South Africa: When a language gets lost - Sandile Memela

[Francis Hult]

Dispatch Online

 

When a language gets lost - Sandile Memela

 

MANY of those who were teenagers in 1976 are the first generation of African adults to raise children who cannot speak their own mother tongue.

 

When we fought apartheid, we were not too sure of what we wanted to unleash into this world to define our freedom. Perhaps it is time for us to ask: What kind of world have we created for our children?

 

The new South Africa is a confusing, changing place. We continue to celebrate June 16 and April 27 as significant days that marked a radical change in the course of history, culminating in democracy. But I find that our children are awkward and orphaned by parents who live to work in the name of trying to provide a better quality of life for their offspring.

 

As a result, these children are left to tread carefully in a deceptively normal society where they are not encouraged to speak their indigenous African languages.

 

Full story:

http://www.dispatch.co.za/article.aspx?id=231271

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