Balfour, R. (2006). “University Language Policies,Internationalism, Multilingualism, and Language Development inSouth Africa and the United Kingdom”i in Cambridge Journal of Education.

Abstract

This paper examines legislation concerning language policy and

language choice in the United Kingdom and South Africa. In

particular an account of the pressures and imperatives to which

such policy development must respond is provided. The paper

suggests that the comparison between South Africa and the United

Kingdom is relevant and compelling, not least because both

countries respond to an awareness of multilingualism and

internationalism in both the schooling and higher education

systems, though in different ways and with different effects. The

paper explores the degree to which language policies may

facilitate, but may also obstruct, language development and choice

in HEIs in the United Kingdom and South Africa.

1

INTRODUCTION

Spolsky (2004) suggests that one consequence of globalization,

whether perceived as an economic or socio-cultural development

precipitated by advances in communication technology, is that it

obliges nation-states to perceive of their interests in a much

wider context than simply political, economic, social, historical,

or geographic identities located in time and space. From the

perspective of educational policy, this is no less true as

Stromquist (2002) suggests when she writes that institutional

policies need to be situated within a context that operates “beyond

national boundaries” and that such contextualisation “causes us to

view events and trends in most countries as linked to initiatives

begun in central countries” (p.5). Stromquist’s (2002) analysis of

policy development makes use of the categories of “central”

(industrialized, wealthy, and developed) and “peripheral” (rural,

poor, and developing). Although globalization theory is far more

complex than these binaries suggest (see for example, Hardt and

Negri, 2002 or Rosenberg 2000) they are useful for the purpose of

this paper in which language policy development in South Africa and

the United Kingdom is compared.

In the United Kingdom, as in South Africa, competing regional

drives towards research excellence, and national drives to promote

what are regarded as indigenous or regional languages, are funded

by incentives related to student recruitment, research assessment

exercises, and the development of what Footit (2005) terms

‘internationalism’. The similarities between the United Kingdom,

until recently thought of as almost completely monolingual, and

2

South Africa, until recently not fully recognized as multilingual

owing to its bilingual English/Afrikaans official language policy,

are striking. Both states have articulated a commitment to regional

languages over the last two decades. In the United Kingdom there

have been bilingual language policies for Welsh and Gaelic, and

regional policies for community languages such as Gujarati, Urdu,

and Punjabi (Slattery, 2004, p.1). In South Africa there has been

official recognition in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (1996)

of eleven languages. Both states have had to recognize the rights

to mother tongue education of communities of foreign origin and

indigenous language users within the State, and both have had to

identify strategic languages with a view to providing students

(both foreign and local) with opportunities for global access and

competitive advantage in their training.

This paper begins with a description of contexts in which what

is similar (the extent to which the United Kingdom and South Africa

apprehend globalization, for example) becomes evident by way of

what is different (one context is developed, another developing).

The theoretical premise for this paper is based on Bourdieu’s

(1990) discussion of language and symbolic violence since

irrespective of context, the central argument of this paper is to

demonstrate the extent to which language rights and choice are in

fact delimited, sometimes even prescribed in damaging and hegemonic

ways. Inevitably this analysis must limit itself to developments in

the last decade even if ‘development’ is understood as a broadly

historical process with links to colonial or nationalist pasts. My

arguments thus relate to a late stage in the imposition or

3

privileging of a hegemonic language, and deal with the point at

which first-language speakers of tongues other than the hegemonic

are likely to be persuaded, in generation 1, to abandon their

native tongues as means of public exchange, and in generation 2, to

abandon them altogether. Such choices may be private, but where

policy exists to aid or resist them as is the case in South Africa

and the United Kingdom, they are also ‘public’ and thus to some

extent produced or determined whether actively or passively.

In South Africa, cultural production [of the kind referred to

by Bowles and Gintis (2000)] and its reproduction have become,

after 1994, linked to a broader project concerning the

transformation of society in order to achieve what Giddens (1991)

terms the ‘re-creation’ of the community. Central to the

transformation project are human rights, not least of which is the

right of every citizen to participate in the democracy via his/her

mother tongue. However, the language rights which exist are limited

by contingencies that prescribe their exercise in the national,

political, economic, social, and cultural domains. The South

African ‘project’ is explicitly and implicitly ideological.ii There

is no similar project in the United Kingdom, but since

decolonization the State has become aware both of the language

needs and diversity of a growing immigrant population. Slattery

(2004) notes that in the United Kingdom, community (or regional)

and foreign languages have been accorded a place within education

policy, but actual provision and structural support for development

of these has not matched policy. As in South Africa, there are

contingencies that prevent the activation of provisions made in

4

language policy as a comparison between two higher education

institutions will demonstrate.

