René Dirven

Contact and Conflict Linguistics in Southern Africa

Series B: Applied and Interdisciplinary Papers ISSN 1435-6473 Essen: LAUD 1989 (2nd ed. with divergent page numbering 2011) Paper No. 208

Universität Duisburg-Essen

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René Dirven

University of Duisburg

Contact and Conflict Linguistics in Southern Africa

Copyright by the author Reproduced by LAUD 1989 (2nd ed. with divergent page numbering 2011) Linguistic Agency Series B University of Duisburg-Essen Applied and Interdisciplinary Papers FB Geisteswissenschaften Paper No. 208 Universitätsstr. 12 D- 45117 Essen

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René Dirven

Contact and Conflict Linguistics in Southern Africa

Abstract The paper presents the author's views on the conditions for a stranger exploitation of the multilingual resources of Southern Africa. This is done in ten theses: knowledge by all contact linguists of various languages, the acknowledgment of the absolute value of each language, the recognition of various 'national' languages as 'official' languages, recognition of one or two languages as having the status of 'working' language, respect for all varieties of standard languages, strong emphasis on the 1earner's first language at all levels of education, the integration of linguistics and literature in all academic language departments, the integration of socio -, psycho – and applied linguistics in any linguistic curriculum for future teachers, the cooperation between all linguistic societies of a country and their active participation in the conception and implementation of language policies as a contribution to the nation's democratic, non - racialist future orientation.

Introduction Southern Africa - in fact the whole of Africa - is characterized by an immense richness of languages and cultures. Several of these had already been in contact and conflict with one another before the advent of colonialism. Due to the history of colonialism and Western settlements several African languages and cultures have again been confronted with new languages and cultures. The contact between the two extremely diverse groups of languages and cultures has more often than not led to new conflicts and even wars.

Contact and conflict linguistics (CCL) is the study of the relationships between such languages in contact and conflict and of their special characteristics. In fact, there is already a rich harvest of studies available on language contact and conflict in Africa and it would be a primordial task of CCL in Southern Africa to take cognizance of this work (see Reh & Heine, 1982). But it cannot be the goal of this paper to look at the past and review all the valuable work done already, since the assignments of CCL in Southern Africa are so huge that we must work towards dear principles and priorities for the present and the future language policies in Southern Africa.

I will present my views on CCL in Southern Africa in the form of number of theses, which I want to put to discussion rather than hold them out as absolute certainties. Not being African, but feeling a strong commitment to the people, the languages and cultures of Africa, I can just offer these insights for what they are worth. But at the same time, I am strongly committed to them and I do not want to just present some tentative views.

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The theses I want to propose are the following:

1. CCL requires, besides knowledge of a first language, a fundamental knowledge of other languages.

2. CCL acknowledges the independent and absolute value of each language.

3. Therefore, in future SA, there will be four (or five) national official languages, viz. Nguni (Zulu, Xhosa), Sotho, Afrikaans, English and various regional official languages.

4. English is a 'working language'; this is a practical convention. English and Afrikaans are 'relative' linking languages (= lingua francas).

5. All varieties of languages are to be taken seriously, e.g. for English: the English of English speakers in South Africa (ESSA), the English of Africans, Pretoria - Sotho.

6. There must be emphasis on the first language at all levels of education; two other national languages, taught by native speakers trained in linguistics will have to be learnt.

7. In all academic language departments, both linguistics and literature, and cooperation between them is required.

8. Linguistics must comprise: theoretical linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and applied linguistics.

9. Regular joint congresses of LSSA and SAALA are called for in order to end the splitting of the linguistic world

10. The above cultural orientation is in harmony with some important political conclusions.

I will address each of these theses in turn now.

1. KNOWLEDGE OF VARIOUS LANGUAGES CCL requires, besides knowledge of the first language, fundamental knowledge of other languages.

Southern Africa suffers from the situation of any other colonial heritage. Although it is also different from the other African countries by the massive presence of some 5 million whites, it shares one of the main characteristics of a 'colanial' situation in that the white man has never really bothered to learn the languages of the black people. No white politician is capable of addressing any major group of the 25 million blacks in their own languages. Few white employers at higher level or managers, even those directly in charge of black workers' teams can speak their languages. This has led to the rise of working situation pidgins such

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as Fanakalo, especially in dangerous working contexts such as the mines (see Hanekom 1988). Here workers use a pidgin which is so vague and ambiguous that they are in constant danger of being severely injured. The situation is somewhat better in the Durban dockyards (see Raubenheimer 1984) since a lot of borrowing and specialization in the meaning of English or Zulu words has taken place, so that whites and blacks understand each other more adequately. But in other domains the picture is just gloomy.

