its members speaking either English or Afrikaans as
home language. The Zulu speakers, as the largest language group, have a strong
representation (more than 1 out of 3) in churches such as the African Traditional
Churches (ATR), Roman Catholic (RC) and Lutheran Churches. In general, every
church has (on a national level) sizeable representation of ten or more languages.
At the local level, especially in the rural areas, there are however many monolin-
gual congregations.
When missionaries first arrived in South Africa, they did not speak any of the
local languages, so it was difficult for them to convert the Africans to Christian-
ity. Initially they utilised a wide range of material means, goods and services,
which might help promote this aim. However, they soon realised that to reach
out to the indigenous people and preach the word of God to them, they had to
learn local languages. The Protestant missionaries believed people had to get the
Bible in their own language (Petersen, 1987). They were convinced that the expe-
rience of Pentecost, when everyone heard the message of the great deeds of God
‘in his own language’ (Acts 2), also had to become real for this new language
group (Kritzinger, 1995). That is why so much effort was put into the reduction of
the language into writing, and the subsequent translation of the Bible into the
various African languages. By the turn of the 20th century, complete Bibles had
been published in five South African indigenous languages: Setswana (1857),
isiXhosa (1859), Sesotho (1881), isiZulu (1883) and Sepedi (Northern Sotho)
(1904). The Setswana Bible of Robert Moffat was not only the first in any African
language, these five were among the first eight to be published (Kritzinger, 1995).
According to Human Science Research Council (HSRC) (1985: 20–24), in 1984
among South African Blacks there were 2,419,000 Methodists (11%); 2,022,000
Roman Catholics (9.4%); 1,300,000 Dutch Reformed (6.1%); 1,224,000 Anglicans
(5.7%); 948,000 Lutherans (4.4%); 516,000 Presbyterians (2.4%); 297,000 Congre-
gationalists (1.4%); and 141,000 members of the Apostolic Faith Mission (0.7%).
European missionaries were later joined in their effort to spread the word of
God by African independent churches that emerged and proliferated in number
from the early 20th century onwards. In this regard, Oosthuizen et al. (1989: 5)
note that from an estimated 32 independent denominations in 1913, indigenous
churches had multiplied to 800 in 1948, 2000 in 1960, and nearly 5000 different
denominations by 1990 with an estimated following of about 9,000 000 adherents
or 30% of the black population of South Africa (Oosthuizen, 1987, 1989). African
Traditional churches are known for their strong emphasis on healing. This
emphasis appears to be one of the main reasons for the phenomenal growth of
these churches. One of the most prominent independent churches that attracts a
huge following mainly because of its emphasis on healing is the Church of the
Nazarites, started in 1911 by the Zulu prophet and healer, Isaiah Shembe. By the
time of Shembe’s death in 1935, the Church of the Nazarites had a following of
nearly 30,000 members, almost completely comprised of Zulu-speaking converts
(Sundkler, 1961: 133). Today, one can estimate that the Shembe church has a
following of about two million adherents in southern Africa. Table 5 provides the
222 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
Table 5 The home languages of African Traditionalists (ATR), Hindus and Muslims
in South Africa, 1980 (in thousands and percentages)
Language ATR Hindu Muslim
Afrikaans 1 135
% 0.2 38.2
English 464 168
% 88.0 47.6
Gujerati 10 18
% 1.9 5.1
Hindi 21
% 4.0
Tamil 19
% 3.6
Telegu 2
% 0.4
Urdu 1 7
% 0.2 2.0
N.Ndebele 50
% 1.4
N.Sotho 861 1
% 24.9 0.3
S.Ndebele 42
% 1.2
S. Sotho 175
% 5.1
Swazi 121 1
% 3.5 0.3
Tsonga 339 1
% 9.8 0.3
Tswana 130
% 3.8
Venda 66
% 1.9
Xhosa 421
% 12.2
Zulu 1224 2
% 35.4 0.6
Total 3456 527 353
% 100.0 100.0 100.0
Source: Republic of South Africa (RSA) (1985). Population Census 1980. Social characteris-
tics. Report no. 02–80–12. Pretoria: Government Printer.
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 223
figures about the home languages of African Traditionalists (ATR), along with
Hindus and Muslims. As one might expect, African Traditional Religion is well
represented among most of the black language groups, while Hinduism is found
among South African Indians.
Hinduism is to a large extent practised in one or other of the Indian languages.
However, as a result of the language shift from the Indian languages to English,
by far the majority of the South African Hindus are actually English speaking.
South African Islam offers an interesting case study. Its official language is
Arabic, the language in which their holy book, the Quran, was written, but classi-
cal Arabic is not a spoken (i.e. community) language and no form of Arabic is
spoken in South Africa. This creates a formidable barrier to understanding. On
the other hand, almost 40% of South African Muslims are Afrikaans speaking,
and are generally credited to be original Afrikaans speakers (Kritzinger, 1995). (It
is known that the earliest written Afrikaans was in Arabic script). Apart from the
official use of Arabic, therefore, the Holy Book is also translated into Afrikaans
and English and these languages are used in general instruction and personal
worship.
To conclude this discussion on language and religion in South Africa, let me
reiterate that the country has a long history of language struggle, a history in
which religion has been deeply embedded. On the one hand, religion has been
implicated in forces of dehumanisation in South Africa. It has been entangled
with economic, social and political relations of power that have privileged some,
but have excluded many from a fully human empowerment (Chidester, 1992: xi).
Some of the European missionaries who settled in South Africa worked as spies
for the colonial authorities (Cochrane, 1987; de Gruchy, 1995: 62) and so played a
major role in the oppression to which the African people were subjected. On the
other hand, by introducing literacy and education in South Africa, among other
things, the missionaries have contributed substantially to the development of the
country and its linguistic heritage.
Language Spread
This section discusses language use and spread in the media and education.
With regard to the media, the focus will be on language use in the medium of tele-
vision, the radio and the print media. With respect to education, I shall examine
language spread in three historic periods, the pre-apartheid years, the apartheid
years, and the post-apartheid years. Each of these periods has its own distinct
characteristics. The pre-apartheid years are marked by the struggle of the
Afrikaners against the British policy of Anglicisation. The apartheid years are
marked by 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
medium of instruction in black schools. This policy and its legacy are discussed
later in this section. The post-apartheid years are marked by the dismantling of
the administrative structure of apartheid-based education and the adoption of a
new education system, the outcomes-based education, also called Curriculum
2005. The section that follows describes language spread through education in
the aforementioned three historic periods.
224 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
erhood) started what came to be known as the taal stryd (the language struggle)
(Lanham, 1996: 25) against die vyand se taal (the language of the enemy), English
(Branford, 1996: 39). In education this struggle expressed itself in a commitment
to separate schools, and in a rigid mother-tongue education policy (Hartshorne,
1995: 309). In 1953, that is five years after the Afrikaners took the reins of govern-
ment in 1948, this policy of mother-tongue education culminated in what came to
be known as the Bantu Education Act. I shall discuss this controversial piece of
legislation in a subsequent section. But first, let me give a brief introduction to the
administrative structure of the apartheid-based education system.
For ‘Indian’ education, as a result of the language shift to English in the Indian
communities as described in The Language Profile of South Africa, above,
English was used as the medium of instruction for primary, secondary and
tertiary education. For ‘Coloured’ education, Afrikaans was, in general, the
medium of instruction, since the majority of those racially classified as ‘Col-
oured’ speak Afrikaans as a first language. Thus, for each of the ethnic groups
mentioned, education was provided exclusively through the medium of the
group’s first language, English for Whites of British descent and the Indian
communities, and Afrikaans for the Afrikaners and the majority of Coloured
communities.
Education for the Black people was different from that for other ethnic groups
in many respects. First, in black schools, an African language was used as
medium of instruction for the first four years of primary education, years during
which, from grade two onwards, English and Afrikaans were taught as subjects.
Second, English became the medium of instruction in the fifth grade. The switch
from an African language to English as medium of instruction resulted in high
rates of failure and extensive drop-out, and was attributed in part to the inade-
quate linguistic preparation of the pupils in the second language prior to the
switch in the medium of instruction (Musker, 1993; Walters, 1996: 215). In this
respect, Macdonald and Burroughs (1991: 15) observe that at the end of the fourth
grade, the pupils may have acquired up to 800 words in English but the fifth
grade syllabus required them to have at least 5000 words. According to Macdon-
ald (1990) the disjuncture between the level of competence expected in the
second language in the fourth grade and the adoption of this second language as
the medium of instruction in the fifth grade placed too great a burden on pupils.
Also, pupils learning any L2 will be assisted by linguistic contact with native
speakers of the target language. However, in South Africa the policy of separate
development made it very difficult for black pupils to have contact with
mother-tongue speakers to practise their English. These pupils, being barely able
to communicate in English, could not cope with the demands of the curriculum
and so simply dropped out of school.
