The following article from the Durban(?) newspaper The Independent was seen on http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=105&art_id=vn20050423090738822C938501 (thanks to a Google alert)... DZO
Indigenous language plan hitch The Independent http://www.tios.co.za/ April 23 2005 at 11:35AM By Zukile Majova A shortage of colleges teaching African languages could forestall the government's plan to have more public servants speaking them. A government-appointed commission on language policy headed by the University of Cape Town's vice-chancellor, Njabulo Ndebele, advised this month that South Africans wanting to work for government or state institutions should be competent in at least one indigenous African language. The intention is to fight for the souls of indigenous African languages, which President Thabo Mbeki says are not spoken enough in schools, parliament, provincial legislatures, municipalities or other public and private institutions. However, the down side to the proposal is the fact that most provinces do not have accredited institutions to teach the languages. For instance, in KwaZulu-Natal the only way future public servants could get lessons in isiZulu is to enrol at a technikon or university for lessons at third-language level. In most universities one can only enrol for African languages while studying towards other qualifications. KwaZulu-Natal Director of Language Services Bongumenzi Mpungose said the public servants could enrol at universities and technikons, while other departments offered literacy courses by hiring private service providers. The University of KwaZulu-Natal was the only university that offered individual courses in indigenous languages, while the University of Zululand was in the process of doing so, Mpungose said. "The problem is that although some of the literacy programmes have been running for the past 10 years, we still do not have a way of assessing their success rates. The Education Department assesses the Adult Basic Education programmes, but similar programmes offered by NGOs and contracted private services are not assessed," said Mpungose. He said another difficulty was to acquire credible statistics about the number of people already in the public service who were not literate in isiZulu. -- ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> What would our lives be like without music, dance, and theater? Donate or volunteer in the arts today at Network for Good! http://us.click.yahoo.com/pkgkPB/SOnJAA/Zx0JAA/TpIolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AfricanLanguages/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