Though I refer to Cardiff University and the University of

KwaZulu-Natal later in this paper, the concerns with language

policy, its responsiveness to social and political pressures and

priorities are wider than any one institution or nation. Such are

the similarities between the ‘central’ and ‘peripheral’, that even

if I were based in the United Kingdom and had been a respondent in

Footit’s (2005) survey of institutional responses to the National

Languages Strategy in Higher Education (2004), my perceptions would be

similar to those recorded in her Report on the National Languages Strategy

in Higher Education (Footit, NLSiHE, 2005).

Perhaps the first significant point to make is that HEI

language policy development derives from national imperatives such

as the Languages in Higher Education Policy (LiHEP) (2002) in South Africa,

or the NLSiHE in the United Kingdom but also constitute active (in

terms of explicit policy formulation and action) and passive (to

the extent that such policies are at times neither acted upon, nor

supported) agendas revealing stated and real priorities. What is

critical to our understanding of active or passive agendas is that

both are influenced by larger phenomena, and so the main assumption

of this paper is that policy developments are mediated, shaped,

even distorted by the influence of globalization, illuminating the

complexity of the national, regional, and global interface.i I am grateful for the helpful comments of the two reviewers of this article.ii Nowhere are these values more closely aligned with neoliberal capitalism than in GEAR (Growth Employment and Redistribution Policy, 1996), the South African government’s economic policy framework, designed to usher South Africa into the global or international arena (Nicholson, 2001).

5

Yet even within regions or states the impact of globalization

is felt. For example, provisions in the Welsh Language Act (1993) have

in a period of ten years been constrained by passive agendas in

which the dominance of English in higher education, if not

entrenched by so-called ‘market forces’, is at least unchecked. As

much becomes evident in an analysis of Cardiff University’s Welsh

Language Scheme (2000) iii where the use of Welsh and resources

available for its development are delimited by economic

imperatives, specialists who are competent to use Welsh when

teaching, and student demand. Understandably after ten years since

the Welsh Language Act (1993) was passed, Cardiff University reports

the only 6% of the institution (staff and students included) use

the language; this despite the establishment of a Welsh Language

Board, the use of Welsh in aspects of university administration,

the setting of institutional targets for language use, and the

provision of some financial benefits for students enrolling for, or

studying through the medium of Welsh.

In South Africa language policy in schooling and in HEIs,

whilst actively concerned with indigenous language development, has

been ‘passively’ preoccupied with English hegemony. Ministerial

task teams, academic reports and language policy debates must all

at some point ‘deal’ with English, its erosion of indigenous

languages (wakaMsimang, 1998), its contribution to decliningiii Founded in 1883 Cardiff University has recently undertaken a merger with the University of Wales’ medical faculty leading to the creation of a new institution in 2004. In the sense that it is a merged institution it is comparable to the University of KwaZulu-Natal (also newly created in 2004) and both have had to revise institutional plans, priorities and development in lightof this restructuring. Another compelling reason for a comparison is that both universities focus on bilingual education (Welsh and isiZulu).

6

literacy levels and poor matriculation (GCSE) results (Moreosele,

1998), and its contamination of indigenous cultures (see Balfour,

2003, 2002; Alexander, 2001; De Kadt, 2000; Van der Walt, 1998;

McDermott, 1998; Wright, 1995). The need to halt the encroachment

of English on other languages and to enhance indigenous languages

can appear alarming (see Alexander 2001; he calls upon parents to

free themselves of ‘Anglophone values’).

These concerns, though never as vehemently articulated in the

United Kingdom, have found expression in Slattery’s (2004) research

concerning the need for proper recognition (and not tokenism) of

community languages and learners’ bilingualism or multilingualism.

Slattery’s (2004) perspective, discussed in the previous section,

suggests that in schools provision for community language

development amounts to tokenism. Her research in schools highlights

the extent to which language choice is delimited as a consequence

of policies that enable a ‘fit’ between the active agendas of

indigenous language promotion and their passive negators (low

status, absence of cultural capital) to become attenuated in the

social arena where parents and children, teachers and academics,

make choices or are allowed to make choices about the language of

instruction or of study. This interaction is dynamic, rather than

static, since language choice must react to concerns about

empowerment, social and economic mobility. The concerns all respond

to globalization in complex and changing ways giving rise to

‘developed’ (meaning ‘first world’, but ‘developed’ also meaning

explicit articulated education funding policies for HEIs across

United Kingdom and South Africa), and ‘developing’ (as in ‘third

7

world’, but also dynamic, ambivalent, contested) priorities

concerning language rights, language development, and language

choice.