The face of ‘Black’ education changed drastically with the advent in 1953 of the
Bantu Education Act, which has had far-reaching implications for language
education in South Africa. The following section provides the background to the
Bantu Education Act and points out that this policy has impacted negatively on
black South Africans’ attitudes towards the use of African languages as media of
instruction.
with the following extract from Mesthrie’s (1995b: xvi) interview with a
23-year-old student from Germiston (Johannesburg) about the languages he is
proficient in:
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 came into contact with lots of Sotho and Tswana students,
so I can speak these two languages well. And of course I know English and
Afrikaans. With my friends I also use Tsotsitaal.
It is not clear what the mother tongue of the student who produced this text is.
Ferguson (1992: xiii) suggests that the whole mystique of ‘mother tongue’ should
be dropped from the linguist’s set of professional myths about language. The
concept of ‘mother-tongue’ is being used here because it was central to the apart-
heid government’s language-in-education policies, particularly mother-tongue
education. The campaign for mother tongue education was driven by the church
and by the apartheid government’s philosophy of Christian Nationalism. The
Christian Nationalism philosophy propagated notions of the separate identity
and development of each volk (people) and of the God-given responsibility of the
Afrikaner volk to spread the gospel to the native inhabitants of Africa and to act as
their guardians (Shingler, 1973). Engelbrecht (1992: 499) observes that the basic
values of this philosophy – among them the promotion of a Christian philosophy
of life with the emphasis on Calvinistic beliefs; support for the principle of
nationalism (a national ideal, traditions, religion and cultures); mother-tongue
instruction and parental involvement in education – reinforced the doctrine of
separate provision of education for groups of people with different languages,
religion and cultures. In support of this philosophy and especially the notion of
mother-tongue education, the church preached that ‘God had willed it that there
[should] be separate nations each with its own language and that, therefore,
mother tongue education was the will of God’ (Malherbe, 1977: 101). With the
church’s backing, the apartheid Government saw to it that every ethnic group
was educated in its own mother tongue. So, language became a yardstick for
segregated education: isiZulu mother-tongue speakers had to be educated in
isiZulu-medium schools; isiXhosa mother-tongue speakers had to be educated
in isiXhosa-medium schools; the Whites of British descent had to be schooled in
English-medium schools; their Dutch counterparts had to be schooled in Afri-
kaans-medium schools. What distinguished mother-tongue education for the
Whites from mother-tongue education for the Blacks was that the former was an
education with a difference: it was intended to promote white interests, to ensure
that the white segment of South Africa’s population had access not only to the
languages of power, English and Afrikaans, but also to the privileges with which
these languages were associated.
To achieve these objectives, the apartheid government introduced legislation
known as the Bantu Education Act no. 47 in 1953. The Act, also dubbed ‘Slave
Education Act’ (Grobler, 1988: 103), superficially had two main objectives. First,
it was aimed at ensuring equity between English and Afrikaans by using them
equally as a medium of instruction in black schools. Second, it was intended to
extend mother-tongue education from grade 4 to grade 8 in black schools to
228 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
through three languages, Afrikaans, English, and their first language; while for
their white, coloured, and Indian counterparts education was dispensed exclu-
sively in Afrikaans or in English, depending on whether one was Afrikaans- or
English-speaking.
The black pupils resisted first-language education, as promoted by the Bantu
Education Act, because they recognised it for what it was: one of the strategies
used by the apartheid Government to deny the Blacks access to higher education
and thus restrict their social and economic mobility (Kamwangamalu, 1997b:
243). The black pupils saw education in their own mother tongue as a dead-end, a
barrier to more advanced learning, a lure to self-destruction and a trap designed
by the apartheid Government to ensure that the black pupils did not acquire
sufficient command of the high-status languages (English and Afrikaans), for
such education would enable them to compete with their white counterparts for
well-paying jobs and prestigious career options (Alexander, 1997: 84). The resis-
tance to first-language education was a resistance to Verwoerdian instruments of
repression, intended to limit access to the mainstream of political and economic
life (Nomvete, 1994). The resistance to Afrikaans was a resistance to what was
perceived as a language of oppression, as well as a desire for greater access to
English. The black pupils’ resistance to the Bantu Education Act, and the apart-
heid Government’s determination to impose it, led to the bloody Soweto upris-
ing of 16 June 1976, which marked the end of Afrikaans as a language of learning
and teaching in black schools and concomitantly boosted the status of an already
powerful language, English, not only in these schools, but also in the black
communities as a whole. Thus, for the black people English became the language
of liberation, despite the fact that prior to the rise of Afrikaans both the Boers and
the Blacks viewed English as an instrument of domination. The Boers’ feelings
towards English need not be explained any further. For the Blacks, the view that
English was an instrument of domination was reiterated by the current ruling
party (the ANC) as recently as 1992, when the organisation referred to English as
‘a shackled language’:
English is in many ways a shackled language in the sense in which any
language that has been used for exclusion, division or domination is a
shackled language: it becomes trapped in the interests of money makers
and power makers. (ANC, 1992: 7)
In response to the pupils’ resistance against first-language education, the
apartheid Government amended the Bantu Education Act in 1979 and reintro-
duced African languages as the medium of learning for the first four years of
primary school, after which parents could choose one of the then two official
languages – English or Afrikaans – as the medium of instruction. This policy was
entrenched in Act 90 of 1979, which included the following clause on the medium
of instruction:
that the universally accepted education principle of the use of the mother
tongue as a medium of instruction must be observed: Provided that this
principle shall be applied at least up to and including Standard Two (i.e.,
grade 4): Provided further that wishes of the parents shall be taken into
consideration in the application of this principle after Standard Two, and
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 231
Afrikaans as a first and/or as a second language since these schools are attended
mostly by native speakers of Afrikaans.
Whether the school is an English- or an Afrikaans-medium school, English
and Afrikaans have the same time allocation. At the primary school level, a
first-language subject (English or Afrikaans or an African language) is taught for
five–30-minute periods per week, or a total of 150 minutes per week. What this
means is that since in South Africa a school year is 41 weeks long, in
English-medium primary schools, pupils have 205 periods of 30 minutes each
during which they study English, i.e. a total of 103 hours per school year. At the
secondary school level a first-language subject is taught for five periods of 50
minutes each per week, i.e. a total of 250 minutes per week or 171 hours per
school year. A language taught as L2, such as Afrikaans in an English-medium
school or English or an African language in an Afrikaans-medium school, is allo-
cated four periods of 50 minutes each per week, i.e. a total of 200 minutes per
week or 137 hours per school year. Recent developments in education, such as
the Curriculum 2005, suggest that the amount of time allotted to language
instruction was not sufficient. According to the 1997 language-in-education
policy, 70% of class time is now to be spent on language instruction (and maths).
In predominantly black schools, especially those located in rural areas, Afri-
can languages continue to be used as the medium of instruction for the first four
years of primary school, much as they were in the apartheid era. However, recent
trends in language education suggest that, in these schools, even where no quali-
fied English teachers are available, English is increasingly being used, in what-
ever form, as the medium of instruction from grade one onwards. Preference for
English as a medium of instruction is mainly due to economic considerations. As
Bendor-Samuel (quoted in Eggington & Baldauf, 1990: 100) points out, a
language must ‘fill a hole’ in the community for the teaching of that language to
be viable and meaningful. Accordingly, most black parents are opting for
English-medium education from day one of schooling because of the instrumen-
tal value of the language. They consider education in an African language as
‘miseducation’16 and useless, for it has no cachet in the broader socioeconomic
and political context. Along these lines, black parents who can afford to do so
send their children to formerly white schools (commonly known as ‘Model C
schools’) to expose them early to English and quality education, since these
schools remain the best equipped both in terms of facilities and teacher qualifica-
tion. This state of affairs has not helped the new language policy (see below) to
achieve its goal of promoting additive bi-/multi-lingualism in education. On the
contrary, even in predominantly black schools, there seems to be a general trend
towards the use of English as the sole medium of instruction from grade one
onwards.
