The role of Afrikaans in Namibia
Afrikaans and English were till 20 March 1990 the two official languages in Namibia. The next day, on Independence Day, Afrikaans lost its official status. In spite of this, the Afrikaans language is alive and well in Namibia today. It continues to play an important role in society.
For the past 30 years, Afrikaans has been treated by government as just one of the 12 ethnic languages in Namibia (excluding sign language). This in spite of the fact that Afrikaans has certain properties which none of the other ethnic languages have.
Government sincerely wishes that English becomes the most spoken language in Namibia. Indeed, it would be very good if this could happen. English, after all, is the most important language internationally. A hindering factor, however, is that proficiency in English is growing very slowly. The language was rarely used in Namibia before independence. It is still very difficult to familiarise particularly children in rural areas with the English language.
The constitution requires schools to guarantee that learners will become proficient in English. The language policy requires that every learner takes two languages as subjects for passing grades 10 to 12. English is compulsory and the other language is mostly the mother tongue, or otherwise the chosen home language since many families are multi-ethnic. The second language may also be a language spoken widely in the area. The learning subjects are taught through English medium.
Implementing policies
It is one thing to put a policy on paper; it is another matter to implement it successfully. The implementers of the new language policy in schools, the teachers, were not prepared for this major change.
Like almost all Namibians, the teachers themselves could hardly speak English properly when Namibia became independent. The writers of the language policy for Namibian schools were mainly expatriates in the United Nations Namibia Institute in Lusaka, Zambia. Teachers should have been involved very early during the drafting phase of the new policy. It would have helped to facilitate the implementation process, but they were deliberately excluded.
The new government did not want input or criticism from teachers. So, the new government decided to install the new language policy immediately and quickly without consulting teachers, whose knowledge of English was limited. In doing this, the language policy for Namibian schools became a holy cow.
Something that is holy is considered to be perfect, elevated, untouchable and above all criticism.
The verge of collapse
But time has run out. The education ministry is desperate to find the reason for the poor grade 10 and 12 examination results every year. For the past 33 years, they have been shifting the blame from the teachers to the learners to the parents, but the drooping holy cow is now on the verge of collapse. She has produced far too little; it seems she is almost barren.
The ministry seems to be stuck and desperate to revive the limping cow.
The question is: Are Namibians ashamed of their ethnic languages, being their mother tongues? Do they not know that their children will learn to speak, read and write English faster if they were also simultaneously given a chance to learn to read and write their own mother tongues better? Children should not be weaned off their home language/mother tongue so quickly; home language-based bi-lingual teaching should rather be extended until grade seven. The model we have at the moment since 1990 is called Early Exit Home Language-Based Education (EEHLE), which lasts for only grades one to three or four. This is far too short.
What I am calling for is a bi-lingual home language-based education extended until at least grade seven; this model is called Late Exit Home Language-Based Bi-Lingual Education (LEHLBE).
Why has the language policy not been changed to LEHLBE model a long time ago? Our children can’t spell – not in their home language nor English.
We are sitting on a ticking time bomb. Too many young learners are dropping out of school. Government is very vocal at the beginning of each year to inform the nation that almost 100% of all seven-year-olds have registered for grade one, but never talks about the drop-out rate.
The fact is that only half of those who registered for grade one seven years before register for grade eight. What happened to the rest? Where are they, what are they doing?
Some start dropping out already as of grade one, many after grade three or four when their education switches from home language-based education to pure English medium overnight.
Hungry, angry, unemployed
Having dropped out of school, these children join the crowd of hungry, angry, unemployed youths. Many of the girls in this group become mothers too early; many of the boys start stealing cattle or committing other criminal acts. No woman in her right mind will want to be involved with them.
So, sexually-frustrated, unemployed men resort to violence to satisfy their urges. No wonder the government is trying in vain to curb domestic violence.
It is necessary that children with normal intelligence remain in school at least until they pass grade 10. Most of them do their best to learn to speak understandable English, but it often sounds more like Namlish; many can’t read and write properly.
While a good proficiency in English for grade 12 is one important requirement for admission to institutions of higher learning, there are many school-leavers after grades 10 and 12 who do not need a high symbol for English. Just a pass in English should suffice for further training in the applied sciences, in technical subjects and in the para-professional field.
Exciting potential
But back to Namlish. It has exciting potential. It may develop into a kind of Swahili, eventually spoken by all the Namibian ethnicities. This does not imply that I am pleading for the transfer of pure Swahili to Namibia, it is too East African, but am of the opinion that Namlish could function the same way as Swahili.
Namlish already contains Oshiwambo, Afrikaans, Khoekhoegowab, even some clicks, German and English. The future for Namlish looks very promising.
