What national language?

The discourse around the teaching of Ikalanga language has been shrouded in a haze of lies and deceit. Why this is so is quite simple to explain. People who would not deserve the privileges they currently enjoy were merit to be the only criterion for advancement, now feel threatened by new exposes concerning the true status of languages spoken in Botswana, and are therefore lashing out wildly in all directions in an attempt to save their ill-gotten privileges.

What we are saying is that Setswana is not, has never been, the national language of Botswana. The national language of Botswana, post-Independence is English. The declaration by the Setswana speakers that Setswana is the national language is a fraud; it never reflected the reality on the ground before the Europeans arrived in Southern Africa. It does not reflect the reality even now, despite close to 50 years of forcing Setswana down the throats of the population and manipulating statistics to justify the fraud.

In the Telegraph newspaper of October 16th Dr. Otlogetswe writes in his column, The Linguist Chair:

 “Science is a systematic enterprise based on observation, testable explanations & claims and reproducible experiments. Glaring observable occurrences have been seriously and repeatedly ignored.”

He continues further down in the same article:

“Botswana has a very small population and has a high linguistic diversity. The country has 28 languages spoken by about 2 million people. Setswana as the national language is spoken by over 80 % of the country as either a first, second or .....”

An incident that obviously qualifies as “science” according to Dr. Otlogetswe’s definition, and that seriously questions his statistics happened last week. I went into an Election registration booth. A Kalanga-born-and-speaking girl assisted me. I spoke in Kalanga, but she answered back in Setswana. When I switched to English, she answered back in English. I never said anything in Setswana language in that office. At the end of my registration she handed me the record of the exercise. I was shocked to find that she had recorded that the “interview” had been conducted in Setswana! I asked her why she had written that and her answer was that they had been instructed that for all “locals” they should write Setswana language!

You see, these are the blatant lies that the Setswana speakers tell the world about the linguistic diversity of our country. The compulsion upon our people to learn Setswana language robs our kids of the chance to develop their English language skills. It denies them the chance to broaden their world view. It creates intellectually stunted beings.

What we are saying to the Tswana speakers is that if such stunting is the price we have to pay for having a “national” language other than English, let that “national” language be the language we speak from birth – Ikalanga. Keep the Setswana language that you speak from birth as your national language; we don’t need it.