A number of questions arise as a result. How does one promote
multilingualism in education if African languages are not used as a medium of
instruction throughout the entire educational system? How does one promote
African languages as the medium of instruction against the stigma left by the
Bantu Education Act? If the distinction between English as L1 and/or L2 is not
maintained, how does one prevent the emergence of a society in which, as Peirce
(1992: 6) warns, power is concentrated in a minority of speakers of standard
English? Should the country reintroduce first-language education despite its
234 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
the labour market with individuals who have particular skills, as well as
adequate technological and practical knowledge in a specific field (Rauntenbach,
1992: 358). In South Africa, vocational education usually starts after the age of 16
and follows a general preparatory education. Seventeen of the universities are
English-medium institutions and five formerly Afrikaans-medium universities
have largely become English/Afrikaans-medium institutions. Like Afrikaans-
medium secondary schools, since the end of apartheid, Afrikaans-medium
universities have also opened their doors to black students. Note that the major-
ity, if not all, of these students are not native speakers of Afrikaans. Accordingly,
all Afrikaans-medium universities, whose population includes a substantial
number of black students, offer an English-medium stream to accommodate the
needs of these students. It seems that, in future, Afrikaans-medium universities
are most likely to operate on a dual-medium system, thus offering tuition in both
Afrikaans and English. This is likely to occur, especially in the light of the strong
competition among the universities to attract students from previously disad-
vantaged communities.
mented in many first world countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, the
United States, and the United Kingdom, most often in training. In South Africa,
the idea of OBE seems to have come about after the members of the Congress of
South African Trade Unions (COSATU) visited Australia and New Zealand in
the early 1990s and were impressed with OBE as a model for training (Depart-
ment of Education, 1997).
Since its announcement in 1997 and its subsequent launch in 1998, Curriculum
2005 has received a mixed reaction from the stakeholders. To my knowledge, and
except for a lone three-day conference on OBE organised by the Western Cape
Department of Education in December 1999, there has been very little academic
debate on OBE in South Africa (e.g. Gultig et al., 1998). The argument for or
against OBE has been aired mostly in the local newspapers. The opponents of
OBE, among them a mix of journalists, members of opposition political parties
and right-wingers, have said that OBE is a ‘very dangerous experiment in social
engineering’ (Sunday Times, 22 June 1997). According to its critics, OBE has been a
disaster in the first world countries where it has been implemented. The critics
see it:
as a system aimed at producing ‘confident illiterates’, a system which
refutes the need for competition and its essential element: individual excel-
lence. It is based on the group and seeks not so much to endow children
with skills as to make them feel good and to raise their self-esteem. (Sunday
Times, 1 June 1997)
In contrast, the proponents of OBE, including the current ruling party (The
African National Congress) and their associates, refer to the achievements of the
OBE system in the very same first world countries where, according to the critics,
OBE has been a failure. For instance, in a newspaper article, van der Horst and
McDonald (1997) remark that:
having studied the instructional systems of some states in the United
States, Australia, South America, the United Kingdom (including the Scot-
tish system), various European countries as well as Singapore and Japan, it
became clear to us that outcomes-based education has a place and function
in South Africa at this time. (Sunday Times, 22 June 1997)
The proponents of OBE argue that those who oppose OBE have ‘allegiance to
the elitist, inequitable and fragmented status quo which protects their privileges
while condemning millions to a life of poverty, illiteracy and ignorance’ (Sunday
Times, 15 June 1997). It may be too soon to comment on the merits or demerits of
OBE for South African education. Just because OBE has succeeded or has failed
in the first world context does not necessarily mean that it will succeed or fail in
South Africa. Only after OBE has been implemented at least partially in the latter
context would we be able to tell which way the pendulum might swing. In this
regard, a recent study (Holman, 2001: 8) assessing OBE in 65 schools in Johannes-
burg, indicates that thus far OBE has been successful. In particular, the study set
out to examine learner performance in these schools. It was based on the OBE
standards test that enables schools to compare their learners’ performance with
an average obtained by all participating schools. The study summarises its find-
ings as follows:
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 237
learners are performing as well as under the previous system, and some-
times even better. The ability of children to think and solve problems is
improving. There are, however, some problems that require immediate
attention, especially in the areas of literacy, mathematics, and group
work.
In this regard, it is noted that by the end of grade 9, pupils should be able to
communicate effectively; solve problems through critical thinking; organise and
manage activities responsibly; work with others; collect, analyse, organise and
evaluate information; use science and technology; and understand how the
world functions as a whole (Sunday Times, 5 August 2001, p. 7). Put differently,
the revamped, much improved and leaner-centred Curriculum 2005 aims to
ensure that no pupil will leave school at the end of grade 9, which is the cut-off
grade for compulsory schooling in South Africa, unable to read, count and write.
In spite of all the changes highlighted here, the key features of OBE as described
earlier will remain at the core of Curriculum 2005. According to the Department
of Education, the retention of the main features of OBE is a rejection of the apart-
heid philosophy of Christian National Education (Sunday Times, 20 August
2000). Table 6 presents a summary of curriculum reform in South Africa since the
Bantu Education Act of 1953 as well as the various stages in the development of
Curriculum 2005 (Potenza, 2001).
238 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
media. The first experimental radio broadcast in South Africa was undertaken in
Johannesburg in 1923 by a railway company, the Western Electric Company.
Subsequent developments include the establishment of the current South Afri-
can Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) in 1936; that was followed by radio broad-
casting services in both English and Afrikaans in 1937, and in African languages
in 1942 (South Africa Year Book, 1999: 470). Today, the SABC has 16 radio stations,
broadcasting for a combined air time of 300 hours per week to an audience of
some 28 million listeners daily. In addition, the SABC also has an external
service, Channel Africa (formerly The Voice of South Africa), established in 1966.
It broadcasts 217 hours per week in four languages, English, French, Kiswahili
and Portuguese to millions of listeners in Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands
(Europa World Year Book, 1999, II: 3227). Its programmes include news, music,
sports, and social, economic and political issues, etc. Some 12 private and about
90 community radio stations complete the network of radio broadcasting
services in South Africa. The majority of these radio stations broadcast in English
and Afrikaans. There is, however, at least one radio station for each of the nine
official African languages. The radio remains the most powerful medium of
language use in South Africa, reaching as it does all South Africans in urban, as
well as remote rural, areas in the language they understand. However, the same
cannot be said about the television or the print media, for they cover mostly
urban areas and major cities.
Compared to the radio, TV broadcasting is a relatively recent event in South
Africa. The country launched its first television channel in January 1976 (Africa
South of the Sahara, 1999: 1007), six months prior to the Soweto uprisings of 17 June
of that year. Today, SABC has three television channels, SABC1, SABC2 and
SABC3. About 50% of all the programmes presented on SABC are produced
locally. Another 50% consists of programmes imported from overseas, especially
from the United Kingdom and the United States. It is estimated that some 14
million adults of all ethnic groups watch SABC television daily. Currently most
of the programmes, both local and imported, are in English. Thus, English has the
lion’s share of air time for all the three SABC channels combined. This is evident
from Table 7, taken from a study in which Kamwangamalu (2000a) examined the
distribution of the total weekly air time of the 11 official languages on the SABC’s
three channels. Briefly, the data for the study was collected from a TV guide for
the week of 10–16 May 1998. The TV guide indicates that, for that week, the 11
official languages had 126 hours, or 7560 minutes of air time per channel, that is, a
total of 22,680 minutes for all three channels combined. Also, the TV guide lists
the various programmes, as well as the languages in which they are presented.
Therefore, except for multilingual programmes, it was relatively easy to deter-
mine the amount of air time allocated to each individual language. The study
shows that the distribution of air time on SA television is strikingly uneven, with
English taking up to 20,855 minutes or 91.95% of the total weekly air time; Afri-
kaans 1,285 (5.66%) and all nine African languages sharing a mere 520 (2.29%)
minutes, or an average of 0.25% of air time collectively. Note that, in Table 8,
some African languages such as Tshivenda, isiNdebele, siSwati and Xitsonga are
marked (00)?, because the TV guide shows that they have no share of air time at
all for the week of 10–16 May 1998, on which the study was based. (For further
details see Kamwangamalu, 2000a: 54–5.)
240 Current Issues in Language Planning
Table 7 Weekly air time distribution on SABC in minutes: TV guide 10–16 May 1998
Languages Channels Total air time
SABC 1 SABC 2 SABC 3 (22,680 minutes)
Ndebele (00)? (00)? (00)? (00)?
Swati (00)? (00)? (00)? (00)?
Tsonga (00)? (00)? (00)? (00)?
Venda (00)? (00)? (00)? (00)?
Sepedi 00 35 00 35 (0.15%)
Tswana 00 65 00 65 (0.28%)
Xhosa 90 00 00 90 (0.39%)
Zulu 120 00 00 120 (0.52%)
Sotho 30 200 00 230 (1.01%)
Afrikaans 30 1255 00 1285 (5.66%)
English 7290 6005 7560 20,855 (91.95%)
Table 8 Monthly air time distribution in hours on SABC: TV Talk , April-June 2001
Languages Channels Total air time:
SABC 1 SABC 2 SABC 3 4664.52 hrs
isiNdebele 0 5.52 0 5.52
SiSwati 0 0 0 0
Xitsonga 0 0 0 0
Tshivenda 0 0 0 0
Sepedi 0 32 0 32
Setswana 0 27 0 27
IsiXhosa 34 0 0 34
IsiZulu 53 0 0 53
Sesotho 0 74 0 74
Afrikaans 0 483.5 0 484.00
English 1269 1104.5 1580.5 3954.00
Year Book, 1998, 1999). While some newspapers and magazines are published in
English or Afrikaans, the tabloids and the ‘freebies’ are published mostly in
English, except for those that cater exclusively for Afrikaans-speaking communi-
ties. Table 9 presents the main dailies (D) and weeklies (W) in South Africa,
together with information about circulation and language of publication. Table 10
presents the country’s other, mostly weekly, newspapers.
