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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?

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.

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)

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Clive Simpkins doing the stare (not as convincingly)

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Clive Simpkins posing

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

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

This can happen to anyone who writes. You write something, and when people read it (perhaps including you, later on), they see merely a weak piece that reveals a lot about you, the writer, instead of something that is informative or wise.

Take the case of Clive Simpkins’ article in which he argues that Afrikaans should be banished from the education system.
In his haste to have his go at Afrikaans, he states that ‘Afrikaans is still a compulsory subject at school’ - a lie that is easily disproved. How will this lie reflect on Moneyweb’s journalism?

When Afrikaners and Afrikaans are being targeted by the wealthy English-speaking elites, we don’t claim racism, because we are the same race in many cases. But it seems to me that to dismiss the rights of a group in such a way is the same kind of thing as racism - to target a group and try to step on them. Unfortunately for Clive, his discrimination is now published for the world to see.

He then goes on to say that African languages should be taught instead (along with English) - nothing wrong with that of course, but does it tell us something about Clive wanting to suck up to black people, and perhaps even his fears (as a white person) for his career?

In the past, paid columnist were protected from themselves by sub-editors. It seems that newspapers’ response to blogging (more blogging by their own columnists), cause editorial control to fall by the wayside. However, what difference then between a paid columnist and an ordinary blogger?

Storymakers
The BBC’s Storymakers seems to be always presented by a black person, but why is he called “Byron Wordsworth”, and another one is called “Blake Wordsworth”?
This reminds me of the words of Patrice Naiambana:
“scores of African actors who now ripple across our screens albeit in RP, cockney or some other form of english context that remain culturally indistinguishable from white actors”
Is the only good African one that becomes culturally British, or is this about children of Jamaicans who are now so integrated in the UK that they don’t mind being black Englishmen? I can’t figure it out, but it seems disappointing both ways.

Noddy
I wondered for a while if Enyd Blyton grew up in South Africa, or is the idea of a scary underclass universal. The baddies in the stories, the gremlins or golliwogs, live in poverty on the edge of the town, township-style. Every now and then, they are up to tricks to steal something from the clearly privileged but silly Noddy. When this happens, Big-ears or Mr Plod rally to rescue him.
The episode I disliked most, was one where two giraffes, talking in very irritating English upper class voices, refused to wear scarves. If African animals can’t be characters that are culturally African, can they not at least be less annoying English types?

Bob the Builder
But the British have moved on from Noddy, and he is thankfully not too popular anymore. This progress should be recognised, and I think this is mostly due to the influence of the Left and feminists. The BBC’s Bob the Builder, for example, is kind when necessary, firm when that is called for, but mostly he is enterprising, enthusiastic and takes a great deal of pleasure from his work. I have actually worked with English people like Bob - you have to like them, because they seem to know exactly what their role in the world is, and are neither vain, nor suffer from low self-esteem. And they have a strong sense of fairness.
The music in Bob the Builder is great, and the other characters are all very interesting. This would be a good series for the SABC to import or imitate.

Adventures of the Little Red Train - Benedict Blathwayt
I love these books! The illustrations are magic, capturing just about everything that is visually interesting in the UK. I doubt that a children’s book with better illustrations exist. You can still discover new detail when reading them the 50th time!
The human hero, Duffy, isn’t too bright, and the little Red Train isn’t a character like Thomas the Tank Engine. The text is sparse (I don’t even read it - I tell the story in my own words.) But values such as community spirit, the common good and the advantages of public transport shine through in the illustrations.
My favourite is The Runaway Train - it has an exciting, action -filled plot and has the best illustrations too. I admire the scene where the Little Red Train drives back, and everything that you have seen previously is now seen from the other side. That beautiful drawing alone must have taken weeks if not months to perfect.
I wish someone from South Africa could draw SA in this way. I think it could potentially be very profitable, because the international public loves reading stories from other countries (see next section).

Handa’s Surprise
Handa’s Hen
by Eileen Browne
These books are so beautiful, even if you don’t have children you’ll want to buy them. They show how beautiful Africa is and the harmony of African village life. Handa’s Surprise is very popular, and is available in 16 languages.

Dougal’s Deep sea diary
Simon Bartram
A great story with some truly sublime illustrations, such as one where rays of sunshine illuminate Atlantis in the distance, with some hills, whales and a mermaid deep under the sea.
But this makes the way Atlantis is drawn when Dougal actually gets there, all the more dissappointing and incomprehensible. Characters seem to be deliberately ugly, and one woman is actually blowing bubble-gum. There is nothing magical about this Atlantis, and I’ll probably never understand why the English are so uncomfortable with beauty that it has to be spoiled in some way. Or is this not just the English, but a fashion of our time?

A secret of children’s books
The other day, I started telling a story to my 2 -year old son, making it up as I went, but tried to be fairly boring because I wanted to talk him to sleep. To my surprise, he liked it so much that he asked for it again the next couple of nights, which goes to show that he is getting something different than a good plot from the experience - it is more about attention, closeness and language development. So it seems crucial that stories for children should be enjoyable to the parents, because that encourages them to read the stories more. Children have an amazing capacity to listen to the same stories again and again - it must be important for their language development.
I can see myself easily reading The Runaway Train or Handa’s Surprise another 50 times, but it is hard not to hide the Noddy books on top of a high cupboard!

Notes:
The Adventures of the Little Red Train is published by Red Fox
Handa’s Surprise first published by Walker books. Also published by Mantra Publishing.
Dougal’s Deep sea diary is published by Templar Publishing
Patrice Naiambana is known for (amongst others) In Exile and
The man who commited thought

In a previous post, I wrote about the predicted demise of African languages in South Africa.
For a while I thought that perhaps the Prospect magazine article does not take into account the official status of some South African languages in our neighboring countries. I thought surely the survival of siSwati, Sesotho and Setswana are guaranteed because in countries where those languages are spoken by the vast majority of the population, and where they have official status, there should be no problem. I thought that these countries and their universities would eventually become the intellectual base for these languages, also for South Africans who speak siSwati, Sesotho and Setswana.
But what are the facts? I’m not keen to legitimize the CIA by using their “World Factbook”, but as a quick reference it is useful. According to the Factbook, the status is as follows:
Lesotho: English is the official language
Botswana: English is the official language
Swaziland: English (official, government business conducted in English), but siSwati is also official, though what that means is unclear if government business is English.

The situation on the ground might be different from what these facts suggest, but I will not be surprised if the Universities (and even schools) in these countries are English. This suggests to me that among South African languages, only Afrikaans has a desire to live. The others will still be around in at most 100 years. But I think they will be extinct in about 200 years.