No professor - except the specialists in African languages - can lecture in an African language. Hardly any teacher at primary or secondary school level teaching a black language in white segregated schools knows this language profoundly. Even in the world of linguists there is an astonishingly weak knowledge of any African language: of 79 participants in a questionnaire at the 1989 Pretoria Linguistic Conference, 47 said to have no knowledge of them at all. This is 57,5% or almost six out of ten; the remaining 31 (39%) answered to have some receptive knowledge and only 8 (10%) claim a moderate to good reading knowledge.

We all know the political and ideological background that explains these figures. So in the multilingual and multicultural world of Southern Africa, where are all the multilinguals? The answer is that at present it is only blacks that are multilingual (one or two African languages and English and/ or Afrikaans). Hence, one can hope to recruit a good many contact and conflict linguists from this vast potential. But the white linguist must live and cope with tremendous areas, though he can, of course, cooperate very successfully with his black students (see Van Jaarsveld, 1989).

In this respect, it cannot be stressed sufficiently that CCL cannot be carried through on a purely linguistic basis, but that the study of languages in contact and conflict presupposes a profound insight into the culture that these language are reflections of, and also into their past histories as, for instance, described in R. Elphick and H. Giliomee (eds.), 19891, The Shaping of South African Society 1652 - 1840. It may even be a cultural shock to view this history through the eyes of a black author such as Francis Meli, (1989), South Africa belongs to us. A History of the ANC.

It is therefore only in the context of a profound linguistic and cultural immersion in the world of the other language and culture that CCL can thrive.

2. THE ABSOLUTE VALUE OF EACH LANGUAGE CCL acknowledges the independent and absolute value of each language.

Each language fulfills mainly three functions, viz. (i) cognitive categorization, (2) interactional communication, and (3) social stratification. Let's have a brief look at each of these functions first.

1 I will only refer to some few results here; the full results of the questionnaire and a comparison with the

opinions of the participants of the Southern African Applied Linguistics Association (SAALA) conference 1989 will be discussed in a separate paper (Dirven, 1989).

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1. Language is a cognitive, culture-specific system of categorization, embodying all the relevant experiences made in a given culture and providing an abstract network of relations necessary to relate these experiences. (See Talmy (1988) and Lakoff (1987)). The cognitive function of language implies that language is part and parcel of the total cognitive system of humans, but it does not just translate the cognitively distinguished categories of an objective reality into different language systems (as has been traditionally assumed in most philosophical and linguistic schools), but it creates this experienced reality and shapes its perception in a culture - specific way.

2. Language is an interactional, communicative system covering all the speech events in a community and all the speech acts and metapragmatic rituals that are needed in that community.

3. Language is a social, expressive system mirroring essential aspects of a community's or society's structural patterns, be it hierarchical authority structures, social class systems or any other system of social stratification.

It is in these three functional aspects that each language has an absolute value, independent of any comparison with other languages, since it covers the full range of a community's cognitive, interactional and social achievements.

Although this insight is not new, it has gained new momentum with the arrival of cognitive Linguistics (Langacker, Lakoff, Talmy; also see J. Taylor 1989 for an introduction). Still one is astonished that this insight is not fully and ureservedly endorsed by most, and not even by many linguists, as appears from the said small- scale questionnaire2: only 43 (54,4%) agree fully with the thesis of the absolute value of each language, 24 (32%) agree with same reserves, 10 (12,6%) have not answered the question, and 2 (1,25%) do not agree at all.

Especially amongst blacks, whether intellectuals or political leaders, there is a widespread belief that the indigenous languages of Africa are not capable of being developed into a full - fledged cognitive and interactional system able to cope with the demands of modern science, technology and the management of the state. They seem to be convinced that only a European ‘ex – colonial’ language such as English can serve these functions. One notable exception is Ndebele (1986: 18), who critically evaluates the function of English:

English is an international language, but it is international only in its functionally communicative aspect. For the rest of the time, indigenous languages fulfill the range of needs that English similarly fulfill for its native speakers.

2 Although this paper intends to deal with the whole of Southern Africa, this point and several others only

hold for South Africa itself. The context will hopefully be clear about which (the whole of Southern Africa or only SA) is meant.

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He also warns against the danger that English may perpetuate the present subservient role of the Black labor force:

In this context the functional acquisition of English in a capitalist society such as ours further reinforces the instrumentalization of people as units of labor. So it is conceivable that the acquisition of English because the language has been instrumentalized, can actually reinforce the alienation of the work force.

I’ll came back to the cultural/ cognitive aspect of the function of language in section 6 when discussing the need for an intensive teaching of L1 and in the last section.

3. VARIOUS OFFICIAL LANGUAGES Given these premises, in a future Southern Africa all the languages of the major language groups (Zulu, Xhosa3, Solho4, Afrikaans and English) must become national official languages, and the other languages (Swati5, Ndebele6, Tswana, Venda and Tsonga) must be religional official languages.