DEVELOPED AND DEVELOPING PRIORITIES: MULTILINGUALISM AND

INTERNATIONALISM

This ‘dynamic interaction’ between choice as an expression of will,

and choice based upon what has already been delimited, can in part

be illustrated with reference to the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s

draft language policy, and Cardiff University’s language scheme,

responding as they must to ‘internationalism’ and the pressures for

indigenous language promotion and development. The Welsh Language Act

(1993) perceives Welsh as equal to English in much the same way as

the Constitution of South Africa (1996) recognizes eleven languages as

official and all as enjoying equal status. The Welsh Language Act

(1993) legislated that Welsh be integrated into the mainstream

curriculum, with the additional provision that it could be used as

a parallel medium where possible. The Act (1993) required HEIs and

industry to begin planning for the development of Welsh as a

language of learning and communication, in much the same way as the

LiHEP (2002) in South Africa required of HEIs. Understandably in

Wales and South Africa one can imagine that ‘ownership’ of

institutions becomes a socio-cultural problematic since although

the legislation makes provision for the development of the

indigenous language, both in South Africa and in Wales, the

indigenous language must compete with English for space, and that

space is already ‘occupied’ rather than ‘vacant’ space to be

8

contested by two equally well developed competitors. Add to this

the need for universities to identify strategic foreign languages

(Mandarin Chinese, French, and Arabic) as part of their need to

attract foreign students, and the limited resources available to

develop these, and it becomes evident that the need to develop

multilingualism in students must compete with the pressure to be

internationally attractive to students who need English, not Welsh

or isiZulu, to study in the United Kingdom or South Africa.

HEIs in the United Kingdom are far more attuned to the

‘international’ dimension of their profiles than their sister

institutions in South Africa. As in many developed countries,

higher education has become a industry and even an export, and has

had to take account more explicitly of globalization as a

centripetal force (attracting students, skilled migrants, shifting

populations in Europe) and centrifugal force (in which the demand

for English as a gateway and keeper, is both exported and regulated

like a commodity through agencies like the British Council, UCLES,

and IELTS). “[T]his is one thing that often gets forgotten…our

language departments are hugely influential in the countries whose

languages and cultures they teach” (Footit, 2005, p.25). Footit

(2005) terms this ‘internationalism’ on account of national

prerogatives for HEIs to develop a competitive edge over other

institutions. This awareness, however, has not been extended to

community languages which in the order of priorities, come last.

Language policies must interface with international policies

but the interface has not to date been much explored let alone

understood by HEIs and even governments, sometimes because of

9

competing interests, which are not always reconcilable. This is not

unlike the experience recorded by Footit (2005) of HEI managers in

their estimation of NLSiHE as at best “warm words” and at worse

contributing directly to the deterioration of languages: “New

external policies like the most notably the Higher Education Act (2004)

and National Languages Strategy were expected to worsen the situation”

(2005, pp.43-44).

The UKZN draft language policy aims to give further substance

to the vision of the University as the premier university of

African scholarship by focusing on isiZulu whilst supporting

multilingualism more broadly (and less meaningfully). It attempts

to describe how English and isiZulu might come to be further

developed and utilized by the University to the benefit of all

constituencies of the institution. UKZN draft policy must be

contextualized within similar policy developments at other

universities in South Africa, and compared to developments at HEIs

in the United Kingdom. Such comparisons show that language policies

which do not result in the advancement of languages by HEIs and the

State serve to erode attempts of practitioners to develop

languages, rendering institutions ill-equipped to provide language

support for students and to enable access to the world beyond the

community other than in very limited terms and invariably in

English only.

In the United Kingdom even the explicit allocation of

resources for the support of languages such as French or Welsh have

not made these attractive to students since in real terms numbers

have declined (Footit, 2005). In recognition of the fact that Welsh

10

language development would not simply occur as a consequence of

free choice, Cardiff University set about framing a ‘scheme’ in

which the development of Welsh, with the resources the University

had at its disposal, would begin in specified contexts

(administrative notices, switchboard interaction, signage), and be

developed within timeframes. The extent to which such ‘development’

had to be engineered is another means of indicating the extent to

which the passive agenda (low public esteem, the scarcity of fluent

speakers of Welsh, the dominance of English among academic staff

and students, and the associations of English with mobility) had to

be countered ‘explicitly’ in order for space for the development of

Welsh to be created.

While the active aim of such policies are to enable new

understandings of diversity, tolerance, multilingualism, and

citizenship, evidence for their success is not convincing and the

fact that the constituency using Welsh at Cardiff University has

not grown suggests that the creation of ‘space’, while adequate to

create the right climate for development, is not sufficient on its

own. Slattery (2004) and Footit (2005) in their surveys of school

and HEIs in the United Kingdom suggest that a number of competing

pressures interface to stifle or at least severely constrain the

development of indigenous, foreign or even community languages.

