San call for greater recognition of their languages

Representatives of the Bushman communities in Southern Africa have called on regional authorities to do more to promote and develop San languages, some of which they say are in danger of becoming extinct. San from Botswana, Namibia and South Africa ended a three-day workshop on Friday in Windhoek, the Namibian capital, where they discussed ways to achieve the tuition of San languages at primary schools. The workshop was organised by the NGO, Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa. The estimated 110,000 remaining San today live in Botswana, South Africa, Namibia and Angola. Their languages, although fundamentally similar, vary considerably from place to place. San is primarily a linguistic label adopted by anthropologists to describe people speaking these related but distinct languages. "We call on the government of Botswana to adopt a policy of multi-lingual education to bring the country in line with policies of African countries and of the United Nations," said the resolution adopted by the 30 participants at the workshop. In Botswana, only Setswana and English are taught in schools. The participants also urged the Namibian government to recognise the Khwedam language and introduce it at primary school level. Namibia's education policy provides for mother-tongue tuition for the first three years of school, but from the fourth grade English is used as the medium of instruction. Billies Pamo of the Northern Cape told IRIN: "The South African government planned to introduce San languages in the middle of this year [2004], but it has been delayed. We realised at this workshop that we face the same problems trying to obtain more rights for our languages and education in our mother tongue." There are 35 San languages, according to South African sociolinguist Nigel Crawhall. Language groups represented at the workshop were Khewdam, !Xun, Ju/'hoansi, Naro and Hai//om. "In Namibia and South Africa non-formal adult education programmes exist for the San, assisted by the governments. In Botswana, this does not happen," he noted. David Naude, who hails from Shakawe in northwestern Botswana, in some cases pointed out that efforts to protect San languages had emerged from abroad. "The University of Cologne in Germany has, together with us, compiled a dictionary of our Khwedam language. We hold literary workshops with San adults to enable our people to become literate in their own language," he explained. The collaborative initiative has seen the publication of a newsletter in Khwedam every two months, which is distributed in northwestern Botswana and the Caprivi Region in northwestern Namibia. Participants also blamed the high number of school dropouts in the San community on the absence of their languages as subjects in school.