Parents contribute to obliteration of African languages, says Minster
"Parents dont see anything wrong with kids who cannot speak their mother tongue."
AS much as we talk about the decolonisation of education, it us the parents who are contributing to the obliteration of our languages something that our erstwhile colonisers failed to do. So says Minister of Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa, who was delivering the opening address of the international colloquium on Mzasi Kunene’s contribution to African scholarship at UKZN on Monday.
“Every parent wants their children to be educated and be respected individuals in life and in the process of wanting to create a better life for your children, there are pitfalls. One of those pitfalls is that we all flock to the former Model C schools, helping the project of discouraging our kids not to speak their own language. They are children who cannot communicate in their mother tongue because of this and many parents don’t see anything wrong with this,” said Mthethwa.
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While Kunene is known for many internationally celebrated books such as the Anthem of the Decades, originally called Inhlokomo Yeminyaka, he never wrote in English so all his work had to be translated from IsiZulu. Earlier this year and ten years after his death, his 80 000 word poem on King Shaka Zulu was published in IsiZulu from English by the University of KZN Press.
He wrote the poem ‘UNodumehlezi KaMenzi’, popularly known as Emperor Shaka the Great, while he was in exile in the 1960s but it was never published in the language he wrote it in even though it was translated to numerous languages including English in 1979. The poem paints Shaka as a great military strategist, visionary leader and a unifier of African tribes.
“Bab’ Masizi’s inspiration came from the classical orator traditions of Southern Africa, that is the oral traditions of the first inhabitants of this part of the continent transmitted by word of mouth from one generation to the next. This traditions embrace a performance of tales, tales of epic poetry, tales of history, tales of odyssey and the pronouncement of proverbs and idioms,” added the Minster.
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