By Peter Sinkamba
MAGRETH CHISULO: A VICTIM OF LUGUAGE POLICY FAILURE
Magreth Chisulo is merely a victim of lunguage policy failure.
At the attainment of independence, most African governments, Zambia inclusive, adopted the colonisers’ foreign languages as official languages to be used in business, the judiciary, education, local government and parliament.
Examples of foreign languages that have dominated local languages in Africa are English, French and Portuguese.
This colonial legacy has rendered
indigenous languages in most African countries, have low variety status vis-à-vis foreign languages for a variety of reasons. The major reason being the challenges faced in the implementation of the language policies in these countries.
In Zambia, for example, there are seven vernacular languages that are used on public radio and TV, namely, bemba, nyanja, lozi, tonga, luvale, kaonde, and lunda. However, none of them is recognised in the Constitution. And none is official lunguage. The official lunguage is English. The vernacular languages are merely tolerated in public spaces, depending on the exposure of presiding officer or moderator.
In some schools, a learner may even be punished for using a vernacular lunguage within school grounds. In parliament, if an MP uses a vernacular lunguage, he or she is obligated to interpret the same.
In South Africa, government declared 11 languages as official. Section (6) of the Constitution stipulates that all 11 official languages should enjoy equal statusrecognised eleven official languages on an equal footing.
Section 6(1) of the Constitution says that official languages of the Republic are Sepedi, Sesotho, Setswana, siSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, Afrikaans, English, isiNdebele, isiXhosa, and isiZulu. To ensure that this equal treatment of official languages isimplemented, the government passed into law the Use of Official Language Act, no. 12 of 2012 which provides for the regulation and monitoring of the use of all official languages by organs of state.
Amongst other things, language policies, language institutions, and legislations were established to assist in implementing Section (6) of the Constitution.
Provincial governments have been given the task to adopt a language policy that ensure that the designated official languages are used, promoted, and developed equally.
From what transpired with Margreth Chisulo, it can be concluded that our language policy is not congruent to its implementation, and has failed to achieve its desired effects of building a One Zambia One Nation.
Perhaps, our forefathers could have adopted the Tanzanian language policy model that formalised Swahili as a national language for all purposes. To all intents and purposes, the Swahili model has been a resounding success.
She is not fit to be on national broadcaster let her join some community radio/TV station. Fire the tribalist.
I very, very strongly disagree that Margaret Chisulo should be fired. She did nothing out of the ordinary. In fact she was implementing government policy which has not changed since the UNIP days and that policy is to promote Bemba and Nyanja above other local languages.
If she was a genuine Christian she would not be in this mess. As Christians we are taught to be polite to everyone I.e treat others as you would want them to treat you. As a civil servant one will interact with various types of people but be kind and be above board.
In Developed Countries Chisulo would be transferred to Mongu to go and learn Lozi and their culture, only then would she be brought back to Lsk. The point is be kind to everyone we lose nothing. As Civil servant you are employed to serve every Zambian regardless of status, tribe or religion. In the end we are all brothers and Sisters, we all came from Adam and Eve.
Predident Sinkamba, you are spot on about going for one national language. Let’s adopt Swahili as our national language and leave English to be used as official language as the case is for wider local and international communication. This will also help put an end to wrongly perceived tribal supremacy, awful tribalism, tribal heroism and tribal dominion. Imagine one Soli or Lenje child sitting for local exam in Lusaka and competing for good marks with a Chewa or Nyanja mother tongue speaking children. It’s extremely unfair. Look at North Western having 3 national languages within same province while some provinces are forced to adopt languages from other provinces. Some local languages are becoming extinct because of unfair dictation of other languages in schools, hospitals, public places etc. Let’s abolish this bizarre competition for local languages so that we promote the One Zambia, One Nation motto in an earnest, impartial and neutral manner.