In South Africa there does not exist the surveys of schooling

and HEIs of the kind undertaken by Footit (2004) or Slattery

(2005), but research and debates are plentiful. A number of

academics and writers have attempted to understand the complex

interface between policy development, implementation, and its

11

sometimes problematic outcomes in Africa where the memory of

decolonization lingers. Webb (1999), for example, points to the

mismatch between language policy and linguistic realities, whilst

Bunyi (1999), using Kenya as a ‘case’, points to the longstanding

ideological effects of colonial language policies. More recently an

entire issue of the English Academy Review (Klopper, 2003) explored the

multifaceted impact of English as a language of intercultural

communication in South Africa. An important book by Chisholm (2004)

entitled Changing Class has also re-opened debates concerning

language, elitism, and class, hitherto regarded, in the early years

of our democracy, as too politically sensitive. Though the critical

literature is strong concerning language rights and development in

the United Kingdom and South Africa, the dilemmas raised in this

literature point to the extent to which such development is

compromised and retarded by what appear to be (willfully created)

lacunae. These lacunae are not simply perpetrated by policy makers

who imagine an ‘equal playing field’, but also by HEI managers who,

in a playing field where the posts shift continually concerning

subsidy formulas and student support, undermine and reduce the

capacity of language schools or disciplines. The next section

explores the extent to which policy in fact enables a trajectory

for language development, or (under)mines it.

POLICY LANDSCAPES OR MINEFIELDS

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966, Articles 26 and

27) recognizes the right of people to be protected against

discrimination on the basis of language. The Covenant suggests that

12

discrimination on the basis of language is easily perpetrated and

perpetuated given that some languages and their users are more

powerful than others. In South Africa, as in the United Kingdom,

there are several ‘policies’ that shape the ways we understand

language rights, with the difference that imported languages and

regional languages do not have official recognition in the United

Kingdom other than in the geographical areas in which they are

located (Welsh and Gaelic are obvious examples). The Constitution of

South Africa (1996) allows individuals the right to exercise their

rights, public and private in any language, and to choose the

language they wish as the medium of their own or their children’s

education. The South African Schools Act (No.84, 1996) however, allows

for school governing bodies to determine the medium of instruction

for a particular school. Even the 2004 Ministerial Report on the Use of

Indigenous Languages as Mediums of Instruction in Higher Education Institutions

acknowledges that “unfortunately the policy does not provide detail

or give guidance as to how this will be achieved or by whom” (2004,

p.21). Despite attempts at definition, language policy

documentation for schools and HEIs and their continued

reformulations within the limitations established by the Language in

Education Policy (1997) do sometimes appear to give rise to conflicts

of interest. Like the Higher Education Act (2004) and the Department of

Education and Skills (DfES), NLSiHE (2002) in the United Kingdom,

the South African LiHEP (2002) and the Ministerial Report (2004) make

provision for the development, and promotion of indigenous and

other languages. However, both in South Africa and in United

Kingdom these policies are perceived as problematic and even

13

damaging by educators or practitioners, a fact noted by Slattery

(2004, p.3) in her review of the different treatment and status of

foreign languages and community languages in schools in the United

Kingdom:

The statutory inclusion of languages such as Urdu,

Punjabi and Gujerati within the highly Eurocentric

confines of the Modern Foreign Languages Department

(D.E.S., 1988) may have been construed to herald a more

enlightened and inclusive approach to language awareness

in schools. Set within a previous context of assimilatory

practices (Fyfe, 1993), the Order seemed to affirm and

recognize the language skills of Britain’s ethnic

minority communities; it appeared that, at last, pupils

were now welcome to cross the school threshold (Bullock,

1975) with their bilingual skills intact. Yet, from the

outset, it became apparent that this Brave New World

extended no further than the continent of Europe itself…

and many inherent inequalities remained unresolved. (2004,

p.1)

The damaging consequences of various pieces of legislation in South

Africa have become evident in the schooling system where disputes

arising from different interpretations of the provisions made in

the policies tend to be resolved (or not) in courts of law (one

need only refer to the interdicts and appeals arising from the case

of Laerskool [Primary School] Mikro vs. the State in which the

latter lost between 2003-2005 successive legal attempts to

prescribe the medium of instruction for the school). These

14

reactions seem, as Janks (1990) suggested in the early 1990s about

English, to be more concerned with contests over resources and

cultural capital than about the interests of governing bodies or

departments of education. Disputes concerning language rights or

discrimination (linguistic, ethnic, cultural, racial) are highly

emotive and sensitive, whether expressed in the toyi-toyiiv, or in

court interdicts.

Perhaps unsurprisingly in the United Kingdom and in South

Africa policy documents generated in the last decade, in which the

role and development languages are enshrined, have in general been

met with a degree of cynicism by educators and HEI managers. Footit

(2005) alludes to this in the NLSiHE Report in which she states that

while HEI managers in the United Kingdom, though aware of the

National Languages Strategy, “were often extremely hostile, both to the

relatively slight space accorded to higher education within it, and

about the simultaneous removal of languages from the post-14

compulsory curriculum” (p.32). The gradual erosion of foreign

languages in school curricula, the more rapid decline in the

importance at HEI level of community languages, makes it clear that

the ‘internationalism’ espoused by HEIs in the United Kingdom is

based upon a Eurocentric conception of strategic foreign languages

that does not take account of multilingualism in Britain even

within the schooling curricula, a point returned to in the next

section. In South Africa no universities have conceived of foreign

languages as part of visions for international development.

