The ManicaPost
Morris Mtisi
WHILE one paper’s open attack on English Language recently can be described as simply academic, balanced thinkers cannot help but smell a sense of xenophobic resentment of everything English.
Little wonder such attitudes are common! The English people fathered and mothered our colonisers. As such we have little or nothing to admire about them. At least we want to feel like we have nothing to admire about these people including their language. That is what we want to feel.
I will not mention their names or offices but that paper last week published writers who were on an open rampage, diatribe, tirade, against the English Language. Indeed full pages of long angry criticism smirking of, is it excessive patriotism or typical jingoistic remarks!
People today are now media savvy. Whether the one writing is a doctor or professor or some such fierce fundi, readers can distinguish sense from nonsense, lies from truth and jingoism from patriotism.
First, it is correct that no language is superior to another and no language is worthy to be feared or worshipped. It is also correct that “to value English more than our very own languages is tantamount to treason” and “…without our languages we are a lost generation.” Well, the assumption is that we know what ‘treason’ means and what a lost generation is. Otherwise this too in its angry choice of words is highly debatable!
The writers of these ‘impressive’ diatribes say a lot in the newspaper: “No doubt, black people were brainwashed and Christianity played an important role. Could it be wrong to say 36 years after independence, many Zimbabweans have been colonized to the bone as they try in vain to become ‘little British people’? The title of the article is THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE TRAGEDY. It contains numerous examples of how English is bad and how Zimbabweans and indeed Africans have “drowned in the Queen’s language such that they now render their own language archaic and useless.”
The author of this angry diatribe asks, “What is so special about this language and how do we identify with it as black people?” It’s amazing that he does not know. He, or is it a she, goes on to quote that Robert Moffat was fluent in Zulu and hunter Frederick Selous was fluent in Ndebele. He ends up with Roy Bennet in the tragic equation of the English language tragedy. The result is a salad, a mixture of emotion, xenophobia and jingoism. To call it academic would actually be an overstatement.
Another author professorially condemns Africans in what he calls “A sinister shackle of the African mind.” This one condemns the Biblical names for replacing African names and throws tantrums in the face of all colonial names on farms, townships and suburbs and streets. He bemoaned Aneas Chigwedere’s lack of support in his effort to change the names of schools from colonial ones to those of our own African heroes.
Another author in the same newspaper eloquently demystifies the mother-tongue in economics arguing he has navigated all the corners of Economics in Shona. He bravely submits that language carries within it a people’s history, culture and experiences. Most interesting of all is the argument, it is a notion really, that when the Bible says, “Honour your father and mother” it means “In promoting our languages, we honour our father and mother and this has a bearing on our survival or extinction as a people. Marvellous, isn’t it?
You will probably still remember my opening remarks, “People today are media savvy. Whether one is a doctor or professor…readers can distinguish sense from nonsense…jingoism from patriotism. Xenophobia even!
Yet another fundi argues, “Give me one country which developed to a powerful nation using a foreign colonial language as official language? The painful truth here is, there is no such country on earth.” He asks, “If we are to inspire these majorities to dream big dreams centred on development, is it not easier to do so in our own languages rather than in alien tongues?” He also asks, “If during the nationalist struggles we used our languages to mobilise ourselves against the foreign powers who exploited our labour and looted our resources, why should we not use the same language to develop ourselves?” He concludes by quoting Mawuna Koutonin who says, “Africans are lazy and so well brainwashed to believe that our education and political systems should be in European languages to be modern.”
The paper in question covered wide volumes of space zeroing on one issue: English Bad, Vernacular Languages Good.
I must say everything said or written was impressive…very impressive. How much of it was pragmatic and sensible is something else.
First, the problem with ‘political’ academics whose ‘sense’ lies in the lust to be politically correct is to think they are always right and theirs is the only argument that there is. They are intellectual bulldozers,(sorry I could not find a better word) whose opinion is fact. They want their attitudes and tempers to rub on to everyone who hears them or reads them. Civilisation respects other people’s views no matter how divergent perceptions about something or some idea maybe.
I don’t subscribe to the thinking that languages make people. I believe people make languages. As such the wickedness or devilish nature of human beings is skin deep. It has nothing to do with their language. If our colonizers used Shona or Venda or Ndebele, they still could have colonised us and looted our resources. And we could have been colonised and enslaved even if we were speakers of English.
To make people believe that our enemies are our enemies because of their language or dialects is an underestimation of people’s intelligence. We don’t love people or care for them or hate them in a language. Of course we can use the language to express all of it, but it is the heart that commands the actions, not the language. All this, good or bad, is done in the heart, mind and soul. Even people who don’t have or speak a language, if there are any, are capable of brutalizing others.
Corruption is not a result of Shona or English, German, Portuguese or Italian. It is a result of mankind’s carnal sin, greed, selfishness, call it what you may. But it certainly has nothing to do with the language they speak. When snakes strike people whom they do not eat at all, is it because they speak English? Well, maybe that is the reason. But would they not bite people if they spoke Shona?
To argue that the English colonized us because they spoke English is to poorly simplify academic analysis.
Because we must begrudge those who enslaved us, must we also hate their language as if colonialism was language and not deeds? If the Shona people, whoever these are, are thieves and corrupt despots, is that fine because they speak Shona? If this Shona gobbles up other dialects and see them as if they are not spoken by real people is that right because there is no English involved?
If it is wrong to view English as superior to other languages, what is right about viewing Shona as superior to Ndau, Ndebele, Venda or Tshangaan? Are regionalism and tribalism fine so long as English is not involved? Are intolerance and cultural or ethnic snobbishness fine so long as English is not involved?
Are people who speak Chinese, German or Portuguese right if they enslave, exploit and loot other people’s resources and treat them like second hand humans, so long as they don’t speak English? What does language have to do with skin deep wickedness?
Of course English is not a religion, it is not God who must be feared and worshipped? But to waste time being xenophobic about it instead of dealing with the innate ills of human nature, and dealing with real issues that are serious challenges in life is not being intelligent either.
It jars in the ears of those who are open-minded, serious about life and realistic about being real and sensible. It is intelligent nonsense to those who are neither emotional nor jingoistic.
Do not miss Part 2 of another viewpoint of view on the pros of English Language: In Defense of English Language. Watch the space! All those who only see English as a tragedy, may for the first time see and appreciate what is developmental about our coloniser’s language; about the Queen’s language without the queen; about the language without its owners and first language speakers. Watch the space!
