[lg policy] South Africa: A deadly war of languages

Tue Oct 6 18:13:32 UTC 2009

A deadly war of languages

HERMANN GILIOMEE: COMMENT - Oct 05 2009 06:00

For the past 10 years a vital battle for the future of Afrikaans as a
university language has been waged. One of the participants has been
the government, which demands access through the medium of English for
blacks at all universities. In order to meet this demand but also to
keep its Afrikaans clients, the University of Stellenbosch has
responded by introducing ever more courses taught in dual medium in
place of Afrikaans single medium. In dual medium, Afrikaans and
English are used intermittently in the same lecture as the media of
instruction, on the understanding that Afrikaans is used at least 50%
of the time. In the case of parallel medium, separate streams of
Afrikaans and English lectures are offered on the same topic.

Despite this, Blade Nzimande, Minister of Higher Education and
Training, has recently railed against “covert forms of racism”, citing
as a “distinct example” people “using constitutional rights for the
continuation of single-medium [read: Afrikaans] schools and
Afrikaans-only universities”.  One would hardly guess from Nzimande’s
indictment that there is nothing wrong with citizens asserting their
constitutional rights and that there is not a single “Afrikaans-only”
university’ left. At the University of the Free State a full set of
parallel-medium courses are offered; at the University of Pretoria 45%
of the lectures are in dual medium, 28% in parallel medium and 25% in
English medium. At the Potchefstroom campus of North-West University
there is instant translation of almost all Afrikaans classes.

There is little recognition on the part of Nzimande or the ANC in
general of the potent fear among minorities about the displacement of
their language in public institutions. In socio-linguistic circles it
is commonly accepted that single-medium instruction is the only medium
of instruction that guarantees the survival of a local or regional
language in a school or a university, given the need to coexist with a
universal language such as English. Over the medium term, dual medium
in particular but also parallel medium are the death knell of a local
or regional language.

There is an element of déjà vu in this. A century ago Afrikaners were
urged to accept parallel or dual-medium institutions to build a new
nation out of the two white communities (or “races” as they were then
called). Those Afrikaners who objected were accused of fomenting
racial hatred. The popular Afrikaans journalist CJ Langenhoven
parodied the plea as follows: “Friends, let us make peace and keep the
peace. Let the lamb and the lion graze together; the lamb on the grass
and the lion on the lamb. The lamb will soon be part of the lion. It
will be to the honour of the lamb and the delight of the lion.” In
2001 the University of Stellenbosch accepted a language policy that
ostensibly kept the English (the lion) at bay. It singles out
Afrikaans single medium as the “automatic” or “default” option, and
allows the use of dual medium only in circumscribed cases.
Nevertheless Afrikaans single-medium courses have plummeted to only
38% of undergraduate offerings and dual medium has risen in the same
time to 45%.

The latest to cave in is the law faculty. It has made dual medium
obligatory in the entire undergraduate programme, despite a proud and
rich tradition of teaching and scholarship in Afrikaans. It stands in
strong contrast to the faculties of its peers at Bloemfontein and
Pretoria, who offer parallel medium without any extra financial
resources. To make matters worse at Stellenbosch, the institution does
not insist on proficiency in Afrikaans as a prerequisite for a degree.
Students are not compelled to pass a language proficiency test in
order to proceed at the end of the first year. Lecturers are not
required to be proficient in the language(s) they teach in. The
university is unable to state how many have not mastered Afrikaans. No
effective monitoring system exists.

The university frowns on such practices and brands itself
taalvriendelik (language-friendly). In response we may cite a “law” of
socio-linguist JA Laponce: “The friendlier the relations between
people, the deadlier the fight between languages.” Laponce himself
thinks that at the present rate Afrikaans at Stellenbosch will end up
as “a mere decoration”.
The call for a predominantly Afrikaans University of Stellenbosch is
sometimes branded as nationalist, racist or exclusivist. Yet the
demand that it teaches predominantly in Afrikaans single medium has
wide backing. In 1996 Nelson Mandela saw it as the university’s
special task to “promote the sustained development of Afrikaans as an
academic medium”.

The call for Stellenbosch to be a mainly single-medium institution was
also backed by a committee headed by Dr Jakes Gerwel, who was
appointed by former education minister Kader Asmal. In 2001 it
recommended that the government give two universities (Stellenbosch
and Potchefstroom) a special mandate to promote Afrikaans as a
language of instruction and research “consciously and systematically”.
Public support for Stellenbosch as an institution using Afrikaans
single medium as the core of its offering has also come from leading
educationists Neville Alexander and Kathleen Heugh; the executive
committee of the convocation of Stellenbosch alumni; a petition of
3500 students; virtually every prominent Afrikaans writer, including
Breyten Breytenbach and André Brink; and by business leader Koos
Bekker.

Dr F Van Zyl Slabbert, the outgoing Stellenbosch chancellor, described
the university’s version of dual medium as “an academic absurdity”.
This year the Democratic Alliance called for the university to be
predominantly an Afrikaans institution. More than 80% of
Afrikaans-speaking students (and nearly half of the English speaking
students) prefer or accept Afrikaans single medium. The issue concerns
both Afrikaans and transformation. Given its location, the particular
challenge of Stellenbosch is to draw large numbers of coloured
Afrikaans-speakers and thus prove that transformation could also occur
in and through Afrikaans. Because this community’s participation rate
in tertiary education is the lowest of all the communities,
large-scale funding is needed for bursaries, bridging courses and
creative interventions in the schools. None has been forthcoming. The
proportion of coloured students at undergraduate level has remained
stagnant at 13% to 15%.

The university hoped dual medium would attract black students, but
they insist on parallel medium. The proportion of undergraduate blacks
has dropped to a minuscule 2% this year. Then there are coloured
English-speakers. In this community Afrikaans is read and spoken much
more frequently than in white English-speaking homes. There is no
indication that dual medium is needed to attract them. Dual medium has
in fact attracted a market segment that the university is not supposed
to cater for: large numbers of white English-speakers, of whom half
cannot or will not become proficient in Afrikaans. Between 1998 and
2009 the proportion of English-speaking undergraduate students has
doubled from 18% to 36%. Some flee from the formerly white English
universities because of the growing black presence. Others do not get
a place there. At Stellenbosch, Afrikaans students outperform English
students by a significant margin in all but one faculty.

The shift from Afrikaans single medium to dual medium can be explained
in simple terms: the state does not fund parallel medium and lecturers
do not want to repeat their lectures without remuneration (as
lecturers at the University of Free State indeed do). Second,
university councils and managements have lost the will to tell
lecturers to conform to a strict language policy or leave.  Recently
banking tycoon Jannie Mouton and prominent Afrikaans writer Marié
Heese resigned from the University of Stellenbosch council. Mouton
believes the university has become “too white and too English”, and
Heese believes the council and management have failed in their duty to
make it possible for students to study in Afrikaans.

The university has made no real progress on transformation and has
left the coloured Afrikaans-speaking community in the lurch. It runs
the risk of alienating both its alumni and the government. The real
beneficiaries are lecturers, who do not have to repeat lectures, and
those English-speakers who don’t want to learn Afrikaans. Afrikaans --
and an effective form of instruction, particularly for students at
risk — is the casualty. It is a great cultural tragedy that is
unfolding. Not only the university but all of South Africa will be
immeasurably poorer if Afrikaans is fatally weakened at Stellenbosch.

Hermann Giliomee is an elected representative of the alumni on the
University of Stellenbosch council but writes this in his private
capacity

Source: Mail & Guardian Online
Web Address: http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-10-05-a-deadly-war-of-languages

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