Portuguese, French, Swahili, and Mandarin Chinese have either beeniv Toyi toyi- a phrase used to describe popular protest marches accompanied by dance in South Africa.

15

restructured into language schools and diminished, or closed. In

short the vision for language development, the critical importance

of languages in the curriculum, or the strategic importance of

foreign languages for the country, have been pushed to the

periphery of initiatives such as the UKZN language policy, which

while purporting to develop multilingualism, are actively concerned

with the development of one or other indigenous language and

English. And, even then this active support is dependent on the

State which has to date shown too little interest in taking the

matter seriously. The prospects for language practitioners remain

bleak since while policies appear benign, they are in reality

threatening through the indifference of institutions or departments

of state.

JAWS WITH NO TEETH: DEVELOPMENT WITHOUT RESOURCES

Universities have served since their establishment as repositories

of knowledge and privilege, and knowledge as inscribed through

language is used easily in the service of power (Honey, 1997).

Bernstein (1975) has shown that language is the grammar of

knowledge, and knowledge comes quite often to be the grammar of

power and class. English and Afrikaans were used in the colonial

period to further an ideology of racial inequality, manifest

especially in apartheid legislation, and educational institutions

became the means by which such ideological perspectives were

affirmed as colonial norms and values. Typically in such

circumstances language is a means of implementing and perpetuating

what Bourdieu (1990) refers to as ‘symbolic violence’, the ultimate

16

aim of which is to bring one subordinated group to a state where it

would accept as normal the hegemony of another group.

In KwaZulu-Natal, the increased currency and higher status of

isiZulu, the majority language of the province, whether as a medium

of instruction, a requirement for re-employment, or a compulsory

school or university subject, is an ideal which in light of recent

legislation will gain currency. This will be especially the case in

the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where the declared ambition is to

become the premier institution of African scholarshipv.

It is my argument that whilst the missions and policies of

South African universities remain aspirational, their formulations

require more than “commitment by academics, the top management of

institutions of higher learning, government, private sector,

students and parents for African languages to assume a meaningful

and effective role in higher education” (Ministerial Report 2004, p.19).

Nothing less than transformation in the attitudes and beliefs of

the body politic is required, but when the language of change is

experienced as coercive or is not matched by adequate support, its

credibility is questionable and it becomes instead a ‘newspeak’ or

another form of ‘symbolic violence’. Recent language policies in

South Africa and the United Kingdom are concerned with producing in

the majority of citizens the conviction that multilingualism is a

desirable characteristic of the new citizen. In South Africa the

v The ideological basis of internationalism in HEIs in the United Kingdom andthe links between policies promoting this and globalization, is reported on infinancial terms by a respondent in Footit’s report: “At the level of survivallanguages get credibility in taking forward the international policy…they[students from foreign countries] are needed for financial solvency” (2005,p.24).

17

Ministerial Report (2004) provides a rationale for its activities

stating that:

There has been a move away from the relevance of African

languages towards that of English. English has become the

language of use of the employers and those empowered,

while indigenous languages represent the poor, less

technologically advanced and thus marginalized people.

Instead of promoting these indigenous languages, the

educational arena and particularly institutions of higher

learning are responding to this situation by down-sizing

the investment, both human and financial, in the teaching

and study of African languages (2004, p.4).

In its restatement of a cliché the Report avoids acknowledgement

that this state of affairs occurs not so much as a consequence of

the spread of English, but because there have to date been adequate

policies supported by real initiatives, and real incentives to

develop indigenous languages themselves. People have ‘voted with

their feet’ for a language which appears to ensure upward mobility.

To ‘engage with the wider world’ has a different meaning in

Footit’s (2005) research, which shows that the emphasis is on the

development of internationalism in the face of diminishing interest

in foreign languages teaching and learning in the United Kingdom.

According to Footit, the pressures to ‘think local, act global’

have nevertheless not been experienced positively by higher

education where, in the face of diminishing recruitment and status,

the NLSiHE (2004) is “at best warm words, there are neither carrots

nor sticks in it” precisely because policies such as this have not

18

been supported financially by the State (Footit, 2005, p.43). In

South Africa too it remains to be seen whether the State will

actually fund the resources necessary to implement the ambitious

provisions of LiHEP (2002). The tendency to date, as I have

suggested, is that HEIs have been made to be accountable for

policies which are clearly not sustainable in terms of capacity or

resources; a willful indifference by HEIs and the State.