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 243
India Company who settled in South Africa after 1652. During the century and a
half of the Dutch occupation of the Cape from 1652 to 1795, only knowledge of
Dutch served as a catalyst for access to resources and employment in the civil
service. Anyone who wanted to do business with the Dutch authority had to
display knowledge of Dutch. The indigenous population of the area, the Khoi
and the San, lost their languages entirely (language death) and acquired an
interlanguage form of Dutch, so that today the descendants of all these people are
Afrikaans- (or Sesotho-, isiXhosa-) speaking. The Dutchification of the Cape
came to an end in 1795, when Britain first took control of the Cape of Good Hope
(now Cape Town) to prevent the territory from falling into the hands of the
French, who had already laid claim to Holland during the Napoleonic wars
(Watermeyer, 1996: 101). However, Dutchification continued in the north of the
country, where the Boers had established the Boer Republics of the Free State and
the Transvaal. The latter was later renamed the ‘South African Republic’.
Anyone who lived in the Boer Republics and especially in the South African
Republic, including the Uitlanders (foreigners, mostly British immigrants) were
subject to Dutchification. The Uitlanders’ request to Britain for protection against
Dutchification in education and for franchise in the South African Republic is
said to be one of the contributory factors to the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902.
Thus, education became politicised. As Malherbe (1925: 287) notes,
it [education] was seized upon by politicians as one of the instances in
which the rights of the Uitlanders were infringed, and was made a contrib-
utory cause to the [Anglo-] Boer war. For instance, in a dispatch from
H.M. Government, dated 10 May, 1899 to Government of South African
Republic on 13 June, 1899, Mr Chamberlain wrote: the education system
was ‘more directed to forcing upon the Uitlander population the habitual
use of Dutch language than to imparting to them the rudiments of general
knowledge’.
After the war, which the British won, the policy of Anglicisation continued, as
discussed earlier (Moodie, 1975; Ponelis, 1993; Warwick,1980). This policy ended
only in 1948, when the Afrikaners took the reins of government. With the power
now in their hands, and in the interest of Afrikanerdom, the Afrikaner politicians
replaced Anglicisation with Afrikanerisation. The Afrikaans language took
centre stage in the administration of the state, and, as Webb and Kriel (2000) put
it, the use and power of Afrikaans increased dramatically.
All government-controlled institutions, the state administration, the radio
and television, the education sector, the defense force and semi-state insti-
tutions gradually [became] almost wholly Afrikaans. The [white] Afri-
kaans-population was in total control, and Afrikaans was considered to
have earned, and was thus given, a monument: the gigantic language
monument on a hill in Paarl, a town near Cape Town, where one of the
organized movements for the promotion of the language, [the Genootskap
van Regte Afrikaners (GRA) (Society of Real Afrikaners) had its roots. (Webb
& Kriel, 2000: 22)
Knowledge of Afrikaans became a requirement for entry into the civil service.
The state invested heavily, both politically and financially, in the development of
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 245
Afrikaans and often praised the language as a gift from God. In this regard, Webb
and Kriel (2000) quote the following from former state president P.W. Botha’s
addresses to Parliament and celebratory ceremonies marking the achievements
of Afrikaans:
We pay homage to the cultural leaders of the past, but we also stand
humbly before the Creator of all languages and all nations [volkere], grateful
for this miraculous gift to our soul. (Webb & Kriel, 2000: 42)
....
The official languages of the Republic (of South Africa) are Sepedi, Sesotho,
Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele,
isiXhosa and isiZulu. (The Constitution, 1996, Chapter 1, Section 6(1))
All official languages must enjoy parity of esteem and must be treated equita-
bly. (The Constitution, 1996, Chapter 1, Section 6(2))
A number of questions have been raised concerning this policy. Why 11 offi-
cial languages? Why not settle for English only? What language will be used as
the medium of instruction? These questions are addressed in section 3 of the
Interim Constitution (1995). According to the Interim Constitution, South Africa
has chosen 11 languages:
(a) to ensure and guarantee the freedom and human dignity of all South Afri-
cans under a new dispensation,
(b) to recognise the country’s linguistic diversity as well as the fact that the
majority of South Africans – probably 98 per cent – use one of these
languages as their home or first language, and
(c) to ensure that the process of democratization is extended to language-
related issues as well (The Department of Education: South Africa’s New
Language Policy: The Facts, 1994: 4, 6).
246 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
Similarly, South Africa has not declared English the only official language, as
it is a minority language, spoken as first or home language by only 9% of South
Africa’s population. Also, it is worth noting that South Africa has opted for a
multilingual language policy in order not to re-ignite the long-standing
ethnolinguistic rivalries20 among the speakers of the various African languages
on the one hand, and between English-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking Whites
on the other. As Webb (1994: 255) observes, the incidence of ethnic nationalism,
for instance among the Afrikaans-speaking Whites and within the Zulu-
speaking community, is language related and has a high potential for inter-
group conflict. The Afrikaans-speaking Whites, the Afrikaners, have fought
against English domination for the past 300 years and, therefore, they would not
have accepted English (let alone any of the African languages) as the sole official
language of the state. Similarly, speakers of the various African languages
consider their respective languages as symbols of cultural identity. Accordingly,
it would have been inconceivable, especially for the speakers of major languages
such as isiZulu, isiXhosa or Sesotho, to accept any one of these languages as the
sole official language of the state.
With regard to the question of the medium of instruction, the new Constitu-
tion of South Africa stipulates that:
matters such as the medium in which a pupil’s instruction takes place and
the number of languages that are to be compulsory school subjects may not
conflict with the language clause in the Constitution [Section 3] nor with
section 32, which provides that every person shall be entitled to instruction
in the language of his or her choice where this is reasonably practicable [author
emphasis].
I have highlighted the phrase ‘where this is reasonably practicable’ to under-
line the ambivalence, vagueness and non-committal nature of the policy. For
instance, who decides what is ‘reasonably practicable’21 and what criteria are
used in making this decision?
One of the main objectives of the new multilingual language policy has been to
promote the status of the nine official African languages against the backdrop of
past discriminatory language policies. Accordingly, the new Constitution states
that ‘recognizing the historically diminished use and status of the indigenous
languages of our people, the state must take practical and positive measures to
elevate the status and advance the use of these languages’ (The Constitution,
1996, Chapter 1, section 6 (2)). The Constitution also makes provision for the
establishment of a Pan South African Language Board (PANSALB) with the
responsibility to, inter alia: ‘promote and create conditions for the development
and use of these (African) and other languages’ (The Constitution, 1996, Chapter
1, section 6 (5a)). Building on the aforementioned constitutional principles, in
1997, the Minister of Education announced a language-in-education policy whose
main aims are:
(a) to promote additive multilingualism, that is, to maintain home language(s)
while providing access to and the effective acquisition of additional
language(s);
(b) to promote and develop all the official languages;
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 247
The policy also mandates the schools, through their respective governing
bodies, to stipulate how they will promote additive multilingualism through the
use of more than one language of learning and teaching, and/or by offering addi-
tional languages as fully-fledged subjects, and/or applying special immersion or
language maintenance programmes.
It is clear from the constitutional clauses cited above that the thrust of the new
language policy is to promote additive multilingualism through mother-
tongue22 education – that is, by using the official indigenous languages as media
of learning and teaching. However, not much progress has been made yet in
attempts to implement the policy, especially with respect to the issue of
mother-tongue education. Rather, the status quo prevails: English and Afrikaans
remain the chief media of learning in English-medium and Afrikaans-medium
schools respectively, much as they were in the apartheid era. Put differently, if
anything has changed at all in terms of the language practices, it is that English
has gained more territory and political clout than Afrikaans in virtually all of the
country’s institutions, including the legislature, education, the media, and the
army. Language practices in the media have already been discussed (see above).
The discussion that follows will focus on the language practices in the remaining
institutions, beginning with the legislature.
