Language teaching at school in South Africa since 1994: an entry through isiZulu and English practices in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN)

National language and school policies

South Africa is a 28-year-old democracy. Still in its infancy, it has demonstrated its solidity but is still working to affirm its unity in its diversity, which is sometimes questioned on the occasion of social sparks. The end of apartheid and the arrival of a democratic regime have brought about a definite reconfiguration of its sociolinguistic landscape, opening the doors of schooling, training and employment to all South Africans. To this end, the new Constitution established in 1996 laid the foundations for an open, highly contemporary democracy, initially proposing temporary laws, then the perennial laws currently in force. The explicit desire to "right the historic wrongs of the past" by elevating nine so-called "historically disadvantaged" languages (1996 Constitution) to the rank of official languages alongside English and Afrikaans, certainly symbolized a desire to legitimize the black South African population through the recognition of multilingualism in South Africa.

Symbolically, the country's now eleven official languages affirm the equality of all South African speakers in their diversity. More pragmatically, language policies have been put in place to try and organize the country's great diversity of practices into a form of national cohesion and coherence.

The eleven official languages are distributed differently across the country and across each province, whose dominant "family languages" are very diversely distributed. Thus, while isiZulu is the home language of almost a quarter of the population, it is mainly spoken in KwaZulu-Natal and in major cities such as Johannesburg. While English is the main home language of less than 10% of the population, it is lingua franca in large parts of the country. It seems rather difficult, moreover, to be able to propose a "representative" picture of sociolinguistic practices[3] on the country's overall scale.

As the country is reorganized into nine provinces, it is the three languages most represented in each that become the languages offered in schools, thanks to the Language in Education Policy (1997:1). Each provincial government is required to use "at least two" of these three official languages, in an explicit drive to promote multilingualism and a "non-racial" nation:

"Both societal and individual multilingualism are the global norm these days, especially on the African continent. As such, this approach assumes that learning more than one language should be the general practice and principle of our society. This means that being multilingual should be a defining characteristic of being South African. This approach is also built to counter any chauvinistic or separatist ethnic particularism through mutual understanding."

In KZN, isiZulu, English and Afrikaans are the languages offered for school learning. We note that multilingualism (societal) and plurilingualism (individual) are both identified as important, and even participate in the affirmation of a common African identity for the continent and the country, even if only the term multilingualism is used (in English).



Teaching and learning isiZulu "additional language" in private school in KZN

Figure 2 - Sign in isizulu and English at the entrance to durban



"English is always the first choice"

In the KZN, isiZulu and English are largely dominant in terms of number of speakers, with Afrikaans suffering all the more from a certain stigmatization in the province. Public and private schools will not necessarily use the same language of teaching/learning. However, private schools all use the medium of English, a language that is also sought-after by parents as a synonym for economic advancement and better schooling conditions for their children. This is why Alexandra[4] points out that English will always be the first choice of language at school. If language planning is seemingly crystal-clear, its layout for languages other than English is less so.


Accessibility of isiZulu at different learning levels

In practice, language learning at school obviously does not follow the children's language repertoire, but neither does it always intervene at the level of learning desired by the pupils, They were often offered a medium language of schooling (with the status of "home language"), a language to be learned as a "first language" ("first additional language"), and possibly a second language, which was not compulsory since the medium language was one of the "at least two languages" recommended institutionally.

At the time of our surveys, Zulu was not offered as a "beginner" language at the start of high school. Pupils who became aware of the value of the language as they grew up could not start learning it. IsiZulu had to be either the language of the school or learned as a first language from secondary school, with the result that, twenty years after the start of democracy, pupils sometimes studied the better-known Afrikaans instead, by default.

Teachers of different languages were nevertheless unanimous in envisioning a progressively strong choice towards Zulu rather than Afrikaans in private schools, like Zola who comments on the pupils' choice "because they see that there's more of a future for them speaking Zulu than Afrikaans and I think we can see that here", as can Annie: "they see it, and I think they're right, as a better tool for the future [...] our Zulu population is huge!" [5].

Figure 3 - Excerpt from student questionnaire


This vision seems to be echoed in the words of the high school students questioned by questionnaire[6], through two major motives: one extrinsic through an awareness of the importance of speaking isiZulu in the future in KZN (or even in Africa), particularly in professional situations, and the other, intrinsic, through the desire to learn it in order to communicate with its speakers (thus forming part of the same linguistic community through shared practices).
For these potentially different, but eminently communicative purposes, in addition to the possibility of being able to begin appropriation during schooling, which seemed necessary, the school curriculum proposed learning a variety of isiZulu that seemed rather out of use.


Teaching standards and formative communication practices

The teaching of isiZulu as a first living language was done at an apparently strong objective level (even disconnected from practices) that often set students back, sometimes even those for whom it is a family language. The fact that a qualified teacher himself sometimes experiences difficulties raises the question of reconsidering the relevance of the variety of isiZulu then erected as an expected school standard:

Zola[7]: "the 1st Zulu language is much more difficult and it's xxx because you use certain words and in your second language classes you use basic words and the second language is more for communication and simple things and you notice that in the second language there are a lot of words borrowed from English, similar sounds, it's the same thing coming from Afrikaans for, whereas in the first language you want authentic-authentic Zulu[8] (taps the table, for emphasis) which is much more difficult [...] even I sometimes have difficulty with certain things, despite the fact that I did it as a first language".