Sustainability, even where access to funding is limited, is not

merely a matter of ‘throwing money’ at institutions, but rather

growing and retaining scarce capacity; a direct contrast to the

tendency of placing language departments under more and more

financial pressure, or simply closing them. Footit argues that:

The shrinkage in language capacity at national and

regional level in Higher Education, with institutional

concentration of provision, and evidence of a narrow

student class profile, represents a major challenge to

the successful implementation of the Languages Strategy

nationally and regionally. Unless the unplanned

diminution of provision is publicly perceived as a matter

of national strategic concern, university managers are

likely to continue to deal with the consequences of

subject decline in purely institutional terms. Formal

mechanisms are needed to address the consequences of

changes in provision for national capacity and regional

access to languages, and to provide annual information on

developments in this area. (2005, p.3)

19

In South Africa, as in the United Kingdom, those affected by the

lack of support are the language practitioners and students

identified in this paper and in the research conducted by Footit

(2005) and Slattery (2004). And, as in the United Kingdom, HEI

managers in South Africa place pressure, especially against the

background of declining student recruitment, on such practitioners

to justify their work in ways in which physicists, clinicians, or

legal or management practitioners, rendered valuable by being in

short supply, are rarely required to. A respondent in NLSiHE says:

“We’ve reached the point where survival strategies can’t be

maintained” (Footit, 2005, p.3).

In short, the issues raised in this section have both

perceptual (the low status of languages and the human sciences in

general) and prejudicial (punitive national funding formulas)

aspects. Footit (2005, p.16) and Slattery (2004) describe

contradictory perceptions of community languages and foreign

languages, and policy provisions which, because they are not

sustainable, prejudice the development of languages whether in

schools or HEIs. The South African Ministerial Report (2004) articulates

similar concerns. Low morale in language schools and among teachers

of languages occurs precisely because initiatives designed to

support the languages (such as NLSiHE or LiHEP) do not receive

institutional, let alone State support. For Footit

the evidence … (of over 131 HEIs across the United

Kingdom) is that there has been a marked decline in the

numbers of undergraduates nationally taking languages (by

20% since 1998)…shrinkage in numbers has been unplanned…

20

and strategically important languages like Arabic and

Chinese and Japanese have declined (by 12%, 16%, and 27%)

respectively. (2005, pp.43-44)

It is perhaps thus unsurprising that the languages are also not

considered as relating to viable careers, or as essential to any

high-status professional career track. Clearly, the development of

multilingualism and internationalism in HEI language policies

requires a better coordinated, and more perceptive vision for

supporting language learning, whether in the interests of securing

a competitive edge globally, or fostering regional access to

indigenous languages. In general the picture in the United Kingdom

mirrors that in South African HEIs. As far as African and foreign

language departments are concerned there is “broad consensus …that

universities [are] fast approaching the limits of what they could

do to maintain languages provision” (2005, p.21). Suggestions from

government on how to ‘develop’ languages also merit some attention

but cannot be pursued here vi.

The South African Ministerial Report refers to the diminution in

status and numbers in indigenous African language departments as

‘balkanization’ but affirms, somewhat ironically, the need for

‘separate development’ in order to bring indigenous languages to a

level of parity with Afrikaans. In the United Kingdom the

development of competencies in another (foreign) language is

aligned with HEIs’ development of institutional international

policies where the promotion of languages is seen to be the

equivalent of becoming internationally marketable, competitive and

mobile (Footit, 2005, p.24). In South Africa LiHEP (2002) addresses

21

the need for multilingualism in indigenous African languages; the

difference being that in South Africa ‘international’ languages

(French, German, Portuguese, Mandarin) are marginalized in

institutional planning in favour of indigenous languages that

‘internationally’ are more marginal than any of these. The awkward

question to ask for indigenous languages in South Africa and in the

United Kingdom is to what extent their promotion must or will occur

at the expense of any other minor language group (international

languages over community languages, English over indigenous

languages). Furthermore, will any language want to incur the odium

of being preferred by the State over other competing languages? In

the case of Welsh and isiZulu it seems clear that even with

communities’ support the ‘official’ preferential treatment of

either language makes ambivalent the status of that language as

narrowly sectarian, nationalistic, and parochial.

vi One such suggestion is made clear in the Ministerial Report. The development ofAfrikaans, a compulsory language for schools and state employees between 1948and 1994 in South Africa, is the example used to demonstrate what might beachieved if adequate resources and development were put into indigenouslanguages:

it is worth noting that one of the arguments used against thefurther development of our indigenous languages is that theselanguages are not properly equipped. Precisely this same argumentwas made in 1912 against the use of Afrikaans at tertiary level that“Afrikaans is nie deftig genoeg nie” [Afrikaans is not fancy enough]….Theimportant lesson for our indigenous languages is that through theAfrikaans experience, we know that the use of a language as a mediumof instruction creates the demand for new terms and further providesthe opportunity to use the language (Ministerial Report, 2004, p.9).