Commenting on language practices in the legislature, Gunning (1997: 7)
remarks that most provincial legislatures use English. He explains that: ‘politi-
cians seem to prefer English over other languages, practical circumstances
dictate its use, it [English] is used to avoid confusion, it is the main language of
documentation’. Pandor (1995) makes a similar remark in regard to language
practices in the country’s Parliament. She observes that in 1994, 87% of the
speeches made in Parliament were in English, less than 5% were in Afrikaans,
and the remaining 8% were in one of the nine official African languages – that is,
less than 1% in each of the languages, despite the fact that about 80% of the
members of Parliament are Africans, the majority of whom are fluent in at least
two of the official African languages. Besides being prevalent in the majority of
the speeches made in Parliament, English has also been proposed as the sole
language of Hansard, the Parliament’s historical record of proceedings, formerly
published in both English and Afrikaans. The proposal was, understandably,
prompted by the prohibitive cost of publishing Hansard in all 11 languages.23 A
similar proposal was made recently by the Minister of Justice. Parliament
approved the idea that English should become the sole language of record in the
courts (The Daily News, 20 October 2000). The implications of these proposals for
language practices in the higher domains are obvious. The proposals contribute
to the further exclusion from these domains of both Afrikaans and the previously
marginalised languages, the African languages. Along these lines, in its investi-
gation into language practices in public institutions, the Language Plan Task
Group (LANGTAG, 1996: 47) found that:
248 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
It is clear that there is a loophole in the clause under consideration, namely, the
lack of specification about the official languages that must be used at the provin-
cial and national level for the purpose of government. And since the Constitution
does not specify which official languages should be used in which province or by
the national government, both provincial and national governments have tacitly
opted for the status quo and thus use English and Afrikaans as the languages of
administration, much as was the case in the apartheid era. If the policy is couched
in sufficiently general terms, says Bamgbose (1991: 113), it may go down well,
since it will be a ‘catch-all’ formula that may be interpreted in a flexible manner.
And because the policy is vague and so is subject to multiple interpretations, it
has hardly been implemented, especially with respect to the African languages.
In 1998 the lack of progress in attempts to promote the African languages
prompted the Government to embark on a year-long multilingualism awareness
campaign. Drawing on the tenets of the 1997 language-in-education policy as
described earlier, the campaign was aimed at, among other things:
listed in (1)-(5), below, to which Fishman (1971: 288) would add those in (6) and
(7). The official language is used:
(1) as the language of communication for government officials in carrying out
their duties at the national level;
(2) for written communication between and internal to government agencies at
the national level;
(3) for the keeping of government records at the national level;
(4) for the original formulation of laws and regulations that concern the nation
as a whole;
(5) for forms such as tax forms;
(6) in the schools; and
(7) in the courts.
Current language practices in South Africa, as described in the foregoing
discussion, show that only Afrikaans and English perform some or all of these
functions. The inclusion of the nine African languages in the Constitution seems
to be merely symbolic, to say the least. It is obvious from the description of the
language practices in the higher domains (e.g. the media, the army, the legisla-
ture, education) that government structures have failed in their mission to imple-
ment the proposed multilingual language policy. Accordingly, it has become
almost impossible to convince parents and pupils that multilingualism is a
resource, that African languages can be used as a medium of instruction
throughout the entire educational system. It is not surprising, therefore, that,
when presented with the following models26 of literacy, parents overwhelmingly
opt for the third model.
(1) Initial literacy in the mother tongue followed by a shift to English.
(2) Initial biliteracy in English plus an indigenous language.
(3) Literacy only in English throughout the entire educational system (e.g. de
Klerk, 2000b; Heugh, 1995a; Roodt, 2000).
As pointed out earlier, the choice of English over the African languages has to
be understood against the background of the negative attitudes people have
towards the African languages, an obvious consequence of the legacy of apart-
heid-based Bantu-education. Also, English is perceived to be materially more
relevant than African languages. For instance, citing a 1992 ANC’s language
policy document, Heugh (1995a: 341) reports that ‘large sections of black urban
communities have already pressurized primary schools into beginning with
English as the medium of instruction from day one’. In a more recent survey on
the choice of the medium of instruction in the Pretoria area, Roodt (2000) also
found that ‘98% of black parents want their children27 educated in English, 1%
prefer Afrikaans and only 1% an indigenous African language’. He concludes
that many non-English speakers, be they Zulu, Xhosa, Tswana, Sotho, Venda,
Tsonga, Afrikaans, etc. are choosing to abandon their mother tongue by speaking
English to their children. De Klerk (2000b) draws a similar conclusion in her
investigation into language practices in isiXhosa-speaking communities in
Grahamstown. The study reveals that Xhosa parents not only choose to send
their children to English-medium schools, they also encourage them to speak
English rather than isiXhosa at home. The following extracts from interviews
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 251
between de Klerk and Xhosa parents are telling. They show that, for mostly
economic reasons, parents prefer English to isiXhosa for the education of their
children:
there is a tradition between me and my children that if they catch one
another speaking Xhosa (see Note 3 concerning the spelling of the names of
African languages), they use two clicks to remind the other to speak
English;
they (the children) hardly speak Xhosa . . . all the time they like English. I
don’t encourage them to speak Xhosa, not at all;
it’s fine to let it (Xhosa) die. We have never teach (sic!) our son any Xhosa;
I don’t think there will be a need to be a Xhosa-speaker later on;
I am a Xhosa, but I can’t use it anywhere else; Xhosa cuts you off (de Klerk,
2000b: 93–94, 103).
The implications of this state of affairs for the maintenance of African
languages will be discussed in Language Maintenance and Prospects, below.
These extracts suggest, however, that unless the black communities28 value their
own languages, as the Afrikaners have valued theirs since the era of Angli-
cisation, the Government will be powerless to enforce change and so top-down
efforts to promote the indigenous languages will not succeed. In the next section,
language planning agencies are described. In the subsequent section, some of the
factors that influence language policy and planning in the polity, with a focus on
market forces, the legacy of apartheid education, elite closure, and linguicism are
discussed, followed by a discussion of literacy.
Task Group (LANGTAG) and the Pan South African Language Board
(PANSALB). PRAESA is an independent research and development unit
founded in 1992 by Dr Neville Alexander of the University of Cape Town. It
emerged from the struggle against apartheid education, to which it sought to
provide an alternative. Its main goals are to:
further an additive approach to bilingualism and biliteracy in education;
raise the status of the (official) African languages, with a focus on isiXhosa
in the Western Cape Province;
assist teachers in coping with the challenges of working in multilingual
classrooms; and
contribute towards a database of research relating to language policy, plan-
ning and practice (PRAESA, 1999a: 3).
The Language Plan Task Group (LANGTAG), the precursor to PANSALB,
was a policy advisory body appointed in 1995 by the Minister of Arts, Culture,
Science and Technology. Its brief was to produce a report that would provide the
then Government of National Unity with guidelines for:
the realisation of language policy and planning across all social sectors;
the promotion of multilingualism and, more specifically, the development
of the African languages; and
combating the trend towards unilingualism resulting from the perception
by many South Africans that multilingualism is a problem (PRAESA,
1999b: 13).
LANGTAG completed and submitted its report, entitled Towards a National
Language Plan for South Africa: Final Report of the Language Plan Task Group to the
Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology in August 1996. The report
contains discussions of, recommendations for, and data on, various aspects of
language policy and planning in South Africa, among them language equity,
language development, language as a resource, language in education, language
in the public service, to list but a few.
PANSALB is an independent statutory body appointed by the Senate and
enshrined in the country’s new Constitution. Its aims, as stipulated in the 1996
Constitution, Chapter 1, section 5, are:
[to] promote, and create conditions for the development and use of (i) all
official languages; (ii) the Khoi, Nama and San languages; and (iii) sign
languages; and (b) promote and ensure respect for (i) all languages
commonly used by communities in South Africa, including German, Guja-
rati, Hindi, Portuguese, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu; and (ii) Arabic, Hebrew,
Sanskrit and other languages used for religious purposes in South Africa.
PANSALB has as yet to achieve the goals for which it was enshrined in the
Constitution. Financial constraints and the lack of political support have made it
difficult for PANSALB to execute its constitutional mandate to promote
multilingualism. Besides the language planning agencies already discussed,
there are several interest groups involved in language planning activities, espe-
cially for Afrikaans and English. Apart from PRAESA, which concentrates its
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 253
activities on isiXhosa in the Western Cape, there exist very few language plan-
ning organisations involved with the remaining African languages.
in Tanzania (Mafu, 1999). Mafu notes that, while expressing official support for
Swahili-medium instruction, the Tanzanian elite generally send their own chil-
dren to ‘English academies’, that is, to private English-medium schools that have
mushroomed in Tanzanian urban centres. In South Africa, the mismatch
between the new language policy and language practices (as described above) in
the higher domains resembles the Tanzanian trend, although the indigenous
South African languages do not have the high sociolinguistic profile that Swahili
does in Tanzania. Also, by adopting English as the sole language of Hansard and
court records, the South African elite are, perhaps consciously, resisting the new
language policy.
