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According to the outgoing director of the British Council in Namibia, Patience Mahlalela, the Afrikaans language is responsible for the slow development of English in schools and the general public in the country.

“Too much Afrikaans is still spoken by everyone. This is very detrimental to the development of English as the official language in the country in general. But, as long as the political will is there and the willingness of the people persists, the English language will eventually take its rightful place as a communication tool.”

My question is, is it right that the British council seeks to promote English in a way that sees indigenous languages as a problem? An obstable in the way of English dominating everywhere and everything even more than it is already?

I don’t think it is right, and I think we should name it as it is: neo-colonialism.

Why should English, a world language with powerful financial, technological and military factors that favour it be promoted? When will British people begin to seek the promotion and survival of small languages instead of trying to stamp them out?

When I look at the way information technology topics predominate at social news sites, I wonder if that is really what their creators intended.
What about people who don’t have a major interest in that - do they participate? I don’t think many do.
What if 90% of social news site users are IT - people, I sometimes wonder.
When I think that I cannot help remember former South African president John Vorster’s words about sports sanctions: “Well, we’ll just play with ourselves”, he said!

I remain fascinated by the letter below to Business Day, which I archive here because I know Business Day - like most if not all on-line SA newspapers, just drop content from their website. It was written in a time when the Native Club, and its memberhip was being debated in the press.

Posted to the web on: 09 June 2006
Noxious role

The current public debate around intellectuals calls to mind Paul Johnson’s conclusion in Intellectuals, in which he outlines the noxious role of intellectuals over the ages.

“I detect a growing tendency among ordinary people to dispute the right of academics, writers and philosophers, eminent though they may be, to tell us how to behave and conduct our affairs. The belief seems to be spreading that intellectuals are no wiser as mentors, or worthier as exemplars, than the witch doctors or priests of old.

“I share that scepticism. A dozen people picked at random on the street are at least as likely to offer sensible views on moral and political matters as a cross-section of the intelligentsia.

“But I would go further. One of the key lessons of our (past) tragic century, which has seen so many millions of innocent lives sacrificed in schemes to improve the lot of humanity, is — beware intellectuals. Not only should they be kept away from the levers of power, they should also be objects of particular suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice.

“Beware committees, conferences and leagues of intellectuals. Distrust public statements issued from their serried ranks. Discount their verdicts on political leaders. For intellectuals, far from being highly individualistic and nonconformist people, follow certain regular patterns of behaviour. They are often ultraconformist within the circles formed by those whose approval they seek and value.

“This is what makes them, en masse, so dangerous, for it enables them to create climates of opinion and prevailing orthodoxies, which themselves often generate irrational and destructive courses of action.

“Above all, we must at all times remember what intellectuals habitually forget: that people matter more than concepts and must come first. The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas.”

Kerry Swift
Johannesburg

Below is part of a e-mail chain letter I received - It uses techniques of propaganda, but though I could see that, it still struck a note with me, particularly in view of Jack Straw’s pathetic admition that he always asks his female Muslim constituents who wear the niqab to take their headscarves off during consultations with him.
Jacob Dlamini wrote an interesting piece in Business Day about this: Britain unveils its prejudices against Muslim women. However, I would say that Dlamini is too soft on Straw, who claims to “feel uncomfortable” if he does not see their faces. One would not think a powerful, senior politician can become uncomfortable so easily, and I would say he his clearly up to something else - some said he is trying to raise his profile for the deputy -premiership under Gordon Brown. Whatever it is he is up to seems sinister to me, as he will have known, or should have known what the reaction would be. Is he so keen on on his career as to disregard the consequences for Muslims in Britain and the West.

Ever wondered why?

Why a nun can be covered from head to toe in order to devote herself to God?

But when Muslimah does the same she oppressed

Any girl can go to university wearing what she wills and have her rights and freedom?

But when Muslimah wears a Hijab they prevent her from entering her university!

