Use Your Mother Tongues - Zuma Urges Nation (fwd)

Wed Feb 23 18:25:45 UTC 2005

Use Your Mother Tongues - Zuma Urges Nation

BuaNews  (Pretoria) NEWS
February 23, 2005

By Matome Sebelebele
Pretoria
http://allafrica.com/stories/200502230180.html

Government will not use language as a tool to discriminate against other
communities - instead it will encourage the nation to speak in their
mother tongues, says Deputy President Jacob Zuma.

He however called for the promotion and growth of all the eleven
languages and the Khoi, Nama and San languages, rather than develop
English and Afrikaans alone.

The two still dominate in the country. However, numerous efforts have
been implemented to highlight the need to promote the other nine
languages as well.

Some experts have also called for the use of the indigenous languages as
media of instructions in schools, government publications, in business
and scientific work to enable African communities to access
opportunities as well as engage with the authorities.

"We must emphasise that we do not seek to reverse the gains of English
and Afrikaans, but we have a duty, all of us, including the speakers of
English and Afrikaans as mother tongues, to develop the other nine
official languages which have remained historically marginalised," said
Mr Zuma.

He was addressing a function to celebrate international mother tongue
day in Pretoria, last night.

Language, he elaborated, was crucial in asserting one's cultural
identity and opening possibilities as witnessed with the award-winning
Yesterday (a Zulu film) and in isiXhosa uCarmen eKhayelitsha.

Challenges however remain as more African children grow up in
cosmopolitan cities, where there is pressure to be "cool" by expressing
themselves in English.

This, Mr Zuma argued, could be resolved by encouraging children to learn
more than two local languages including their mother tongue.

"The ideal situation is that our children should be conversant in all 11
languages! If we cannot achieve that feat, we should at least achieve
fluency and proficiency in the mother languages."

Citing examples of Ilanga, Isolezwe and Umafrika - the commercial
newspaper published in Zulu - he said these publications vindicated a
view that products in mother tongue were profitable and sustainable.

"The success of these publications indicate that people are actually
keen to read in their mother tongue," he said.