Linguicism refers to ‘ideologies and structures which are used to legitimate,
effectuate and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources between
groups which are defined on the basis of language’ (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1988: 13;
see also Phillipson, 1988, 1992). It is an ideology according to which the language
of the politically or economically dominant group or class is given a higher social
status than the indigenous languages. That view is self-evident in South Africa,
where English and Afrikaans have historically been assigned a higher status than
African languages. Because of linguicism, Western donors, for instance, tend to
support educational programmes that promote subtractive and transitional
bilingual programmes, where African languages are used in early years of
schooling, and subsequently a world language (English) takes over as the
medium of instruction. In this regard, Heugh (1995a: 343) observes that foreign
donors, including World Bank officials, who visited South Africa in 1992, made it
clear that additive bilingualism was not on the World Bank’s agenda and that
funds would not be available to support such programmes. As Kamwangamalu
(1998a, b) has observed elsewhere, foreign aid, in part, constitutes one of the chal-
lenges to implementing the new language policy in, say, education, especially if
doing so is geared towards additive rather than subtractive bilingualism; not
only do foreign donors influence language-in-education policy by providing
funds, they also often serve as government advisors on that very policy. Thus,
Popham (1996: 39, as quoted in Master, 1998: 717) is right when he notes that
‘while the engine of colonialism [and apartheid in South Africa] long ago ran out
of steam, the momentum of its languages and legacies is still formidable, and it is
against their tyranny that the smaller languages fight to survive’. Therefore,
pupils who are, or who become, bilingual in English and an African language, as
is the case in de Klerk’s (2000b) study, must, in practice, become monolingual in
English, that is, follow monolingual usage in order to succeed in life. Accord-
ingly, bilingualism, and by extension the bilingual learner, is viewed in deficit
terms, a problem to overcome, rather than a resource to be promoted (Landon,
2000).
Literacy
Many definitions of literacy can be found in the literature. However, Herbert
and Robinson (1999: 248) note that there has been a radical shift away from the
dominant view of literacy as a neutral, technological skill unaffected by social
contexts (or what Street (1995) calls the ‘autonomous model’) towards a broader
view, the ‘ideological model’, whereby material and social conditions determine
the outcome. Anticipating the latter model, Street (1984: 28) defines literacy as ‘a
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 255
before the apartheid Government came into power. This organisation is credited
with publishing course books in the majority of South(ern) African indigenous
languages and running training courses for literacy instructors. One of the most
recently established literacy agencies is the South African National Literacy
Initiative (SANLI), a government-sponsored body, whose brief is to reduce adult
illiteracy through, among other things, the mobilisation of voluntary services in
support of a nationwide literacy campaign, development of training pro-
grammes for volunteer educators, evaluation, development and procurement of
reading and resource materials for use in the nationwide literacy campaign,
recruitment of learners and the servicing of their needs (Sunday Times, 12
November 2000). Other literacy agencies include the churches, SABC TV and
radio (literacy) programmes, newspapers, Trade Unions (COSATU) literacy
projects, universities, the South African Association of Literacy and Adult
Education, which has close ties with the International Council of Adult Educa-
tion, as well as the National Literacy Cooperation and Project Literacy, each of
which has at least one regional branch in each of the nine provinces. Most of these
agencies produce learning materials for adults and provide training in basic
methods for literacy instructors.
The term ‘language shift’ is invoked here in the sense of Fishman (1991: 1),
who uses it to refer to ‘speech communities whose native languages are threat-
ened because their intergenerational continuity is proceeding negatively, with
fewer and fewer users (speakers, readers, writers and even understanders) or
uses every generation’. The opposite of language shift is language maintenance.
The literature indicates that many factors are responsible for language mainte-
nance and shift, the most important among them being generation, the numerical
258 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
English
The new Constitution of South Africa does not accord English any special
rights or advantages over the other official languages. As a matter of fact, in
section 3(2), the Constitution stipulates that ‘any person may communicate in
writing or orally with a government department in any official language’, and
that ‘any attempt by the government to act in any linguicist manner or to allow
any language/languages to dominate others would be unconstitutional’ (The
Constitution of South Africa, 1996). Other constitutional measures, already
discussed under Language Policy and Planning, also call for parity of esteem
among, and equity in the use of, the official languages. Despite all these
measures, language practices in the country’s institutions point to a different
reality – that English has a special status in South Africa. This is evident from the
language practices in the higher domains such as the media, the legislature,
education and the army, as discussed above. It is also evident from the language
practices for political events, such as the inauguration in 1994 of Nelson Mandela
as the first democratically elected president of South Africa, the annual openings
of Parliament, the signing ceremony on 10 December 1996 of South Africa’s new
Constitution, and various official announcements or press releases. In South
Africa, most official events, including those mentioned above, are conducted
exclusively through the medium of English.
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 259
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is the only language that could present a challenge to the hegemony
of English in all the higher domains, except diplomacy. And this despite the fact
that Afrikaans has lost most of the privileges and political prestige it had during
the apartheid era. It is no longer a compulsory school subject in the country’s
educational system, it no longer receives the special financial support it had
during the apartheid era, it is no longer the sole language of the army and is grad-
260 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
on the South African linguistic scene as a result of Afrikaner mobilisation for the
language against the British Government’s oppressive policy of Anglicisation,
which banned Afrikaans from the public service in the 1880s. Prior to its rise to
prominence with the coming to power of the National Party in 1948, (Dutch-)
Afrikaans had survived 300 years of British oppression. Under the current
Government, Afrikaans is, like all other official languages, protected by the
Constitution. Therefore, although as a result of the demise of apartheid, Afri-
kaans no longer receives special treatment from the state and has been reduced to
one of the 11 languages in the country’s official linguistic heritage, the language
is not likely to come under any threat of attrition, in spite of the territory it has lost
and is likely to lose to its historical rival, English, in the higher domains, such as
the government and administration, the media, the army, the court, to list but a
few. On the contrary, I would like to postulate that the continued rivalry between
English and Afrikaans might lead the Afrikaners to mobilise again for their
language which, as Webb and Kriel (2000: 20) note, they profess to ‘love’ and for
which they are prepared to make material sacrifices to ensure its continued main-
tenance. If the press statement referred to above is any indication, the seed for the
Third Afrikaans Language Movement might have already been sown.
their native languages. In the current South African context, developing the
indigenous languages entails, in particular, the elaboration and modernisation
of their vocabulary, especially in the field of science and technology. This, as
Godman and Veltman (1990: 196) put it, has the economic benefits of making
science and technology and other higher domains accessible in the indigenous
languages. In this regard, Cluver (1996) notes that lexicographers must be
trained to embark on the task of creating a scientific lexicon for each official indig-
enous language. Also, African language practitioners must be trained to facili-
tate the dissemination of information in the official indigenous languages. These
are all top-down and costly undertakings, which the Government alone cannot
afford for all the indigenous languages. The main challenge will be for each
language community, in cooperation with government structures, to take the
lead in developing their own language so that they will have access to science
and technology through that language. A number of language development
projects, including lexicography projects and electronic corpora for all the offi-
cial languages, have been initiated by linguists in collaboration with scientists at
various South African universities. One such project is the multilingual dictio-
nary for students of chemistry, initiated by Dr A. Carstens of the Department of
Afrikaans at the University of Pretoria and the Chemistry Division of the South
African Academy for Science and Art in 1998. The project, titled Quadralingual
Explanatory Dictionary of Chemistry, aims to provide access to new or incom-
pletely learnt special-field concepts by means of the first language of the user.
Carstens (1997: 2) describes the project as ‘designed to be a multilingual explana-
tory special-field pedagogical dictionary with English as the source language
and Afrikaans, isiZulu and Sepedi as target languages’. Its emphasis is on
comprehensible definitions in plain English of scientific terms, provided by the
chemists, plus translation equivalents and definitions of these terms in the
remaining three languages: Sepedi, isiZulu, Afrikaans. It is noted that, by offer-
ing linguistic and encyclopaedic information in English, Afrikaans, Sepedi and
isiZulu, the concepts of the subject field are made accessible not only via the
language(s) of wider communication, English, but also via the mother tongue of
the student, Afrikaans, Sepedi, or isiZulu. To date the dictionary has compiled
1000 scientific terms. The government and language activists must sensitise the
communities to the benefits of projects such as the one described here, for they
both contribute to language development and ensure language maintenance.
In terms of the key factors in language maintenance and shift discussed
earlier, two factors – namely numerical strength and generation – constitute the life-
line for the survival of the major official indigenous languages, such as isiZulu
and isiXhosa, which have a little over nine million and seven million speakers,
respectively. Minor official indigenous languages, such as Tshivenda and
isiNdebele, which have less than a million speakers each (see Table 1), face a seri-
ous threat from English, especially in urban areas. Their chances of survival in
these areas are comparatively slimmer than those of, say, any other indigenous
languages, including isiZulu and isiXhosa. Also, in terms of performance in the
higher domains, minor official languages are becoming increasingly far less visi-
ble than the major indigenous languages, as is evident from the data on language
use in the media and other domains. Recent research shows that, in urban areas,
English is steadily intruding into the family domain for daily communication,
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 263
development has not reached the majority (Alexander, 1997: 88), and the illiter-
acy rate, especially among the black population, remains high. Although people
will always want to learn English, particularly because of its instrumental value,
there is a need for extending the use of the indigenous languages to all the higher
domains and especially to the entire educational system. Using indigenous
languages in such higher domains as education is vital, not only for an efficient
promotion of those languages, but also for the rapid and massive development
and spread of literacy among the populace to empower them to participate
actively in the social, political and economic development of the state.