In its general formulation, this thesis is in harmony with the basic principles of the ANC's Freedom Charter's 2nd claim: “All national groups shall have equal rights" (and more specifically)"All people shall have equal fight to use their own languages, and to develop their own folk culture and customs" (see Meli, 19892: 210). Still, one hears many proposals to declare English the 'common' official language. At the same time, the indigenous languages are downgraded to the language of the home, the street, and the occasional private encounter7. Although one can understand such aspirations, they are, in 3 Zulu and Xhosa belong to the same language family Nguni (so do Swati, North & South Ndebele) and it

is sometimes proposed to standardize these languages into one 'consolidated' Nguni. I cannot take a stand on this matter, of course.

4 A similar proposal is made for the various Sotho varieties/languages (North Sotho, South Sotho, Tswana)

5 One usually finds the name Swazi instead of Swati, but the speakers refer to their language as Swati (private communication G. Schuring).

6 Ndebele consists of two varieties/ languages viz. North Ndebele (not yet available in writing) and South Ndebele (private communication G. Schuring.)

7 See e.g. Harry Mashabel, who writes under the title 'Isintu is self-denial' in Frontline (June 1983 p. 17):

But why should we speak English? What's wrong, if there's anything wrong at all, in using isintu? [= lit. our language). And what benefits, if any exist, can we derive from learning and using isingisi? [i.e. English] If we are serious when we say we are one indigenous “Azanian nation” comprising Zulu, Sotho, Xhosa, Tswana, Ndebele, Venda, Swazi, Tsonga and Shangaan, then we must appreciate the need for a common language to give meaning to that spirit of nationhood. No one can formulate a language to suit a situation. A language is what people speak. We therefore should embrace, without shame, isingisi for the simple reason that our youth already have some knowledge of the language and that it is being taught in all our schools throughout the country. Besides, all African workers (I mean the masses, young and old) have a smattering of English, something they have gained through daily contact with whites. So let English, out of sheer necessity, be our common language. Just as it is for black Americans. Don’t misunderstand me. I'm not saying isintu is irrelevant. No. There's nothing wrong, absolutely nothing wrong, in speaking our languages where there's accord. It would be strange where there's accord. It would be strange indeed if I spoke English to my mother or any member of my own

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my opinion, ill-inspired. They stem from the fact that the official policy of the Government of South Africa has been to promote - to some extent - the indigenous languages in primary education. What the enemy has been doing, must of necessity be suspect and be rejected. The Government's policy was seen as an instrument of division of the blacks. Also Trudgill (1975: 144) shares this view:

This was part of a policy to retribalize all Africans into separate (and isolated) ethnic groups, a policy which can be interpreted as being part of a ‘divide-and–rule’ strategy.

Whatever opinion one may have on this matter, it is, in my opinion, not a sound solution to downgrade the indigenous languages to the role of a lower, not officially recognized vernacular and to create the myth of a national unity through the medium of one national language, English. (Also see Adegbija. 1989 on Nigeria). On the contrary, only through developing all the major or larger indigenous languages to full instruments of government, administration, education and science at all levels, economy, technology and industry, will they be or become full-fledged modern languages, capable of commanding full self-respect among the masses who use them, and allowing them to integrate all their traditional value systems and their own science and technological skills into a modern, democratic society.

The harm that could be done to the folk wisdom in science and technology and to the culture by not developing the indigenous languages into instruments of all the so-called higher domains of life, might turn out to be an irreparable blow to African culture. We would end up with a diglossic situation in which all the higher cognitive and interactional functions are covered by English, and the lower domains (home, hearth and heart) are covered by the traditional African languages.

Most authors do not seem to be aware of the detrimental consequences this may have in the long run, but some do and propose a transitory phase where English first takes the higher functions for the near future and is later succeeded by the - by then more developed - African languages (see. e.g. Neville Alexander 1989: 54, 61, 65).

But things may turn out to be much more complicated than such a proposal suggests. How can one guarantee that such a policy in two phases will be carried through later? The same budgetary excuses will be found and once a provisional regulation has been set up, it is extremely tempting to make it permanent. Moreover, all problems of terminology can only be solved and textbooks for secondary and higher education can only be produced while doing the job and under the conditions of real needs for what you produce. These won't be felt if English is used for all these cognitive and interactional purposes.

tribe for that matter unless we find it more convenient in the sense that it expresses better whatever it is we are discussing. But whenever I speak to someone whose mother tongue is different from mine, English may be the only answer to the language problem.

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One of the greatest difficulties concerning the above thesis might be the acceptance of Afrikaans as one of the official national languages, since this has been 'the language of the oppressor' and therefore has been associated with violence, oppression, imprisonment, police brutality, self-indulgence of the 'white tribe of Africa'8 etc. Kathleen Heugh, (1987) summarizes this negative attitude towards Afrikaans very pointedly, but unfortunately seems to fail to see the main problem, viz. that of the indigenous cultural self-respect:

Elsewhere in the world resentment against the ex-colonial language has in South Africa been replaced by opposition to the colonial language Afrikaans. The de-anglicisation process of the Afrikaner nationalist in favor of Afrikaans and the local indigenous languages has generated a momentous swing towards English in the black community.

