Summary
- 1976’s fight for African languages has not translated into lasting change.
- English dominates, leaving many youths disconnected from their heritage.
- A generation’s dream is fading in a world chasing status over identity.
Many of those who were teenagers during 1976 student upheavals are the first generation of African adults to raise children who cannot speak their own mother tongues.
This has grown worse as we mark the 49th anniversary of the student uprising and 31 years of democracy. When we fought against apartheid, we were clear on the demand to be taught in our indigenous languages.
Much as we were not too sure what we wanted to unleash through the indigenous African languages as medium of instruction, we wanted to take our own future and destiny into our own hands in a way that promotes and asserts our identity and heritage.
There was neither Nelson Mandela nor Robert Sobukwe to define for us the intuitive connection between language and freedom. The only leader we looked up to was Steve Biko and Black Consciousness philosophy.
A generation’s silence: From resistance to retreat
Perhaps after 49 years, the time has come for us to ask: what kind of world have children of 1976 – who fought for the central role of African languages in education – created for their own children?
The situation of the last 31 years shows that, increasingly, the children of the children of 1976 are naïve, orphaned and going through white education and schools. They attend schools where English or Afrikaans are the medium of instruction and indigenous African languages do not feature in any significant way as part of the curriculum.
In addition, it is compulsory to pass Africans languages. If not, you fail. In fact, in many of these schools, African teachers are absent because it is claimed they cannot be found. Thus, it is Indians, Coloured and Whites that teach African children's indigenous languages.
Education without heritage: A hollow victory
The New South Africa is a confusing, changing world which continues to celebrate the anniversary of June 16 – now known as Youth Day – as a significant day that marked a radical change in the course of history to culminate in democracy.
But we find that their parents – who were in the forefront of the 1976 struggle – have abandoned their children and left them vulnerable, awkward and orphaned. Instead, their parents are preoccupied with ‘making it’ in a world driven by status, money and a suburban address in the name of success and achievement.
The children of 1976 – now in their 50s, 60s and 70s – are now caught in middle age angst that afflicts those that are The Establishment. They are strivers that are only interested in providing better quality of life for their offspring and, above all, saving their pension.
As a result, their children are left to tread carefully in a deceptively abnormal society where they are not allowed or encouraged to speak their indigenous African language.
In the suburbs where those parents have retreated to, they are expected to be articulate in English which is, presumably, a sign of intelligence and social status. But deep down in their souls, the children of 1976 know that this is wrong.
This is not what the fight against Afrikaans was meant to deliver: a new generation of African children who cannot speak their mother tongue.
Cultural amnesia in a globalised age
As it is, the children are struggling to pronounce African names and those that manage, always, do that with an English intonation. In fact, African mothers and fathers are very proud today that their children cannot communicate with their grandparents because of the language barrier.
Of course, in the 1976 upheavals, the children’s hearts burnt with the intensity to do away with Afrikaans to make way for teaching in indigenous languages.
But what has happened in the last 49 years is that – despite an official government policy and existence of PanSALB to promote African languages – they do not want their children to be taught in any of the indigenous African languages.
It is claimed that this would close global doors to learning and opportunity. Sadly, South Africa is now part of globalization that has no place for indigenous languages. As a result, today there are far too few of Africans in the 21st Century – especially in the middle class – that are articulate in mother tongue. Yes, we can hear and understand when fellow Africans speak.
But in the urban population that is growing every day, there seems to be less and less people who can finish a conversation in an African language sentence without putting in English. The African Language stations at SABC provide a good example. Current affairs shows are, mostly, conducted in English. Many government officials and officials do not speak indigenous languages.
Speaking English, losing spirit: The crisis of connection
Ironically, the fire and spirit of generation of 1976 is fading fast as the former youngsters grow older. But it is appropriate to remind them to grapple with the question: what is exactly that we were prepared to lay down our lives for when our children are neither taught nor speak African languages. In any case, what were we fighting for if we are going to raise children who have no sense of what being an African means?
Language is the carrier of a people’s history, heritage and culture. It is the essence that defines identity. So, if you cannot speak an African language are you still an African? Maybe. Yes. No.
Today, no one can destroy the fascination people have with children who speak English all the time. Ironically, it is a mark of intelligence at the expense of indigenous languages.
There is no doubt that the children of the children of 1976 are struggling to forge an emotional connection with family and relatives and thus an allegiance with African people in general.
There is something that alienates an individual when they cannot connect with a community at the level of language. It would seem the children of 1976 will need to seek intellectual clarity and vision on how to connect what is happening today to what they struggled for.
Those that have been lucky and privileged to rise to political leadership positions communicate with the people in English, most of the time. As a result, there is a breakdown of communication with the spirit world because of language barriers.
After 49 years the children of the 1976 revolution must take stock to determine whether contemporary developments are what they sacrificed for. Alas that their own children, increasingly, neither understand what 1976 was about nor connect it to the struggle for education in indigenous languages.
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