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Christopher Farai Charamba Correspondent
Language is more than a means of communication; it is an influential tool in preserving culture. In language are contained various nuances that allow individuals to explore different relationships, emotions and power.

Language has even been used as a weapon, a means to subjugate and enslave people. When Africans were captured and forcibly taken across the Atlantic as slaves, aside from being given new names, they were forced to speak English and abandon their indigenous languages. This had the effect of wiping their identities and forcing them to adopt identities of a slave.

On the continent, when the missionaries and colonialists arrived, they did not bother to learn the indigenous African languages, but forced the Africans to learn English, French, Portuguese, German or Spanish. African languages were treated as uncouth or uncivilised.

Despite the abolishment of slavery, the end of colonialism and the promotion of Pan-African ideals, the issue of language and African identity is still very problematic on the continent.

Recently, South Africa was caught up in yet another form of protest with students at Pretoria High School for Girls (PHSG) speaking out against the school’s rules against African natural hair. Black girls complained that they were not allowed to have their hair in natural afro and were forced to chemically straighten it.

Girls as young as 13 years old spoke out against these school rules which they felt were racist and perpetuated the belief that the natural African was uncivilised.

Aside from the rules on hair, the black African girls were not allowed by some teachers to speak their indigenous languages. Some of the teachers would make statements such as “don’t make those funny sounds,” the students at the school said.

In other schools in South Africa, the issue of language is equally troublesome. At one school students are said to be fined R10 for speaking in isiXhosa. At Sans Souci High School in the Western Cape, students were given a demerit for speaking in vernacular with school officials stating that the only languages allowed were English and Afrikaans.

The issue of language is not only at high schools, but also at universities. Students at both Stellenbosch University and the University of Pretoria have both challenged the language policies at the institutions where some of the courses are only available in Afrikaans.

It is concerning that 22 years after the end of Apartheid the politics of language is still extremely prominent in South Africa. In 1976, students in Soweto marched against the forced use of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in schools; 40 years later students in South African academic institutions still face the same problem.

How is it possible that in an African country with majority African people, indigenous African languages are treated with such contempt? Why is it that in African countries foreign languages are given greater prominence than the indigenous?

These questions do not only apply to South Africa, but also in Zimbabwe where the revised education curriculum has proposed to introduce French and Chinese into schools and yet Shona and Ndebele are not compulsory nationwide, neither are the other 12 indigenous official languages in the Zimbabwean Constitution.

As Africa continues to decolonise, one of the key issues that need to be addressed is that of language. It should not be a spectacle or a source of wonder to find a white person who has lived in Africa their whole life speaking a vernacular language. If one were to reside in Japan would it be strange that they speak Japanese?

African languages need to be given prominence and reverence in Africa that other languages elsewhere receive. Why should the African compromise on speaking Swahili, Sotho, Bemba, Twa or Igbo when in France they will speak French or in Russia, Russian?

This is not to say that one should abandon English or other foreign languages. In fact, the learning of multiple languages should be encouraged as it helps one to easily appreciate other people and their culture. But it is important that African languages and identity be part of the African narrative. In 2016, for an African language to be referred to as “those funny noises” should be unacceptable.