World Portuguese Language Day celebrated

On 5 May, Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncip celebrate World Portuguese Language Day, a tradition initiated at the 2009 summit of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) and proclaimed by Unesco in 2019.

It is a date we commemorate with pride alongside our South African friends.

It is a working language of several international organisations, including the African Union and SADC. Portuguese-speaking countries account for 7.3% of the Earth’s surface and hold a combined GDP of around 4 trillion dollars.

Unesco recognises 42 World Heritage cultural sites and 14 Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity elements in the Portuguese-speaking world. International indexes that measure the academic relevance of languages classify Portuguese as the fifth (Social Sciences Citation Index) or the sixth (Science Citation Index) language with the most publications.

Its importance in the digital space is indisputable. Portuguese-speakers account for the fifth largest number of internet users (171 million). Brazil alone is the third country in number of users on Facebook, sixth on Twitter, second on Instagram and second on YouTube.

Lusophone authors would be the pride of any literary tradition. Let us just recall the Portuguese Luís de Camões, Eça de Queirós, Fernando Pessoa, José Saramago (Nobel Prize winner in 1998); the Angolans António Agostinho Neto and José Luandino Vieira; the Mozambicans Mia Couto (Camões Award winner in 2013), Paulina Chiziane and Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa; the Cape Verdean Germano Almeida (Camões Award winner in 2018); the Brazilians Machado de Assis, Jorge Amado, Guimarães Rosa and Clarice Lispector; East Timor’s Xanana Gusmão; Sao Tome and Principe’s Alda Espírito Santo; Guinea-Bissau’s Agnello Regalla, and many others.

Our music is also greatly admired, with the sound of our language and the delicate mix of genres that characterise our vast repertoire inspiring dreamers in our countries and all over the world. Everybody sings or dances to Bossa Nova, Fado, Samba, Morna or Kuduro.

The day is also a date to celebrate the very important step that we have taken to work together internationally based on the common bond of language: the creation of the CPLP, which started to develop as an idea at the first summit of the Portuguese-speaking Countries, in 1989, to come into being on July 17, 1996, in Lisbon, initially bringing together Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe.

In 2002, already independent, East Timor became the eighth member country and, in 2014, Equatorial Guinea the ninth. The African countries of this group have taken another fundamental step by joining the Palops (African Countries with Portuguese as an Official Language) initiative.

The CPLP’s objectives are political and diplomatic collaboration in international organisations; cooperation in education, training of diplomats, health, science and technology, agriculture, public administration, communications, justice, gender equality and equity, culture, sport and the media; cooperation in defence and security, with an emphasis on conflict prevention, participation in peace operations and the periodic Felino exercises, designed to enable interoperability and training for peace operations and humanitarian assistance; and the promotion of the Portuguese language. CPLP’s world standing attracted 19 states as associated observers.

Portuguese occupies a special place in South Africa, where it appears in Article 6 of the South African constitution as a language used by communities, and, as such, should be promoted and respected: “A Pan South African Language Board established by national legislation must – […] (b) promote and ensure respect for— […] (i) all languages commonly used by communities in South Africa, including […] Portuguese […]”.

This presence of the Portuguese language in South Africa is concrete and relevant. The migration of citizens from Lusophone countries to South Africa had different stages, involving groups of different origins, starting at the end of the 19th century and traversing an important phase more recently, with the decolonisation process and the attractiveness of the South African economy.

According to some, the number of Portuguese speakers in South Africa can reach 900,000. In addition, South Africa is an important partner – political, economic, cultural – for all our countries, which are firmly committed to strengthening their relations with this key country in Africa and a relevant member of the international community, as attested by its belonging to Brics and the G-20.

Celebrating World Portuguese Language Day in South Africa, therefore, reminds us in a very affectionate way of how much our language unites us as countries and peoples and how much it constitutes, symbolically and in practice, a strong link between us and Nelson Mandela’s country.

Written by Filomena Delgado, Sérgio França Danese, Paulino Macaringue and Manuel Carvalho, who are the ambassadors of Angola, Brazil, Mozambique and Portugal to South Africa respectively.