Promoting the indigenous languages also requires policy revision on the one
hand, and ridding the languages of the legacy of the Bantu Education Act on the
other. With regard to the former, the language policy must state unequivocally
which official languages must be used in which province for what purposes. It is
not enough to have legislation in place that accords recognition and equal status
to all the official languages. One needs a sustaining rather than a laissez faire
policy (see Kaplan & Baldauf, 1997: 210–213 for discussion). This is because, as
Schiffman (1992) points out, egalitarianism in language policy does not necessar-
ily result in equal outcomes; nor does it necessarily entail language promotion.
Language policy is more than a language clause in the Constitution; rather it is, as
Djité (1990: 96) points out, ‘the realisation and the consciousness raising about
language as a cultural heritage and as a primary factor of socioeconomic devel-
opment, the calculated choice of the language(s) of education and administra-
tion, and the actual implementation of that policy’. Unless the loopholes inherent
in the current language policy are closed, efforts to promote the indigenous
languages will be doomed to fail. Fortunately, the question of policy revision
now appears to be one of the top priorities of the Minister of Education, Professor
Kader Asmal. In a recent newspaper article, the Minister remarks that ‘language
policy “is not working for all” [the official languages]’ and so it ‘requires an
immediate review’ (Daily News, 8 May 2001). He points out that
Although the language policy promulgated in 1997 was theoretically
sound, it had not really worked on the ground. ... Some school governing
bodies refuse to comply with all the provisions of the language-in-
education policy because of racism and use explanations as varied as school
culture, corporate vision, capacity and resource availability as covers for
their actions. (Daily News, 8 May 2001)
It is not clear what amendments will be made to the language policy, but they
should be informed by the findings of current research, discussed in this mono-
graph, into why the policy has not worked in the first place (e.g. Kamwanga-
malu, 1997a, 1998b; LANGTAG, 1996; Verhoef, 1998). Most importantly, the
amendments should be geared towards making the indigenous languages ‘fill a
hole’ in their respective communities, as explained below.
Finally, the legacy of apartheid30 education not only has rendered the indige-
nous languages instrumentally valueless, but it has also led black South Africans
to equate education in the indigenous languages (their own languages) with infe-
rior education. Therefore, for the indigenous languages to become competitive
vis à vis English- or Afrikaans-medium education, they must be ‘cleansed’ of the
stigma of inferiority they have been carrying for decades (Kamwangamalu, 1996,
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 267
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Vic Webb for his insightful comments and suggestions on an
earlier draft of this monograph and for pointing me to key references on ‘Lan-
guage and Religion’.
268 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Prof. Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu,
Howard University, Department of English, 248 Locke Hall, 2441 6th Street, NW,
Washington, DC 20059, USA (nkamwangamalu@howard.edu).
Notes
1. This idea that each racial group must have its own territory continues to be voiced in
today’s South Africa by the Freedom Front, an Afrikaner political party which seeks
self-determination; that is, a separate region or homeland, volkstaat, for the Afrikaners.
2. I am using the term ‘Africans’ to refer specifically to black South Africans. In South
Africa, politicians sometimes use this term to refer to all so-called ‘non-whites’ includ-
ing Indians, Coloureds, and Blacks.
3. These conferences include The 15th Southern African Applied Linguistics Association
(SAALA) conference on Constitutionally Enshrined Multilingualism: Challenges and
Responses (Stellenbosch, South Africa, 1995), The Workshop on Post-colonial
Language Problems and Language Planning: Assessing the Past Half Century
(Utrecht, The Netherlands, 1996); The Panel on Sociopragmatic and Sociolinguistic
Approaches to Multilingualism, 6th International Pragmatics Conference (Reims,
France, 1998); Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics
(Washington, DC, 2000), and The University of Natal’s 17th Conference on Language
Development and Language Use (Durban, South Africa, 2000). Also, in writing this
monograph I have used as a guide the 22 questions provided by the series editors,
Robert Kaplan and Richard B. Baldauf, Jr, and the monographs on the language-
planning situation in the neighbouring countries of Malawi (Kayambazinthu, 1998)
and Mozambique (Lopes, 1998).
4. As in the new Constitution of South Africa, in this monograph I have used a prefix in
the spelling of the names of the indigenous languages, e.g. isiZulu, isiXhosa,
isiNdebele, siSwati, Xitsonga, Tshivenda, etc. The prefix serves to distinguish
between a language (e.g. isiZulu, siSwati, Tshivenda) and its speakers (e.g. Zulus,
Swatis, Vendas). Note, however, that the names of the indigenous languages are also
commonly spelt without a prefix, e.g. Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele, Swati, Tsonga, etc.
5. A descendant of Dutch settlers in South Africa was known during the 19th century as a
Boer, which means farmer. By the early 20th century such people were calling them-
selves Afrikaners, which means people of Africa. Their language is Afrikaans, a
locally evolved form of Dutch (Attwell, 1986: ix)
6. The war was triggered by a combination of factors, among them the discovery of the
gold in the Witwatersrand in 1886, which precipitated a collision between the Boers
and Uitlanders, that is, the new immigrants, mainly British; the denial by the Boers of
the political rights to the Uitlanders; and the desire of Britain to federate South Africa
and bring the whole country under the control of the British Empire.
7. The stipulation of Dutch, and not Afrikaans, in the constitution, or Act of the Union as it
was called, provoked conflict among the parties to the Union. In 1925, Article 137 of
the Act of the Union, by which English and Dutch were given equal status as official
languages of the Union, was amended to state explicitly that reference to Dutch also
included Afrikaans (Maartens, 1998: 29)
8. For an in-depth discussion of the development of Afrikaans, see Ponelis (1993), van
Rensburg and Jordan (1995), and Webb et al. (1992).
9. These organisations include the South African Hindu Maha Sabha, the Natal Tamil
Vedic Society, the Andhra Maha Sabha of South Africa, the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha of
South Africa, the Kathiawad Hindu Seva Samj, the Surat Hindoo Association and the
Shree Sanathan Sabha of Natal.
10. For the Muslim community, some such organisations include the Islamic Propagation
Centre, the Juma Musjid Madressa Trust, the Darul Uloom Trust and the Orient
Islamic Educational Institute.
11. The other organisations involved in promoting Indian languages are: Hindi Sikha
Sangh (teaches Hindi reading and writing skills); Gujarati Khathiawad Association
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 269
(teaches Gujarati language and culture in Gujarati patasalas (schools)); Natal Tamil
Federation, a sister organisation to the Tamil Vedic Society of South Africa, (teaches
Tamil through dances, songs, and through the study of Thevaram (i.e. Hindu religious
texts written in Tamil)); and the Institution for Indian Languages, a new organisation
established in 1995 by some concerned academics at the University of
Durban-Westville to fight for the rights of Indian languages in South Africa.
12. A distinguishing grammatical feature of the south-eastern languages, including the
nine official indigenous languages of South Africa, is that locatives and diminutives
are formed by noun suffixes, while most other Bantu languages employ prefixes
(Schuring, 1990: 25). Two of the nine official indigenous languages, namely Sesotho
and siSwati, also serve as official languages in the neighbouring kingdoms of Lesotho
and Swaziland, respectively.
13. Some of these languages, particularly Zulu, are taught at a number of overseas univer-
sities, e.g. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Yale University, University of
California at Los Angeles.
14. The idea that South Africa should aim for a single non-racial education system was
recommended in 1981 by a Human Science Research Council Committee appointed
by the apartheid Government to conduct an in-depth investigation into the crisis trig-
gered by the 1976 Soweto uprisings. The committee’s report, named the De Lange
Report (after its chair, Professor Pieter de Lange), recommended, inter alia, that:
there should be only one education department responsible for the provision of
education in South Africa at the first or national level; that education management
at the second level should be organised on a regional basis; that the greatest possi-
ble degree of autonomy should be given to the institution that is closest to the
parents and the teachers, viz. the school; and that parents and teachers should have
a major share in decision-making at this level. (Engelbrecht, 1992: 510)
15. Although school segregation has ended, former white schools have gate-keeping
mechanisms, such as lengthy waiting lists and high fees to ensure that the status quo
remains or is, at best, slightly changed by accepting only very small numbers of black
students. For instance, in a study of schooled literacy at a Durban pre-school,
Adendorff and Nel (1998: 211) found that discrimination in South Africa now takes a
different and less easily discernible form. Restrictive mechanisms limit the possibility
of access to elite discourse practices to numbers sufficiently small not to threaten the
status quo, demonstrating the way in which the status quo is upheld, even after the
official mechanisms, such as separate education for Blacks and Whites, have been
dismantled.