Still, no new state can be built upon a policy of revenge, since that would mean building new fuses for conflict into the new structure of the future state. Therefore and in spite of the aberrations of past apartheid policy, the new policies must be built upon a sound language and cultural policy, allowing each group to exploit their potential to the maximum. Consequently, one cannot even agree with D.A. Meerkotter (1985), when he says that a specific variety of Afrikaans used by the ruling elite will be rejected and that the indigenous languages will suffer further erosion. This is indeed what would happen if English were to be chosen as the only national language and the sole medium of instruction.

4. ENGLISH AS 'WORKING LANGUAGE' A more balanced view of the efficient role of English is that it will function as the general ‘working language’, whereas both English and Africaans continue to serve as relative lingua francas, or ‘linking languages’.

English and Afrikaans are indeed, not absolute, but only relative lingua francas. That is, they are understood and spoken by large numbers of the population all over Southern Africa. Karel Prinsloo (1986) quotes the following figures, which are, however, doubted by various other authors (see D. Young 1987). The Prinsloo figures for the command of spoken and written Afrikaans and English, based on the census figures of 1980, are:

Africaans English

Speak 48% 44%

Read and write 37% 41%

Also his chart 9 of the relative language occurrence per district in the RSA, 1980 is relevant: Afrikaans is the generally used language in the Cape Province and in large pans of the Orange Free State and Transvaal; English is the general city language in Johannesburg,

8 This phrase refers to the book with the same title by Harrison (1981). 9 Chan of distribution of languages in S.A. is given in the annex.

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Cape Town and the Durban area, whereas in Pretoria black and white people mainly use Afrikaans, also as the lingua franca. It is in this sense that one can say that English and Afrikaans are only 'relative ' and not absolute lingua francas.

It need not be pointed out that at present about half of the population is governed in a language that they do not understand and that this would even become worse, if English were to be chosen as the only official language. The above figures are a further indication for the need to promote various official languages so that everybody in the state gets access to the policy-making processes. One can think, in this context, of the negative results of promoting English as the second national language in India: This has only led to an elitist function of English, which is known by the middle class in urban areas but which is inaccessible for most of the lower classes in the cities and for the people in the rural areas.

What is meant then, by English as a 'working language', a principle that could be pragmatically applied without inscribing it into the new constitution? It means that English can be used for all oral purposes in government meetings, parliamentary discussions, and that oral translations into English are provided for all those wishing or only capable to speak one of the other national official languages. Consequently, political debates are possible in each of the national official languages and, if requested, translations into English are provided for. But all official written documents must be produced in the five official national languages. This is also the policy followed in all Western states that are officially bi - or multilingual.

The views presented thus far start from different assumptions about the functions of language than those proposed by several black authors. I would like to refer briefly to one example again, viz. Neville Alexander's Language Policy and National Unity in South Africa/Azania. As the tide of his essay suggests, Alexander sees the main function of a language policy to foster and promote national unity:

An assessment of the language policies of other African countries suggests that English will be official language chosen to function as a lingua franca in the future (certainly during the period immediately after a change in the power structure). The choice of English to fulfill this role is likely to foster unity and avoid the possibility of division that the choice of another South African language might present at this stage. (A1exander, 1989: 70)

In a second scenario, Alexander (1989: 54) sees the possibilities that English could be joined (or replaced?) by standardized Sotho and Nguni. This proposal assumes there to be a fourth language function beyond the three functions discussed in section 2, viz. that of creating national unity. But this is rather a myth generated by wishful thinking: people can be divided by (slight varieties of) the same language and all attempts to impose one national language do not always lead to national unity. A typical example of the former is Belgium

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and the Netherlands: in spite of one common language, Dutch, there is no desire in either state to form one national state. A typical example of the second is Great Britain: in spite of the imposition of English in Ireland in the 19th century, the Irish people revolted in 1915 and broke away from Great Britain to found their own republic. A state is not the same as a nation. The USSR groups several nations, which after 70 years of predominance of Russian as the official national language, have not given up their own identities and claims for nationhood, as has recently been shown in various uprisings in same of the Soviet republics. The second problem with Alexander's views is that he suggests that Nguni and Sotho can each be shaped into one standard language. I have no opinion on this matter, but have not met any scholar of African languages who believes this is feasible.

At any rate, Alexander starts from a rather politicized view of language and does not sufficiently consider all the criteria necessary for the discussion of any language policy, as discussed, for instance by August Cluver (1989) in his paper “A systems approach to language planning: the case of Namibia".

Finally, Alexander's reference to other African states is, on closer inspection (see Reh and Heine, 1982) rather an argument against than for an absolute priority for English.

