Speak African

By Theo Mapheto

Just why leaders in South Africa insist on communicating with their followers in a foreign language beggars belief.

Take Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe’s address at Ntwampe in Limpopo Province on the occasion of the National Heritage Day celebrations for example. Look, Motlanthe’s first language is Sepedi and the masses who descended to the Ntwampe grounds to listen to him are invariably Sepedi-speaking.

Now, after a third or fourth cry of “amandla” to the people, Motlanthe just lost the plot, and in that disturbingly aristocratic manner, started delivering his talk in English. I could just see the masses switching off. It all went blank, and the interaction between the speaker and audience dulled, reminiscent of the disconnectedness of teacher and pupil depicted eloquently by DH Lawrence in his poem Afternoon in School — The last Lesson.

Granted, his was not an impromptu address and the poor man was just following the script. But for crying out loud, doesn’t the presidency have a single speechwriter who knows the people of South Africa? One could be forgiven for thinking that Motlanthe wished that he was addressing one of those soporific United Nations talkshops about wars and terrorism (read, George Bush).

Perhaps what the people want — apart from service delivery — is leaders who talk with them. Talking to them is downright paternalistic and hinders lively interaction between the governor and the governed.

One of the most ironic failures of our new order is our disrespect for African languages. No self-respecting people treat their languages as shabbily as we do in this part of the world. At the rate we are going, there is no guessing why our education system is such a shambolic state. We have internalised self-pity and victimhood in our very being. How will an angry protestor help not trashing a library and other community facilities if he has no respect for something as sacred as his language; the definition of his very being?

We — and I mean everyone who sees themselves as African — have to shake things up, I tell you. Starting with our homes, let us give African languages a place of prominence. We need not go far for some inspiration. Let us learn from the Afrikaner (and, in case you are wondering, I am not a coconut/Model C type).

The truth is that Afrikaans is one of our most colourful and powerful languages because the Afrikaner insisted on it. It is a strange twist of irony that the Afrikaner has decolonised his mind a la Ngugi wa Thiong’o long before some of us woke up and smelled the coffee.

Theo Mapheto is a lawyer, youth activist and legal commentator