16. Andrew Gonzalez (1990: 322) uses the term ‘miseducation’ to describe the attitudes of
Filipino students towards the use of English instead of their native tongue, Filipino, as
the medium of instruction. The students consider the use of English in the Philippine
educational system as a continuation of cultural and linguistic imperialism by the
United States. Unlike in the Philippines, in South Africa, because of the legacy of the
Bantu Education system, it is the use of the indigenous languages in education rather
than English that the pupils and parents consider as ‘miseducation’.
17. Until recently, three levels were distinguished, the Higher, Standard and Lower
Grade.
18. The description draws mostly on the following sources: South Africa Year Book, 1998,
1999; Europa World Year Book, 1999; Africa South of the Sahara, 1999.
19. Everyday M-Net broadcasts to the general public, known as open-time viewers, for
two hours 5–7 p.m.) free of charge.
20. Ethnolinguistic rivalries are not unique to South Africa. As Laitin and Mensah (1991)
point out, the promotion of any indigenous language for official use often yields
opposition, not only from those doing technical work, but also from leading politi-
cians of the ‘non-chosen’ languages. This is illustrated in the following statement by
Chief Anthony Anahoro of Nigeria, an Edo speaker, in which he opposes the choice of
Hausa as the official language of the state:
as one who comes from a minority tribe, I deplore the continuing evidence in this
270 Language Planning and Policy in Africa
country that people wish to impose their customs, their languages, and even their
way of life upon the smaller tribes .... My people have a language, and that
language was handed down through a thousand years of tradition and custom.
When the Benin Empire exchanged ambassadors with Portugal, many of the new
Nigerian languages of today did not exist. (Laitin, 1992: 96)
21. In 1997 the Department of Education qualified the phrase under consideration to read:
It is reasonably practicable to provide education in a particular language of learn-
ing and teaching if at least 40 in grades 1 to 6 or 35 in grades 7 to 12 learners in a
particular grade request it in a particular school.
However, at the same time it added the following, also non-committal and
open-ended clause, to the policy:
The provincial education department must explore ways and means of sharing
scarce human resources. It must also explore ways and means of providing alter-
nate language maintenance programmes in schools and or school districts which
cannot be provided with and or offer additional languages of teaching in the home
language(s) of learners. (Government Gazette, 17 July 1997)
22. The term mother-tongue is being used here in the sense of UNESCO ([1953] 1995), as
already described under Language Spread. It is worth noting that the mother-tongue
‘need not be the language which a person’s parents use; nor need it be the language
one first learns to speak, since special circumstances may cause one to abandon this
language more or less completely at an early age’ (UNESCO, [1953] 1995).
23. In accordance with this proposal, the other official languages, including Afrikaans,
are currently being used as the languages of record on a rotating basis each month (The
Sunday Times, 31 May 1998).
24. In the apartheid era, the term ‘Model C schools’ was used to refer to ‘whites-only’
schools, especially white English-medium schools.
25. Incidentally, current language practices in regard to English can be traced back to the
language policy proposal made by the ANC, now the ruling party, in 1993. The first
clause of that proposal reads as follows:
No language must be constitutionally designated as an official language.
However, one language may be designated through legislation as the language for
government record purposes at the national, regional, and local levels of govern-
ment. At the national level, this language will probably be English.
Compare this proposal with the one made a year earlier by the English Academy of
Southern Africa:
Although it is desirable that all eleven languages normally recognized as the main
languages spoken in South Africa should have equal status, the only practicable
solution is to make one language the language of wider communication. The other
languages should all have official status at various levels of public life, in various
circumstances, and possibly on a geographical basis, to be laid down in broad
terms in the Constitution and spelled out in more detail in corresponding legisla-
ture. (English Academy of Southern Africa, 1992: 3)
Note that the English Academy does not name the language it says should be made the
language of wider communication. But it is obvious that the language in question is
and must be English.
26. The language research group of the National Education Policy Investigation (NEPI)
(1992: 4–16) offers an in-depth discussion of various policies for the medium of
instruction, their advantages and disadvantages, and the necessary conditions for
them to succeed.
27. In an article aptly entitled ‘When mother tongue education is not preferred’, Gupta
(1997: 506) makes a similar remark about resistance to mother-tongue education in
Tamil by the urban middle-class Tamil parents of Malaysia. In particular, and citing
Schiffman (1996), Gupta points out that the parents ‘declared that they would not put
The Language Planning Situation in South Africa 271
their children in Tamil schools in Malaysia because Tamil schools are a dead-end
professionally and socially’.
28. According to press reports, one language community, the Tshivenda-speaking
community, appears to have taken the threat of English to its language to heart. In an
effort to roll back what the community terms ‘cultural imperialism’ associated with
English – one that breeds ‘cultural genocide’ – a group of Tshivenda-speaking people
have started a movement to establish a school in Johannesburg which would teach
Tshivenda and Venda culture to Venda children (The Star, 25 September 2000). It is not
surprising that the Tshivenda-speaking people are the first to undertake such an
initiative. They are the smallest among the indigenous language communities in
South Africa and so, in terms of language and culture loss, they feel more vulnerable
than any of the other indigenous language communities.
29. Vic Webb (personal communication, 2001) says that the term ‘Afrikaner’ is defined
more narrowly by many, viz. as (1) support of self-determination/apartheid /sepa-
ratism (politically), (2) white (racially), (3) membership of the Dutch Reformed
Church (religion), (4) a sense of a glorious past (historically) and (5) particular values,
attitudes, and norms (culturally).
30. There is no denying that apartheid is certainly the root of many evils in South Africa. It
is worth noting, however, that language planning situations in the rest of Africa,
which did not have apartheid, are so similar to that in South Africa that other factors,
such as colonialism, slavery, and Christianisation must also have had their impact on
the language situation in South Africa.
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Biographical Notes on Contributors
Armando Jorge Lopes took his doctorate at the University of Wales, and is
currently Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Eduardo Mondlane University
in Mozambique, where he has served as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Pedagogic
Affairs. He has also served as Editor-in-Chief (1990–1995) of the Linguistics
Association for SADC Universities. He has undertaken a number of consultancy
assignments for the Commonwealth and the Organisation of African Unity in
Addis Ababa. He has published two books and some two dozen articles in refer-
eed journals and as chapters in books. His research interests include discourse
analysis, contrastive rhetoric, and language planning and language policy.
Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu is currently Associate Professor of English and
Linguistics at Howard University in Washington, DC. He has taught linguistics
at the National University of Singapore, the University of Swaziland, and the
University of Natal in Durban, South Africa, where he was Professor and Direc-
tor of the Linguistics Program. He holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and has also received a Fulbright award. His
research interests include multilingualism, code-switching, language policy and
planning, language and identity, New Englishes, and African Linguistics. He has
published widely in these areas. He is the author of the recent monograph The
Language Planning Situation in South Africa (2001, Multilingual Matters), and has
guest-edited special issues on this and related topics for The International Journal
of the Sociology of Language (Vol. 144, 2000), Multilingua (Vol. 17, 2–3, 1998), and
World Englishes (Vol. 21, 1, 2002), and Language Problems and Language Planning (in
preparation).
Dr Edrinnie Kayambazinthu holds a PhD from LaTrobe University, Australia
and is a Senior Lecturer in the English Department at Chancellor College,
University of Malawi. She has published a number of articles in the field of
sociolinguistics and language planning in Malawi. Her major work on the
language situation in Malawi first appeared in the Journal of Multilingual and
Multicultural Development in 1998. Her other publications such as ‘Sociolinguistic
Theories: Some Implications from Malawian Data, Codeswitching and
Codemixing’ have appeared in the Journal of Humanities and one on ‘Patterns of
Language Use in Malawi in the Journal of Contemporary African Studies.
Professor Lydia Nyati Ramahobo obtained her PhD in Applied Linguistics at
the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. She served as head of the Department of
Primary Education at the University of Botswana from 1996 to 1999. She is
currently the Dean of the Faculty of Education, a position she has held since 2000.
Professor Ramahobo was Coordinator for the Educational Research Network in
Eastern and Southern Africa from 1992 to 1995. Her major publications include
the book titled The National Language: A Problem or Resource (Pula Press), The Girl
Child in Botswana (UNICEF) and a recent extended journal article titled ‘From a
Phone Call to the High Court: Wayeyi Visibility and the Kamanakao Associa-
tion’s Campaign for Linguistic and Cultural Rights in Botswana’ in the Journal of
Southern African Studies 28 (4). Her areas of interest are language in education,
language and ethnicity, educational research and female education.
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