5. RESPECT FOR VARIETIES OF THE STANDARD LANGUAGE All varieties of languages are to be taken seriously. Not only the various official or working languages in a state, but also the various varieties within these languages must be taken seriously. In any modern state, there used to be a tendency to promote one variety - that of the socially and/or economically most influential class - as the official standard variety. This seems to be an unstoppable evolution in each and every language community and perhaps it is not even wrong. But what is wrong is that this might lead to - and in fact has led to - the downgrading of many other varieties, e.g. Northern English and Scottish English in Great Britain. Black English Vernacular in the U.S.A. or Dutch standard varieties in Belgium and the Netherlands outside the Central Holland Dutch area.

Similar phenomena have occurred or are occurring in Southern Africa, where there are not only very clear differences from British English, but also differences between what is called 'South African English' or also ESSA (English speaking South Africans) on the one hand and the English of African speakers (EAS) on the other.

However, the own legitimate status of a typically Black English variety (EAS) is claimed by Guy Butler (1986) in "English in the New South Africa":

Twenty million blacks will use English for their own interests and ends, without worrying much about the views of less than two million ESSAs (English speaking South Africans). English, unlike the other languages in South Africa, is not an own affair of the ESSAs. It is everybody's affair, because it is indispensable in a way that other languages are not.

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Ndebele (1986: 17) elaborates on this independent character of Black English (EAS) from an even far more radical viewpoint: in his view English must be open to the possibility of becoming a new language: (in fact this has already occurred in some places such as in the new koine form of Pretoria Sotho, a mixture of English. Sotho and Afrikaans (see Schuring 1985): the new English must be freed from the functional instruction of 'corporate English', viz. perpetuating the social class barriers and (American) ideologies: it must be assured that English is not identified with education as such, since “human knowledge is much wider than any/one language can carry."

It is one of the primordial tasks of CCL to investigate the variety or varieties of EAS and to offer a sound sociolinguistic description of it, combined with socio-economic parameters and subjective reaction tests to find out about the implications for Black identification or alienation processes towards EAS and ESSA. As far as I know, no such work has been undertaken yet, so that we are left with a complete lack of insight into what is to become the most widely used variety of English in Southern Africa. In this respect, the numerous studies of BEV (Black English Vernacular) in the US form a notable contrast with the SA situation.

Similar problems hold for the varieties of Afrikaans. But here some of the sociolinguistic research alluded to has been carried out for one variety of Afrikaans, viz. Cape Afrikaans, spoken by 2,5 million so-called Colored or Brown people, mainly in the Cape Town area and the East Cape (see Webb 1979, Scheffer 1983). Webb's study is especially relevant in that it does not confirm the generally claimed negative attitude towards Afrikaans, at least amongst Brown Afrikaans speaking South Africans (BASSAs) in Port Elizabeth. On the contrary, there is a very strong 'variety' and language loyalty amongst this group, which is even the more relevant since the Soweto revolt (1976) had already taken place and does not seem to have affected BASSA language attitudes. Such pictures may be combined with matched guise investigations, e.g. by J. Vorster and L Proctor (1976), who tried to determine the extent and nature of a possible negative attitude towards Afrikaans among a group of black students, compared with their attitude to English. Their findings showed a bias in favor of English and the possibility of arriving at an Afrikaans and an English stereotyped profile, whereby “the English stereotype is of a "nice" person, whereas the Afrikaans stereotype could be of a "strong" person" (Vorster & Proctor, 1976: 108).

This type of research must be repeated in a systematic way over regular time periods, since similar information over the last 10 years is largely lacking. Scheffer's 1983 investigation is a lucky exception and his conclusions are very important: although limited mainly to the Cape Peninsula, he has found out that BASSAs here consider English to be a high status language, which they would want to speak more, whereas the English - speaking coloreds, who usually have better jobs and positions, do not show a similar desire towards Afrikaans, which also leads to lesser knowledge and use. The influence of English is thus

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greater in the higher status groups, a conclusion that points somewhat in the direction of the elitist role of English in India: the urban middle class character of the orientation towards English is striking here, too.

The historic downgrading or stigmatization of Cape Afrikaans is an almost tragic phenomenon, since the group that has kept closest to the original vernacular in the Cape area later turned out to be socially and politically worst affected by it. In this context it is more than remarkable that progressive BASSAs do not follow slogans such as ' English, the language of liberation', but set up action programmes under the banner of 'Afrikaans, the language of liberation', whereby it must be stressed that they mean their own Cape variety of it (see Du Plessis 1989).

The question of varieties is also a very urgent one for the African languages, since there is a strong claim that in the past, by the efforts of missionary societies language families such as Nguni or Sotho have rather been divided than uniformly standardized (see Alexander, 1989: 22 ff.) or a similar criticism of the negative influence of missionary involvement with Herero orthography or the Herero language and culture in general, see Ohly (1986: 16-17).