—(end email chain letter)—

The British like it when people from other backgrounds and races become exactly like them. In fact they fully expect it, and cannot stand the otherness of other people. Why is it that I can’t get over that? Certainly, Afrikaners and other peoples are seldom any better.
It must be the way the British are always on the moral high ground, condescending to ‘help’ others to adopt British attitudes, British principles and the English language. The way English people can critcise America for attacking Iraq, astonishingly forgetting that Britain attacked and occupies Iraq too.

Update:
‘The most tiresome argument in this whole debate is that the niqab makes white, middle-class English people feel “uncomfortable” or “threatened”. Well, I want to say, what a load of whingeing wusses. Threatened by drunken football hooligans or muggers - that I can understand. But threatened by a woman quietly going about her business in a veil?’ - Timothy Garton Ash

To John Matshika. When I read your piece about how disconcerting you found it to be at Aardklop, I remembered the time I was in Burkina Faso with an English colleague. It was his first visit to Africa, and (for the first few days at least) he was at least as disconcerted and intimidated as you were at Aardklop.
He could not distinguish the various individuals we were working with - they all seemed to scare him, even though they were not making any attempt whatsoever to be intimidating.

Which is funny, because you have very much in common - the way you express yourself, your sense of humour, everything that is discernable about you from your writing, seems English. I guess the English just have a problem with non-Englishness.

Watching a news item about Mark Thatcher’s trial I began to understand something about the ANC led government. The BBC cameras focussed on the court buiding where this short trial took place, and showed a hasty cleanup operation taking place. Grime was being removed from the brass letters on the buiding. Clearly, someone realised that the attention of the UK was going to be on that building - hence the cleanup.
And so it is again now with all the new stories we read about govenment - even Mbeki himself -suddenly taking an interest in SA’s violent crime problem. Yep, it is because the World Cup is coming our country.

World, and particularly British, approval matters more than the lives of those who have been maimed or tortured to death in their houses and on their farms.

When reading comments by South Africans on Moneyweb’s brain-dead forum I feel ashamed. Basically just about every participant uses his anonymity to make hate speech about his fellow South Africans. And it is not just at Moneyweb, but every other SA forum I’ve seen is the same - ‘diabolical’ as described by the creator of Muti
Considering how black and white, English and Afrikaner usually act towards each other (with courtesy, in my experience), I wonder whether Moneyweb should get away with this kind of sensationalism.

They might argue that an outlet of these bitter emotions is needed. But I suggest their anonymous pit is not the right place. A handful of poisonous people are given a forum, and we all end up thinking that this is how much THE OTHER really hate us.

No-one emerges from these mud-slinging matches informed or inspired. But then, it is much the same with Moneyweb’s poor but sensationalist opinion pieces too.

I wrote something about JP Landman in Afrikaans. You can also get an idea of what its about here.

1.  Get your photo published, including on the Web.
2.  The photo should be unusual in some way:

Use a prop such as a cigar and an arrogant, ‘don’t mess with me’- stare (David Bullard)

***
 
Clive Simpkins doing the stare (not as convincingly)

***

Clive Simpkins posing

***

Or use an unusual angle, with a glimpse of your palace in a gholfing estate in the background (Dan Roodt).

***
3.  Write something really contemptuous about some group you hope won’t do anything back.

CAFOD’s Golden Rules for gold mining are laudable, and I doubt that any reasonable person could disagree with them. The problem with CAFOD is that these rules are not what you see in the advertisements - only a headline-grabbing: “Gold mining is one of the world’s dirtiest industries”. That is all that 90% or more readers of the ads will register from the campaign. Only the small percentage who go further and read their many web pages on the subject will see the golden rules and what the campaign is supposed to be about.

Although green activists tend to say things like ‘pollution damage the poor most’, they tend give insufficient weight to the fact that capitalist mining and industry - brutal as it may be - provide real jobs to people who might otherwise have had none.
The only way for green activists (who are almost exclusively from wealthy backgrounds and countries), to avoid trampling on the employment needs of the poor, is to involve them in the campaign - from planning to execution. In this way a sensational headline such as the one CAFOD chose could have been avoided.
—
I have written to CAFOD about this, and I assume that their lack of response does indeed mean they have not consulted anyone from gold mining communities.