English, Afrikaans, Xhosa and Setswana: Contested language space in a South African Adult Education program

Jonathan Geidt, Centre for Adult and Continuing Education, University of the Western Cape, South Africa

Paper presented at SCUTREA, 29th Annual Conference, 5-7 July 1999, University of Warwick

Today’s planetary prepotence of Anglo-American … is a crisis phenomenon altering the very nature of language and human relations. Ironically, it too is generating an enforced bilingualism (the native speaker has to know both his tongue and Anglo-American) (Steiner, 80).

Background to the research

Desai and Van der Merwe suggest that in order to accommodate linguistic diversity in South Africa, one must look at the tensions that exist between English and the African languages. Afrikaans can be left out of the contest, they argue, for two reasons:

Firstly, very few Afrikaans-speaking people have been denied access to the wider world in South Africa because of their primary language being Afrikaans. … Secondly, as a result of Afrikaans and English being cognate languages, Afrikaans-speakers display a fairly high level of proficiency in English … (Desai and Van der Merwe 1998, 248).

This paper gives a summary of a small research project I have conducted into the language preferences of students taking part in the Certificate for Educators of Adults. The course is run by CACE (the Centre for Adult and Continuing Education) where I am based. I try to show that in educational contexts where Afrikaans and African language speakers are brought together, Afrikaans has a central and paradoxical role in reinforcing the use of English as the language of communication. In these circumstances the relative powerlessness of both Afrikaans and African languages in the face of English is underlined. My paper suggests ways in which this can happen.

Four clauses in The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 108 (1996, 4-5, cited in Desai and Van der Merwe) give some essential facts and present a language policy which at the moment remains an ideal:

1.The official languages are, in alphabetical order, Afrikaans, English, isiNdinbele, isiZulu, Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda and Xitsonga.

2.The onus is on the state to create conditions for the development and promotion of particularly the nine African languages.

3.The National and provincial Governments must use at least two official languages for the purposes of government.

4.National and provincial languages must regulate and monitor the use of official languages. All languages must be treated equitably.

Most of the education problems in South Africa involve questions of language one way or another. But the difficulties that are likely to arise during discussions of language can sometimes be quite threatening. At stake is the personality and culture of many adult participants on courses, not to mention the educational competence of those who plan, provide, present and tutor courses. In many forums outside adult education language issues are ignored. When senior vice chancellors, business representatives, political parties and the Department of Education met recently to discuss ‘The future of South African Universities: What role for business?’ (CDE, 1998) – every problem was aired except language. Development literature suffers from the same problem. The functions and problems of languages in communicating development projects and ideas are not sufficiently discussed. The problematic disjunction between the language used to talk about communities - English - and the languages other than English used within those communities is often ignored.

Statements about language can fall into platitudes that avoid unpalatable facts, or they can become political manifestos that fail to recognize the intractable but fickle nature of language use. In the name of transformation programs can be called into question and unintended implications of alternative policies are not taken into account. The implications that arise from challenging the way languages are used in education programmes have to be distinguished for the speakers of different languages. In each case deep feelings of unease are raised; down-to-earth debates between students from different backgrounds have on several occasions in my experience either led to the stirring up of race-associated antagonisms, or had to be stopped before any lasting damage was done.

Language is indeed a contentious issue. It is important to trace the realities of use and to describe the ways in which speaking particular languages advantages some and disadvantages others. As a situation this cannot be entirely avoided, but some problems may be overcome if we understand the detail of what happens when people come together on courses such as ours. What are the longer term effects of pursuing alternative policies? To start off I give a slightly exaggerated problem profile of the users of different languages on our course.

First, English speaking whites. These people are renowned for their ineluctable monolingualism, and academics are no exception. A majority are rendered less than clever in Afrikaans and mercifully silent in all other languages. Yet they (we) often behave with what amounts to linguistic arrogance, failing to realise that it is frustrating for others to always work in a second language and difficult for them to convey exactly what they want to say (Merrill 1997, 1- 8). We still believe that ‘there is no need … to master a foreign tongue in order to collaborate effectively with members of a different speech community’ (Hantrais and Ager 1985, 29, cited in Merrill 1997).

Afrikaans speaking whites do not as a rule suffer from this self-imposed handicap. On the other hand they have to cope with a recent failed attempt to dominate. So they have an unpleasant choice to make. Either they feel obliged to defer the interests of Afrikaans, or they risk the danger of appearing to hark back to an embarrassing and oppressive past that is best forgotten.