6. EMPHASIS ON LEARNER'S FIRST LANGUAGE More emphasis is to be given to the first language at all levels of education and two other national languages are to be taught as second or foreign loanguages, by native speakers, trained in (applied) linguistics.

The two subtheses of this thesis are inseparable like the two sides of a coin: the more attention you pay to first language development at the more formal and abstract level of school learning, the later and more intensive, and hence the higher qualified second or foreign language teaching will have to become. This approach is also the general policy in most Western countries, which take into account that from the age of 12 it is much easier and usually quicker for learners to learn foreign languages than at primary school level.

In most 'Anglophone' African countries the policy seems to be reversed (though we badly need an English version of the research done by Reh & Heine, 1982 and further continued research on the situation in the whole of Africa; research projects aiming at a global and comparative survey of language policies in education are even more badly needed than CCL in Southern Africa). Also in black schools in Southern Africa the trend towards more English in the primary school and towards the use of English as the medium of instruction is undeniable. This fits into the same picture as the low self-evaluation of black intellectuals and political leaders regarding the indigenous languages, discussed in section 2. It must also be seen as an attempt to create (more) national unity through the medium of one common language which - for political reasons - cannot be the language of one ethnic group in the state.

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At present, the trend is not decreasing, but even increasing (in spite of serious criticism, o.g. by Adegbija. 1989). Thus Macdonald (1989) presents two models the first of which is a more traditional type whereas the second, known as 'Straight for English Policy' is now officially prescribed in Zambia: skizze According to Theo Luzuka from the University of Transkei (Luzuka 1986) English bas always been used as the medium of instruction in all past – primary education in Uganda and today all primary and pre - primary schools are English medium. Also in Transkei it is the language of instruction, though Luzuka admits that "it is not unusual for a teacher to explain Shakespeare in Xhosa" (p. 17).

Haacke (1986) offers a critical account of the past situation in Namibia, where the South African Government followed a policy of teaching both a national language (Afrikaans) and one African language. This policy will under the next - probably SWAPO - Government switch to English, which has already been declared the 'national' language of Namibia, although there are no English-speaking minority groups nor any historical ties with Britain, the second most widely used and known language next to Afrikaans being German. Haacke criticizes several aspects of the past policy, especially the lack of intercultural dialogue between the 16 or more language groups. His conclusion, however, comes very close to what I have already been proposing:

It follows that for bilingual- bicultural education, all pupils - also Whites - should take one (the?) official language and at least one African minority language as subjects. Teacher training should also be done jointly for trainees of all groups, so as to achieve communicative competence (p. 27).

Indeed, in actual practice, if in South Africa you have five official languages and if you choose your mother langue as L1 then you still have to choose two other national languages so that every pupil - white or black - will have to learn an African language. What is a very important new element in Haacke's discussion is the emphasis given to the bicultural factor which requires that together with the language also the cultural history, customs and traditions should be taught. Also his highlighting of intercultural communication and joint teacher training for all groups is highly innovative and valuable.

A more resigned tone can be heard in Harlech - Jones's (1986) analysis of the Namibian situation, since he accepts the fact that language policy, also in education, is decided upon by politicians only, which is precisely the point attacked by Cluver (1989).

But it is not only politicians that can be blamed for everything. Also the structure of universities and their language departments are in for serious criticism and drastic change.

7. INTEGRATION OF LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE All language departments in higher education in Southern Africa must be equally composed of linguistics and literature.

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Much of the discussion on English as a second or as a national language in Southern Africa has - as can be seen from some of the quotations and references been in the hands of scholars with an exclusively literary orientation. Even the whole organization of teacher preparation is left to departments that either have no room for linguistics or only a very marginal one.

This is particularly dramatic in the English departments of Southern African universities. The language that is probably likely to be taught most of all as a second language in this hemisphere is and will be taught by teachers who have never had a serious training in linguistic analysis, in the functions or the system of language, and in the relationships between language, cognition and culture. They all have to go to their jobs as amateurs in the teaching of English as a non-first language. This situation has arisen from the fact that the English departments of SA universities want to be and have planned to be copies of the British (or American) system. What is good for Britain, is good for the colonies or ex-colonies, seems to have been the ideology behind their approach. This results in English departments at SA universities with up to ten specialists for the major fields in English literature, but not a single one for linguistics. This situation may be tolerable in Britain or America, although even there it is highly questionable if primary and secondary school teachers should not have a thorough linguistic training to cope with all the cognitive, the interactional-communicative and the social problems that may prevail as a consequence of the presence of many immigrant children or of the accents and dialects of native English-speaking children.

But the situation of an exclusive literary orientation seems totally intolerable in a multilingual and multicultural country such as SA, unless one wants to reserve the present departments of English for the 2 million ESSAs and set up new departments for English as a second foreign language especially intended for the over 25 million other South Africans. What is happening now is that the educational system leaves the most dramatic gap imaginable: it does not provide for an in-depth and systematic preparation of teachers of English as a second or foreign language on a fully scientific basis.