What is disturbing about this suggestion is the failure to acknowledge that the development of Afrikaans was not only the result the deployment of resources andopportunities for further use. Its development was accompanied by an unbridled nationalism and was as much a reaction against the colonization by Britain of the Boer republics and British war policies during and after the Anglo-Boer War,as it was about the elevation of Afrikaners to parity with the English, and overall superiority over Africans.

22

To return to the draft language policy for the University of

KwaZulu-Natal: examples of the assumption that hegemony (and

therefore special rights) belongs to English were also manifest in

2004, when in the months leading up to the formation of new

governance and academic structures, the isiZulu Studies Department,

Afrikaans, and other ‘minor’ languages and disciplines objected to

the fact that English Studies did not wish to join a school of

languages. English Studies opted instead (for ‘historical’ reasons)

to join with Cultural and Media Studies and Drama. In a manner not

dissimilar to global examples of English hegemony elsewhere, or

colonial examples from a previous age, the ‘weight and power’ of a

language grouping to signal its ‘difference’ in ways damaging to

less powerful groups, has been made evident in its practices and

(dis)associations. The tendency to ‘separate development’ was

compounded further by the Vice-Chancellor in a 2004 Senate meeting,

when he stated that isiZulu Studies should free itself ‘from its

colonial legacy’, and take its rightful place in the region, and at

the University as a school in its own right. The perpetuation of

old structures and ideas, in the ‘new clothes’ of transformation,

is of course not transformation at all. This point might not be so

important finally but it nevertheless creates awareness of the

dangers of any language revival where that revival depends too

narrowly on the identity of a small grouping for its survival. It

is unlikely that students migrate to the United Kingdom to study

Welsh, or to UKZN to study isiZulu, and yet at the same time, if

universities do not have the responsibility for developing

23

indigenous languages and do not have the support to do so, where

else will such development occur or be safeguarded?

COLLABORATION BETWEEN STATE AND EDUCATION

Footit (2005) suggests that one of the advantages of the

development of ‘internationalism’ (in South Africa’s case

‘multilingualism’, given the emphasis of LiHEP on indigenous

languages) in the United Kingdom has been the drawing together of

previously single discipline departments into schools and that

structures which support such interdisciplinarity (among languages

and between language schools and other schools):

Internationalism: … Until very recently [for] most people

just meant bringing international students … more and

more universities are beginning to think about it in

terms of benefits for the community as a whole… a cross-

cultural experience…the experience has a major influence

on the domestic student…the international dimension was

represented as one of the key ways in which the

university community could understand its own identity.

(2005, p.26)

Clearly there is much to be gained from closer collaboration

between language practitioners, but that collaboration requires

support from national and institutional structures rather than

financial drivers. Footit’s research shows that university

structures and state policies can be actively damaging if they

obstruct the development, collaboration and the further integration

of languages departments. Both the NLSiHE Report (2005) and the

24

Ministerial Report (2004) note that the factors that allow for

languages to be sustained, extended and promoted are recognition

beyond the policy level: language literacy, use of language in

education and in electronic media, and finally language as an

economic resource. In addition to this, the Ministerial Report, with

its focus on the development of indigenous languages, discusses the

promotion of mother-tongue education as a way of ensuring that

languages are seen as relevant to the learning process. And yet the

gap is wide between these ‘ideas’, and the aspirations of a

university language policy: at the University of the Witwatersrand,

where for example, Sesotho Sa Leboa is promoted, there are

insufficient staff and financial support to meet the institution’s

needs. The declining numbers of students enrolling in African

languages departments [the Ministerial Report (2004, p.17) suggests a

decline of 50%] renders complex the problem of promoting such

languages without making them compulsory. Further, the ‘real’

resources required for the prosperity (not merely promotion) of

languages are intellectual, and without those resources, any amount

of government aid and institutional compulsions are unlikely to

achieve anything beyond what was achieved for Afrikaans in South

Africa; a language made compulsory for generations of white and

black learners, and held in low esteem by those very learners now

located in government and civil society. The Ministerial Report

concludes by suggesting that it is the responsibility of each HEI

to promote and develop an indigenous language within explicitly

stated time-frames “no matter how far into the future” (2004,

p.24). The NLSiHE Report differs in that Footit (2005) suggests that

25

responsibility for the realization of NLSiHE depends on more active

support from the State:

From the perspective of senior managers, encouragement

for them …involved seeing visible high-level Government

commitment, which crossed Whitehall, and provided

additional finance earmarked for languages. Without this,

ministerial exhortations…were treated with some cynicism.

(2005, p.33)

Perhaps it is thus not surprising that of all the South African

language policies I have examined only the University of

Witwatersrand’s (Wits, 2003) policy stipulates an 11-year

development period during which Sesotho Sa Leboa would be promoted.

