ZUBENATHI JIZANA
The Minister of Higher Education and Training, Blade Nzimande, wants to make it a prerequisite for university students to learn an African language before they graduate.
It was reported in Pretoria News on 16 September 2011 that Nzimande is disappointed with the development of African languages in the country’s universities.
Nzimande wants to explore the possibility of making it compulsory for all South African students at higher education training facilities to be able to speak, read and/or write at least one African language. Prof. Mojalefa, Head of the Department of African Languages at UP, agrees, “African languages should be compulsory when doing a degree, or else it should be considered that African languages be compulsory for certain degrees where language skills will be needed in their career like social work, law and medicine.” Rudzani Ramukumba, a second-year mechanical engineering student, told Perdeby, “I don’t think it is going to work unless they have started learning the language before. Language is not like other things you learn in varsity where you can just come and jump in. African languages are some of the hardest languages to fully grasp and to ask a student to learn a language and to pass on top of everything they [are] doing [is] a lot of work.” Similarly, Mabatho Motlatla, an honours accounting student said, “I think it is a good idea but it would have been better if it was promoted in primary school instead of in higher education because we have a lot more on our plates. I understand where he is coming from because we are losing our languages. We need to get the opportunity to go back to our roots.” Mark de Lancey a second-year computer sciences student said, “On the one hand it is good to learn about the languages of your country. But most of the degrees are already over-filled. This would be adding new work. And also what does [Minister Nzimande] count as an African language? We have 11 official languages, which ones would be compulsory? In addition to that there are people that specialise in languages, so why does it have to be enforced on other students?”
Read page three for a full exposé on this issue.