The teaching of isiZulu remained to be developed in KZN schools, despite the pedagogical possibilities of these schools at the time (far better endowed than the public system). The question of the variety of isiZulu used as a standard for its appropriation did not seem to cover the communicative objectives nevertheless considered by teachers and students, and these are certainly evolving, at least on the initiative of practitioners and textbooks that have appeared in the last ten years.

In this respect, we can note at the same time, the exploitation in two languages of training documents for adults in the care of early childhood in rural areas (in a schooling situation or not)[9]:

.

Figure 4 - TREE training document



At the time, these leaflets already presented a valorization of isiZulu as a language of linguistic, cultural, school and family transmission with children, but also as a medium of formative knowledge for adults, sometimes already bi/pluri/lingual, in order to valorize bi/pluri/lingual practices in daily life and in training (rather than in English alone). While practices in isiZulu for training are debated, the question of learning the language for speakers is not always received as relevant.
In fact, the social representation that black South African languages do not need to be learned to be transmitted is widespread.


Vitality of isiZulu: with or without formal learning?

As with Maredi[10], many speakers of black South African languages claim that the languages will endure simply through practice within the family circle: "no language is going to DIE soon just because of English". None of the listeners who spoke that day talked about learning their own languages, although they often mentioned the fact that they would be maintained within the family. For Alexander, this represents "the syndrome of immobility":

"This state of mind is present everywhere on the African continent and manifests itself in a feeling of resignation in the face of the perceived or alleged powerlessness of local or indigenous African languages. Most people are willing to keep their mother tongue in a family, community or religious context, but do not believe that these languages can become languages of power" (2003: 10).

The representation that family languages are acquired anyway outside formal learning is quite widespread. Languages are spoken all over the country, and family and friends use them regularly, if not daily. Vernacular practices therefore seem to be a sure guarantee of linguistic vitality in the eyes of various witnesses. The focus is therefore on English.



"I'll speak my English in a Zulu manner!"


It's likely that more schoolchildren are now learning isiZulu at school in the KZN, but isiZulu speakers in their first circle are certainly turning to the appropriation of English. The reconfiguration of identity concerning isiZulu and its speakers seems to be taking place otherwise, as this Vuyo Mbuli listener attests, rather through a plural identity affirmation:

"Nkhosinathi: [...] let us continue with English BUT they must especially the English people speaking people, they must understand that I'm Zulu/ they mustn't blame my pronunciation you know I, [...] they must accept that I'm ZULU/ I'll speak my English in a Zulu manner!
Vuyo: (laughs gently)
Nkhosinathi: and that won't change/"


Appropriating English, of course, but not according to the standards expected of so-called native or international English speakers: appropriating English according to her own standards. Nkhosinathi defines himself as a Zulu, and supports the idea of English lingua franca between South Africans, but without subjection to a hetero-imposed norm. Nkhosinathi affirms the complexity (Morin) of his individual plurality, the diversity of contemporary South Africa allows for much more.



Céline Peigné, Director of the Didactique des Langues department
EA 4514 PLIDAM, EA2288 DILTEC


Bibliography

ALEXANDER N. Educational language policy and national and sub-national identities in South Africa. Guide for the development of language education policies in Europe, from linguistic diversity to plurilingual education, Reference study. France: Council of Europe, 2003

NATIONAL DPT of EDUCATION SOUTH AFRICA. Language in Education Policy, 14th July 1997[modified version]

NATIONAL GOVERNMENT of SOUTH AFRICA. The National Constitution of South Africa, 1996

PEIGNE C. : Une contextualisation du français dans la pluralité sud-africaine, approche sociolinguistique et didactique. Université François-Rabelais de Tours (UFRT), PhD thesis under the supervision of V. Castellotti, 2 Vol. 2010

STATSSA. KwaZulu-Natal : Dominant Home Language, 2001. In: STATSSA. Census 2001,
Digital Census data, Pretoria, 2003, http://www.statssa.gov.za/census2001/digiAtlas/index.html [25.01.2010]


Notes

[1] IsiZulu is a language spoken by around 25% of the population for around 12 million speakers for whom it is the first language (or one of the first languages) ; isiXhosa (around 19% for 8 million L1s), sePedi (14% for around 5 million L1s); seTswana (14% for 5 million L1s), seSotho (12% for 4 million L1s); then xiTsonga, tshiVenda, siSwati, isiNdebele for 2 to 4% of the population who speak them and 1 to 2 million first-language speakers. These languages join English (16% for 5 M L1) and Afrikaans (18% for 7 M L1) as official languages (Statssa 2001, 2011)

[2] KZN: KwaZulu-Natal, a region of South Africa including the major city Durban.

[3] Knowing that it is difficult to summarize the language practices of South Africans since they depend, in addition to individuals and social groups, on provinces, population groups and various historical legacies and trajectories

[4] The research witnesses cited here are from our thesis. Their names have been changed (Peigné 2010). Alexandra and Annie teach French, Zola teaches isiZulu.

[5] Peigné 2010, Vol II., appendices 32, 33, 35 and 41

[6] Idem 21, p. 110

[7] Idem, Vol I, 27p 324

[8] "Genuine-genuine zulu" in original version

[9] ONG TREE: Training and Resources for Early Education, thanks to Pam Picken for permission to distribute the document. https://tree-ecd.co.za/

[10] Maredi and Nkhosinathi are listeners of Vuyo Mbuli's radio program about languages (2009), they call the radio to voice their opinions (Peigné 2010, Vol II, 25b, p. 160)