The language diversity of Gauteng (in which Witwatersrand is

situated) makes the choice of an additional language difficult, but

the University chose to support the development of Sesotho in

recognition of the fact that isiZulu, the other dominant language

of Gauteng, has been accorded special status at the two

universities in KwaZulu-Natal (University of Zululand and the

University of KwaZulu-Natal). The policy, unlike that of the Welsh

Language Scheme is not accompanied by an implementation plan and it

is clear that, in the absence of any sustained development to alter

the status quo, the status quo will obtain dressed up as friendly

multilingualism. Policies which enable the status quo by virtue of

disempowering choice are manifold in South Africa and are not

dissimilar to Slattery’s observation regarding the choice of

community languages in schools in the United Kingdom; it is not a

real choice for either students or teachers vii.

26

CONCLUSION

The discussion in previous pages shows that, in the absence of what

Footit (2005) terms ‘visible commitment’ (structure, capacity,

resources), ‘visible damage’ occurs to languages in terms of their

provision and advancement. In other words, the choices to act or

not are neither neutral nor without consequences. In reviewing

policies in this paper it must be realized, taking into account the

critique offered by researchers, that the development of isiZulu or

Welsh needs to be carefully interrogated in relation to their

relationship with English, and community languages. In KwaZulu-

Natal there are no neat distinctions between bi- or multilingual

groups: Afrikaans and the various Indian and regional languages

(such as Swahili and Portuguese) need also to be developed and

receive attention. Crucially, isiZulu and English cannot be

supported at the expense of these languages as Slattery (2004)

notes when describing the damaging relationship between ‘lowest

status’ community, and ‘higher status’ foreign languages, in the

United Kingdom. Thus language policy at HEI level requires more

from the State than ideological support. If, as we know,

multilingualism is both desirable as a means of accessing global

communities, whilst also developing students’ cognitive abilities,

then the State must own guardianship of its smaller languages and

their value beyond the small erstwhile immigrant communities in

which they might be used, as part of its commitment to

multilingualism, and its development of an international profile.

In this light community or regional languages become resources to

27

be treasured rather than despoiled. What the SA-UK comparison

demonstrates is that no country, whether ‘central’ or ‘peripheral’,

can afford passive choices to benign neglect since these serve to

undermine the credibility of discourses concerned with inclusivity,

equity, and democracy and are ultimately damaging to the State

itself. Without such commitment, the resources and interest

available in HEIs to meet the challenges of creating a critical

citizenry capable of understanding and traversing globalization,

are diminished. The mission of the University of KwaZulu-Natal is

to be “[a] truly South African University that is academically

excellent, innovative in research, critically engaged, and

demographically representative, redressing the disadvantages,

vii For example, the University of the North’s (UN, 2003) (situated in Limpopo province) language policy recognizes that six of the eleven official languages are used within the province and acknowledges that all six are important for intercultural communication. Beyond encouraging awareness and encouraging staff to learn at least one of these languages, no further obligations or requirementsare suggested, and no implementation plan or time-frame is provided – an exampleof a passive choice which disables choice since no choice is actively supported.The University of the Orange Free State’s (UOFS, 2003) language policy recognizes that several languages are widely used in the province, including Afrikaans and English. The policy makes provision only for the use of these two languages as the medium of instruction, effectively ensuring that the vast majority of its students will learn through a second language. Sesotho is given special recognition in the document, but again, no plan or time-frame is provided for its further development. Unlike other policies, the UOFS policy hasa detailed implementation plan in terms of how and in which domains the two languages will be used, providing a framework and checklist to be used for administrative, managerial, and academic personnel. Like the other language policies, with the exception of Wits, the University of Cape Town’s (UCT, 2003) policy does not provide any indication of time-frames or development plans. Of all the policies it alone advocates a ‘straight for English’ approach to the question of language development stating that “Language and literature departments at UCT that teach South African languages other than English or international languages are expected to play a key role in exploring ways of assisting the UCT community to achieve awareness and proficiency” (2003, p.1). The development of Xhoza is mentioned but not as part of any plan for the development of multilingualism.

28

inequities, and imbalances of the past” (UKZN, 2004). In the sense

of aspiring to high status nationally and internationally, it is

not unlike its sister institutions in the United Kingdom. As in the

United Kingdom, where the development of internationalism is seen

as a means of providing new expression and direction for

universities (and their languages), so in South Africa HEIs need to

conceive of the project of developing indigenous languages in a

wider context, where all the languages offered in a particular

region and the languages which enable access to other regions can

contribute to the identity of a university in this century. A

mission document responds to the circumstances of the moment, a

vision to a more enduring imperative, but between the attainment of

redress in the present, and the aspirations to international

excellence in the future, there needs active commitment from the

State to nurture and protect endangered or impoverished languages,

since their enfeeblement renders narrower and more exclusionary the

national and institutional frame of reference, ultimately

prescribing choice and participation in the world beyond the

institution.

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