But even within the literary program new accents are required. First of all, the study of English literature must be systematically linked to the study of the background culture, which is partially or totally unknown to ESSAs and certainly to African students. For all those that have never been to Britain nor will ever go there, the study of English literature can become a thorough confrontation with British and European traditions and values. Seen in this light, one may reconsider what the value of explaining Shakespeare to Xhosa students can mean. This value now seems to be taken for granted and beyond any double not only the value of studying English literature but also the selection of periods and authors needs complete re-thinking. Second, and even more important, English literature cannot be limited to Anglo-American literature, but must encompass authors from all the literatures

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written in English, especially by African authors. Here a completely new orientation and staffing of the literature component of English departments is called for.

It should be noted finally that the function of teaching English at secondary school or at tertiary levels cannot be to form good writers of English, although that may be a useful by - product. In this respect Luzuka's comparison of the effects of adopting English as the national language in Uganda. South East Asia and South Africa can be criticized for taking a literary standard to measure an effort that is far and fore most aiming at communicative competence. Even Ndebele's attitude towards English is still ambivalent in that he thinks that literature can be a means to teach mastery of a foreign language and that literature is a neutral value - free domain for the education of black students.

Coming back to the rote of linguistics in the curriculum of teacher training, there is now a strong tendency in SA to train future language teachers in the departments of education. This has certain advantages, but still leaves the huge potential of a sound linguistic training untapped. What has been acquired in most countries of Europe for the training of future teachers of English, viz. a balanced linguistic and literary curriculum, still seems to be a far-off dream for Africa. All those that are responsible for the perpetuation of this situation carry the heavy burden of lack of concern for the whole continent of Africa.

8. INTEGRATION OF LINGUISTIC SUBDISCIPLINES Linguistics must comprise theoretical linguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics and applied linguistics.

The linguistics programme in the language departments of universities cannot be a purely theoretically-oriented linguistics, but must rather be an integrated concept of linguistics, whereby theoretical and applied orientations are combined and whereby sociolinguistics is a self-evident orientation in a multilingual and multicultural setting. Psycholinguistics is a necessary component as well since it is a basic requirement to gain insights into language acquisition and language learning processes.

In fact, these four subdisciplines within linguistics necessarily have a large amount of overlapping as the following picture may illustrate:

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The area far applied linguistics has been arched to highlight that it shares half of its interests with the three at her subdisciplines of linguistics, from which it also derives part of its foundations.

This is of course not to say that the four disciplines of linguistics cannot be fully practiced in their own right as they are in specialized institutions for pure research. But even then a good deal of overlapping is not to be excluded. As William Labov says,10 one can even claim that the term 'sociolinguistics' is to a certain degree redundant or superfluous, since all linguistics is to a large extent sociolinguistics. The too strict separation of the linguistic disciplines is a very tenacious misorientation, but it was born with modern linguistics itself, which since the beginning has always thrived on dichotomies, some of which were already introduced by Saussure and have always added momentum. But as Langacker (1987) states - from a cognitive linguistics viewpoint - they are largely false dichotomies, such as: synchrony vs. diachrony theoretical vs. interdisciplinary linguistics competence vs. performance syntax vs. lexis semantics vs. pragmatics In a more balanced concept of linguistics, the barriers between the various subdisciplines, and especially those between theoretical and applied orientations, have no foundation. Although the subdisciplines can pursue their own research interests, they must also live in an osmosis with one another in order to be able to tackle the major language and cultural problems in society. This must also be realized at the organisational level.

9. CO-OPERATION BETWEEN LINGUISTIC SOCIETIES Therefore, the linguistic societies of Southern Africa, and foremost LSSA and SAALA, must set up regular joint congresses so as to end the splitting of the linguistic world.

In the present context of major changes in Southern Africa one may wonder whether it is not an unfortunate state of affairs that the two major linguistic associations of Southern Africa represent two different worlds and never meet at joint conferences. This is even more regrettable if one considers that the discipline split coincides with a hidden built in type of apartheid between Afrikaans - speaking linguistics in the linguistic Society of Southern Africa (LSSA) and the majority of the English-speaking one, flocking together in the Southern African Applied linguistics Association (SAALA).

10 Oral communication at the Sociolinguistic Symposium. University of Trier. FRG in 1980.

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Although there are understandable historical reasons for his split, one wonders if the time has not come to join all possible resources and tackle same major issues of the language contact and conflict situation together.