The plight of first language African speakers is much worse than any of this. Many continue to feel ashamed of their language. Others do not share such feelings, but are nevertheless obliged to use the dominant discourse for a host of powerful and practical reasons. Competence in the use of spoken and written English is often not attained under well-attested conditions of subservience. Moreover English has been learned from teachers for whom English is a second language and whose vocabulary and expressive range is not as broad as that of a first language speaker. For Xhosa and Setswana speakers (these are the two main African languages in the Western and Northern Cape, but it is the same for speakers of other African languages in South Africa) the overwhelming lack of African texts is impossible to remedy in the short or medium term. Less frequently acknowledged is an insecurity with texts that (I suggest) derives from a lack of familiarity with institutionally established traditions and routines for processing documents outside the classroom. All of this contributes to a more general perception – a rather negatively-tinged association of so-called ‘black languages’ with poor and uneducated people living in townships and rural areas. For many black people in consequence, the English language provides a least inconvenient politically acceptable escape route.

‘Coloured’ people suffer from their own distinctive host of cultural uncertainties. For a majority the home language is Afrikaans – a language which was affirmed by political masters whom they disowned during the apartheid years. In the rural areas where many of them live they sometimes feel disadvantaged in relation to first language Africans who at least have had an education of sorts in English. Their first language is viewed by some with distaste, and is not infrequently misunderstood. At the same time many have a less than secure grasp of English. Africans who have been taught in English at school are often in a better position to use the opportunities provided by adult education courses and flex their linguistic muscles.

Course description

The CACE Certificate for Educators of Adults is a two year course run in the Western and Northern Cape. It caters for people of all ages without degrees who work in community structures and organisations. Students are taught in distance and face-to-face modes using local tutor facilitated sessions. They are divided into three semi-independent groups. 81 students are administered from Cape Town; they come to CACE for five extended study weekends; Kimberley is the study-weekend base for the other two groups of 69 and 71 students each. The research reported in the next section was carried out with the Cape Town and the larger of the two Kimberley groups.

Assessment of students is by written assignment, exams and (to a lesser extent) live presentations. Written assignments can be in English or Afrikaans (but not an African language), oral presentations can be made in all languages. One cannot give a completely solid picture at this point because some students vary their choice of language. As a rough guide, for any given assignment about 50 out of 220 are written in Afrikaans rather than English. The application forms tell a different story however: they suggest that although Afrikaans is the first language for over twice as many students - at least 104 - many Afrikaans speakers choose not to speak their home language at study weekend discussions. These same students tend to read and write in English for studying and assignment work. Such facts were a source of interest and formed the starting point for this investigation.

CACE produces many of its own teaching texts. At the moment there are no African language versions of our modules, but ‘How to run a Successful Business” is promised in Xhosa by JUTA (educational publishers) shortly. Students with an African language mother tongue at the moment, then, have no choice; except when giving oral presentations, they are obliged to use English.

The questionnaire

16 questions were devised in a questionnaire asking students on the course about language use and their own language preferences. It was given to students in two of the three groups currently taking the Certificate at the end of study weekends that took place in Kimberley (Northern Cape) and Cape Town (Western Cape) in March and April respectively. 53 out of a total of 81 students returned completed forms in Cape Town, 52 out of 71 in Kimberley. The responses given by Kimberley students indicate that some of them had not understood how to react to 6 of the questions and the form was modified for Cape Town. There is no space to discuss the responses to the remaining questions and the paper concentrates on 5 of the questions that appeared to yield significant results. These are: A, a question asking students to list their first, second and third languages; B and C, two questions on language preferences on the course; D, a question asking for reactions to the use of English as the main language of instruction; E, an open-ended question asking students to explain their response to D.

In order to make comparisons easier the figures are expressed as percentages. These are not proper statistics and the findings do not necessarily represent larger populations (of students or provinces). In a sample of 50 a single response makes a difference of 2%.

One has to be cautious about the response summaries; many factors influence the way students react. Advertising and selection procedures, the way the course is presented, the personalities and preferences of lecturers, teaching texts, and the fact that the questionnaires were in English and known to be devised by an English speaker, all or any of these could bias the responses. In spite of these and other reservations, the discussions I have had with students and tutors and my own experiences suggest that that there may be - even that there probably is - a clear and significant trend represented here that needs to be followed up with greater thoroughness and precision. The first item below provides a summary of the 1996 population census and gives the distribution of the main languages spoken in the two provinces (Statistics South Africa, 1998).

