Language is Development

TWO EVENTS that happened this week and last week inspired this writing. I was invited to speak at the Namibia Indigenous Language Seminar: Celebrating Unesco International Mother Language Day. I could not attend due to prior commitment.

But the topic “Exploring the dynamics between the development of Indigenous Languages and National Development Goals” is a vital one. Namibia needs to celebrate mother tongues all 365 days a year.

I also was part of the Unam contingent that celebrated the launch of “Journal of the University of Namibia Language Centre.”

What is unique about this one?

Well, this journal will also publish articles in African languages available in Namibia and abroad. Written and Unwritten. That in itself is a victory for identity and development.

Languages are not immortal. They too die. It is important we consistently write, speak and intellectualise them in order to develop and save them from becoming vanishing languages.

Therefore, if the axiom that language is development is true, by imposing English as the official language, Namibia has excluded about 70% of its population from development and nation building.

That is being conservative. According to the historian, Shiremo Shampapi, the percentage of exclusion should roughly be around 99%.

Apparently, multilingualism is a problem! That is why Namibia opted for English because English is a language of reconciliation as well as a language of socio-economic power. Namibia needs a neutral language to politically, economically, culturally and linguistically make the nation congruent. We are told. Really? Has English reconciled Namibians?

Every language has the quality of unity. The notion that Namibia’s ethnic groups were so divided before independence, therefore choosing one of those ethnic languages would create conflict, is a political expedience of that time.

Apartheid, racism, and bantustans were there but so was division and conflict among various ethnic groups. Harmony and peace were there among ethnic groups before independence.

The perception of English as a language of socio-economic power has also been turned upside-down by events. Today the language of economy is not only English. It is Hindi, Mandarin, Malay, Arabic and Japanese. China is now the major global economic player but they do not have English as an official language.

The real reasons why Namibia opted for a language of the British colonial empire are subconscious self-hate and self-doubt that we have witnessed in most of black Africa. That much is even clear in the seventeen century British parliamentary protocol we copied; the education system we introduced; the names we give our children; the clothes we wear, the God we worship and religion we practice.

That self-hate is even worse to our northern neighbours who call themselves Portuguese, therefore killing Angola’s beautiful indigenous languages and culture. When a language dies, not only a wealth of culture and history is lost but also knowledge about fauna, flora, medicine, food production, and so forth.

Other reasons could have to do with lack of a political will to start afresh in developing the ingenious languages to scientific, intellectual and standardised orthographies. English has all of those, with readily available literature materials; perhaps it was easy to use an already developed language.

Decolonising the Namibian (and African mind in general) is a long process but with the adoption of a European colonial language not only have we lengthened the process to develop indigenous mother tongues but also guilty of linguicide. A nation that does not give a place of pride to its own indigenous languages as a vehicle for development is in fact underdeveloping itself.

Language is a powerful tool of nationhood and development. It is both a means and end to development in the sense that meaningful participation in democracy and development cannot take place effectively where linguistic barriers exist.

To limit Namibia’s indigenous languages to intra-community communication, interpretational roles in courts and political rallies and other less formal domains is excluding those who rely on indigenous language for communication in the socio-economic, political and cultural life of the nation.

It follows that, if the majority of this country’s population use indigenous languages for their communication, is it not logical that we empower Namibia’s mother languages in order to meet the challenges of nation building and development processes?

Indigenous languages hold the keys to our past, present and the future; hence we should care about developing and preserving them.

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