Namibia is a small nation of only 2.6 million inhabitants. Our economy is small. We don’t need many young people with degrees with no future, hanging around unemployed. Namibia is in dire need of para-professionals and technicians. They do not need a high symbol in English - a basic proficiency will suffice, a kind of “working English”.
Not everybody needs grade 12, grade 10 will suffice to be taught many of the trades.
We do not need so many universities offering qualifications with no future - we need more technical colleges and vocational training centres. The entry requirement for tertiary academic education to universities should be made more difficult, not less difficult. Requirements for entry to university should not be lowered, but made more stringent and require an A or a B for English in grade 12 for admission.
Many Namibians, some even with doctoral degrees, cannot write faultless English. Some are sitting in top jobs but their use of English grammar and spelling is poor. Even government officials such as school principals, senior education officers and bankers send out letters with serious grammatical errors.
Namibia, like all Anglophone African countries in Africa, will never achieve more than a national 50% standard-English proficiency. This percentage also applies to Francophone countries with French, and Lusophone countries with Portuguese.
What about Afrikaans?
And what about Afrikaans? Many Namibians whose proficiency in English is poor or nil can speak, read and write Afrikaans very well. The majority of Afrikaans-speakers in Namibia were not white racists, but were part of the oppressed.
Today, Afrikaans is the mother tongue of Coloured people, the Rehoboth Basters and some of the whites, but it is spoken by the majority of white people. It is also the writing and reading language of most Khoekhoegowab speakers. Next to Oshiwambo and Khoekhoegowab, it is most widely-spoken mother tongue in Namibia and is still the most spoken language in Namibia, since 1796 when the Oorlam Afrikaner from South Africa crossed the border to Namibia (Dierks, Klaus, Chronologie der Namibischen Geschichte, 2000: 13).
Afrikaans meets the status of being the lingua franca. The requirements for such status are: The language must be spread over a large area; must be maintained there for a considerable period; must be spread over a multilingual area, and must confer benefits of a material or practical advantage (Brosnahan as quoted by Harlech-Jones, Brian 2000:73).
The benefit of speaking Afrikaans was that it served – and still serves - as the language of inter-racial and inter-ethnic communication in Namibia for the last 227 years. English will eventually take over this role, but that will take time.
**Professor Andree-Jeanne Tötemeyer is an academic and creative writer of poetry, plays and stories for adults and children. She is the winner of the 2019 Windhoek Woordfees prize and the 2021 ATKV Oswald Theart trophy.
For the past 30 years, Afrikaans has been treated by government as just one of the 12 ethnic languages in Namibia (excluding sign language). This in spite of the fact that Afrikaans has certain properties which none of the other ethnic languages have.
Government sincerely wishes that English becomes the most spoken language in Namibia. Indeed, it would be very good if this could happen. English, after all, is the most important language internationally. A hindering factor, however, is that proficiency in English is growing very slowly. The language was rarely used in Namibia before independence. It is still very difficult to familiarise particularly children in rural areas with the English language.
The constitution requires schools to guarantee that learners will become proficient in English. The language policy requires that every learner takes two languages as subjects for passing grades 10 to 12. English is compulsory and the other language is mostly the mother tongue, or otherwise the chosen home language since many families are multi-ethnic. The second language may also be a language spoken widely in the area. The learning subjects are taught through English medium.
Implementing policies
It is one thing to put a policy on paper; it is another matter to implement it successfully. The implementers of the new language policy in schools, the teachers, were not prepared for this major change.
Like almost all Namibians, the teachers themselves could hardly speak English properly when Namibia became independent. The writers of the language policy for Namibian schools were mainly expatriates in the United Nations Namibia Institute in Lusaka, Zambia. Teachers should have been involved very early during the drafting phase of the new policy. It would have helped to facilitate the implementation process, but they were deliberately excluded.
The new government did not want input or criticism from teachers. So, the new government decided to install the new language policy immediately and quickly without consulting teachers, whose knowledge of English was limited. In doing this, the language policy for Namibian schools became a holy cow.
Something that is holy is considered to be perfect, elevated, untouchable and above all criticism.
The verge of collapse
But time has run out. The education ministry is desperate to find the reason for the poor grade 10 and 12 examination results every year. For the past 33 years, they have been shifting the blame from the teachers to the learners to the parents, but the drooping holy cow is now on the verge of collapse. She has produced far too little; it seems she is almost barren.
The ministry seems to be stuck and desperate to revive the limping cow.
