Nama language to be reintroduced in SA

THE plan to reintroduce the Nama language into South Africa’s Northern Cape provincial school curriculum is at an advanced stage.

//Karas regional and Northern Cape educators yesterday held a one-day planning meeting at Keetmanshoop to discuss a strategy to pave the way for the reintroduction of the Nama language into two schools at the Kuboes and Riemvasmaak settlements in the Northern Cape next year.

Once the language’s roots have been firmly established, it will also be taught in other areas.

The //Karas region’s Khoekhoegowab linguists will through the twinning agreement signed between the two regions in September 1999 provide support to the Northern Cape provincial government during the language’s introduction process.

The Pan-South African Language Board (PanSalb)’s CEO Rakwena Reginald Mpho Monareng, said on the sidelines of yesterday’s meeting that the much-anticipated reintroduction of Nama into the province’s school curriculum would help to revive Khoisan language and culture, which was once on the brink of extinction in South Africa.

“The Khoisan were the first people on the continent. Therefore, it would be unfair not to create space for them,” he noted.

Monareng said Namibian teachers would be roped in to train their Northern Cape counterparts in order to revive the language in South Africa.

Plans were also underway to adopt the language as an official South African language.

“The processes of reintroducing Nama as a language in schools and amending the constitution to adopt the language as an official language will run parallel,” he stated.

luqman@namibian.com.na

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