W. CAPEN. CAPE

n = 53 / n = 52
The S.A. population census of 1996 / percent / percent
first language in each province
Afrikaans / 59.2 / 69.3
English / 20.3 / 2.4
Setswana / 0.1 / 19.9
Xhosa / 19.1 / 6.3
Others / 1.3 / 6.1
Responses by CACE students

A

first language

Afrikaans / 51 / 46
English / 16 / 0
Setswana / 0 / 40
Xhosa / 29 / 12
Others / 4 / 2
second language
Afrikaans / 17 / 11
English / 77 / 87
Setswana / 0 / 0
Xhosa / 2 / 2
Others / 2 / 0
Third language
Afrikaans / 17 / 35
English / 4 / 10
Setswana / 0 / 4
Xhosa / 0 / 4
Other / 4 / 4

B. Which language would you like for major presentations by lecturers?

Afrikaans / 24 / 25
English / 55 / 63
Setswana / 0 / 2
Xhosa / 8 / 0

C. Which language would you like to use at your local study group?

Afrikaans / 43 / 46
English / 43 / 46
Setswana / 0 / 6
Xhosa / 4 / 0
D. The main language of instruction is English. How do you feel about this?
Very happy (African speakers) / 23 / 42
Very happy (Afrikaans speakers) / 25 / 19
OK (African speakers) / 4 / 29
OK (Afrikaans speakers) / 38 / 10
Problems / 10 / 0
Very unhappy / 0 / 0

Explain why you gave this response

There were a wide variety of answers. Recurring themes were divided into positive/practical and negative (involving avoidance, insecurity or dislike). The positive outnumbered the negative by a factor of nearly 4 to 1. The most frequent response was the universality of English - ‘all understand it internationally’, ‘everywhere you go is English’. Two related ideas - that English provides access to equality in the classroom, and to democratic ideas beyond were given in many formulations – ‘we all need to make sacrifices – every one understands it’, ‘if we keep English no one can say their language is favorite’. Democratic values feature in five of the six modules of the Certificate so this response was to be expected. Other recurring ideas included career prospects and personal improvement - ‘I need English in my work ‘, and several cited the time taken to translate from one language to another during sessions. This reason shaded into the negative as in: ‘translating takes time, because of the difficulty of speaking with other students I go along with it’. Negative responses tended to be despairing - ‘we have to learn English, it’s no use to speak Xhosa all the time’, or resigned - ‘I have learned to settle with the present ruling.’ 5 Western Cape and 14 Northern Cape responses were in Afrikaans; many voiced feelings of insecurity about speaking English in public rather than writing it. One positive contribution was ‘Soms is dinge onduidelik alhoewel dit baie kortek in engels is!’ (sometimes things are unclear, although it’s much quicker in English). Two people gave English facilitation as a reason for accepting English, a factor which may be more significant than the responses suggest.

Some observations

This section offers provisional comments on the responses.

  • A substantial majority of students from all language groups prefer English as a language of instruction. The choice is most clearly expressed in response to question E. Asked how they felt about the fact that the main language of instruction was English 95% of the total sample opt for ‘very happy’ and ’OK’ rather than ‘problems’ or ‘very unhappy’.
  • Among a host of reasons given in response to D, the fact that English is the language most nearly understood by all (although to varying degrees) provides a pressing practical consideration and cannot be ignored or overlooked in mixed language groups. Pressure to present developmental courses in English must in the medium term act to further reinforce the language in terms of expectations and networking.
  • African language speakers are noticeably more enthusiastic about English than Afrikaans speakers. Some African speakers (a majority of whom cannot speak Afrikaans) say that they feel excluded on the occasions when Afrikaans is used.
  • The responses show that some people from all groups wish to improve their English. But African speakers do not have the option of using their language.
  • Some Afrikaans speakers feel insecure in English. The fact that the written modules and assignments are also offered in Afrikaans appears to act in ways that confirm a difference in levels of English proficiency between the Afrikaans speakers who opt to take the course in their own language, and those who opt for English.
  • It is important to stress that a large minority of Afrikaans speakers do not display a high level of proficiency in English. The completed questionnaires confirm that such students come from rural areas and tend to choose Afrikaans. Some Afrikaans speakers express concern and even resentment at having to speak English. Others avoid using Afrikaans in multi-lingual situations, since they perceive themselves to be disadvantaged.
  • Afrikaans speakers who use English at study weekends prefer and want to use Afrikaans at local study groups. There is a marked contrast here with African language speakers who prefer to use English at locally based study groups.
  • A number of students reject the partial solution that has been offered of translating one language into another in the classroom, mainly for time reasons.

Further research and a more comprehensive analysis is clearly needed.