The question is: Are Namibians ashamed of their ethnic languages, being their mother tongues? Do they not know that their children will learn to speak, read and write English faster if they were also simultaneously given a chance to learn to read and write their own mother tongues better? Children should not be weaned off their home language/mother tongue so quickly; home language-based bi-lingual teaching should rather be extended until grade seven. The model we have at the moment since 1990 is called Early Exit Home Language-Based Education (EEHLE), which lasts for only grades one to three or four. This is far too short.
What I am calling for is a bi-lingual home language-based education extended until at least grade seven; this model is called Late Exit Home Language-Based Bi-Lingual Education (LEHLBE).
Why has the language policy not been changed to LEHLBE model a long time ago? Our children can’t spell – not in their home language nor English.
We are sitting on a ticking time bomb. Too many young learners are dropping out of school. Government is very vocal at the beginning of each year to inform the nation that almost 100% of all seven-year-olds have registered for grade one, but never talks about the drop-out rate.
The fact is that only half of those who registered for grade one seven years before register for grade eight. What happened to the rest? Where are they, what are they doing?
Some start dropping out already as of grade one, many after grade three or four when their education switches from home language-based education to pure English medium overnight.
Hungry, angry, unemployed
Having dropped out of school, these children join the crowd of hungry, angry, unemployed youths. Many of the girls in this group become mothers too early; many of the boys start stealing cattle or committing other criminal acts. No woman in her right mind will want to be involved with them.
So, sexually-frustrated, unemployed men resort to violence to satisfy their urges. No wonder the government is trying in vain to curb domestic violence.
It is necessary that children with normal intelligence remain in school at least until they pass grade 10. Most of them do their best to learn to speak understandable English, but it often sounds more like Namlish; many can’t read and write properly.
While a good proficiency in English for grade 12 is one important requirement for admission to institutions of higher learning, there are many school-leavers after grades 10 and 12 who do not need a high symbol for English. Just a pass in English should suffice for further training in the applied sciences, in technical subjects and in the para-professional field.
Exciting potential
But back to Namlish. It has exciting potential. It may develop into a kind of Swahili, eventually spoken by all the Namibian ethnicities. This does not imply that I am pleading for the transfer of pure Swahili to Namibia, it is too East African, but am of the opinion that Namlish could function the same way as Swahili.
Namlish already contains Oshiwambo, Afrikaans, Khoekhoegowab, even some clicks, German and English. The future for Namlish looks very promising.
Namibia is a small nation of only 2.6 million inhabitants. Our economy is small. We don’t need many young people with degrees with no future, hanging around unemployed. Namibia is in dire need of para-professionals and technicians. They do not need a high symbol in English - a basic proficiency will suffice, a kind of “working English”.
Not everybody needs grade 12, grade 10 will suffice to be taught many of the trades.
We do not need so many universities offering qualifications with no future - we need more technical colleges and vocational training centres. The entry requirement for tertiary academic education to universities should be made more difficult, not less difficult. Requirements for entry to university should not be lowered, but made more stringent and require an A or a B for English in grade 12 for admission.
Many Namibians, some even with doctoral degrees, cannot write faultless English. Some are sitting in top jobs but their use of English grammar and spelling is poor. Even government officials such as school principals, senior education officers and bankers send out letters with serious grammatical errors.
Namibia, like all Anglophone African countries in Africa, will never achieve more than a national 50% standard-English proficiency. This percentage also applies to Francophone countries with French, and Lusophone countries with Portuguese.
What about Afrikaans?
And what about Afrikaans? Many Namibians whose proficiency in English is poor or nil can speak, read and write Afrikaans very well. The majority of Afrikaans-speakers in Namibia were not white racists, but were part of the oppressed.
Today, Afrikaans is the mother tongue of Coloured people, the Rehoboth Basters and some of the whites, but it is spoken by the majority of white people. It is also the writing and reading language of most Khoekhoegowab speakers. Next to Oshiwambo and Khoekhoegowab, it is most widely-spoken mother tongue in Namibia and is still the most spoken language in Namibia, since 1796 when the Oorlam Afrikaner from South Africa crossed the border to Namibia (Dierks, Klaus, Chronologie der Namibischen Geschichte, 2000: 13).
Afrikaans meets the status of being the lingua franca. The requirements for such status are: The language must be spread over a large area; must be maintained there for a considerable period; must be spread over a multilingual area, and must confer benefits of a material or practical advantage (Brosnahan as quoted by Harlech-Jones, Brian 2000:73).
The benefit of speaking Afrikaans was that it served – and still serves - as the language of inter-racial and inter-ethnic communication in Namibia for the last 227 years. English will eventually take over this role, but that will take time.
**Professor Andree-Jeanne Tötemeyer is an academic and creative writer of poetry, plays and stories for adults and children. She is the winner of the 2019 Windhoek Woordfees prize and the 2021 ATKV Oswald Theart trophy.
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