SAALA claims to have been founded after and as a response to the Soweto outburst in 1976 rejecting Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in black schools and claiming English instead. As such it is understandable that SAALA tried to bridge the huge gap created by the new educational situation in the black world and this also explains its preponderant orientation towards English. This orientation has even been interpreted as a hostility towards Afrikaans. As an eminent SAALA representative explained to me, there has never been any reaction against Afrikaans as a language, but only and from the outset an open condemnation of the ideology of apartheid, To the extent that the policy of apartheid was implemented by representatives of the Afrikaans-speaking National Party and to the extent that in Afrikaans-speaking academic circles, reactions against apartheid came about somewhat later and perhaps also less outspoken, one can partly understand the historical cleavage between the two worlds of linguists. But once people get divided, it is extremely difficult to inform people about 'the others'. Thus it largely went unnoticed in SAALA-circles that the LSSA journal distantiated itself from apartheid and for that reason even lost its right to government support.11

At any rate, the new challenges in a future South Africa are so great that its past divisions and differences should be done away with and new joint strategies and research priorities worked out. This also seems to be the opinion of the majority of the participants of the two 1989 conferences: 75,8% of LSSA and 69,7% of SAALA participants declared themselves in favor of regular joint conferences.

10. WIDER POLITICAL ORIENTATION The above cultural orientation is in harmony with some important political conclusions.

The general thesis proposed in this paper is the absolute priority of native languages and cultures for each of the various groups composing the multilingual and multicultural nations of Southern Africa. This thesis may - in view of the claims for English as the language of national unity and of the political claim of 'one man, one vote' - at first seem somewhat suspect. But apart from the intrinsic justifications offered in the previous sections, it may be useful to point out that it is in line with the ANC's Freedom Charter (1955), and – more recently - with Giliomee & Schlemmer's synthesis of a political debate about Negotiating South Africa's Future (1989).

The second section of the Freedom Charter unequivocally states the rights of all national or cultural groups:

All national groups shall have equal rights. 11 In fact, this already happened as early as 1972.

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There shall equal status in the bodies of state, in the courts and in the schools for all national groups and races. All people shall have equal right to use their own languages and to develop their own folk culture and customs. (Meli, 1988: 210)

A moot question is, however, whether the first 'Charterists' envisaged a minimal interpretation associating the promotion of national cultures only with 'folk culture and customs', or whether they aimed at a wider interpretation, holding out a perspective for all domains of national culture.

Such an (admittedly far) wider perspective is the one held out by Seke Touré in Guinea, where the role of French has been strongly reduced - at least in comparison with other Francophone African countries - and where the indigenous languages are given full emphasis.

Reh and Heine (1982: 142) describe this policy as follows:

It is noteworthy that Touré does not only justify the transcription and promotion of the indigenous languages on the basis of preserving the cultural heritage as laid down in oral traditions folk tales fairy tales and songs, but also and equally on the basis of the possibility of thereby preserving and further developing indigenous science and technology. It is only now beginning to be realized that Africa is not a continent without its own stock of scientific and technological knowledge. This insight has not become possible until it became evident that the technology developed in industrial states cannot merely be transferred and that due to their increasing ecological and social problems, these industrial states have lost a great deal of their model character. (Own translation, R.D.)

Such a radical viewpoint is not yet expressed in the ANC's Freedom Charter, but it is not incompatible with it, since it also stresses the need to open up science and culture to all:

The doors of learning and of culture shall be opened. "The Government shall discover, develop an encourage national talent for the enhancement of our culture life. All cultural treasures of mankind shall be open to all, by free exchange of books, ideas and contact with other lands. The aim of education shall be to teach the youth to love their people and their culture, to honour human brotherhood, liberty and peace. (Meli, 1988: 212)

Although according to Giliomee-Schlemmer (1989: 108) the ANC originally considered alt South Africans as brothers and - as the texts above show - stressed the various cultural groups and therefore pluriculturalism, the white Government's unilateral definition of cultural groups by means of the manipulation and ascription to ethnicity has later induced the ANC to reject all group formulas:

Thus today, the ANC wants neither multiracialism, pluralism, consociation, federalism, nor even groups based on voluntary association. It is exclusively concerned with pure non-racialism – ‘one person, one vote in an undivided South Africa’. (Giliomee/Schlemmer, p. 109).

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Still, the authors think a solution might be possible by accepting some form of 'cultural groups'. The condition is that cultural groups should not be based on race, but on voluntary affiliation:

Communalism legitimated by voluntary affiliation and not by racial criteria should not be inconceivable for supporters of a non-racial, united South Africa - particularly as it could help to ease the transition away from the present situation.

They further stress that examples such as Canada, Switzerland and the Soviet Union prove that the recognition of cultural diversity is not an obstacle to the emergence of a strong national identity.

If the ANC can revive the principles of its Freedom Charter and believe in all the cultures of South Africa again without facing any form of racial division, it might contribute enormously to the ultimate realization of its Freedom Charter. That this presupposes an unambiguous annihilation of all forms and practices of the apartheid system need not be stressed.

In the present circumstances it is important to create the conditions for the beginnings of the negotiations for such a future South Africa. If the linguistic world can reach a concensus on vital issues of language policy and educational policy, they may contribute fundamentally to the creation of conditions in which fruitful negotiations can start off.

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