Issues of identity and African unity surrounding the introduction of an exogenous African language, Swahili, at tertiary level in South Africa

Abstract

This paper reports on a study that examines the attitudes of university students and immigrants to the introduction of Swahili at a tertiary institution in South Africa. Data were obtained from a questionnaire survey and interviews with questions that covered the domains in which Swahili could be most useful, who should learn it and the reasons why they should learn it. The data were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively within a theoretical framework which drew on theories of identity, multilingualism, migration and language ecology. The findings were categorised in terms of the main themes emerging from the analysis, including intercultural communication, African unification and Swahili as a lingua franca. The attitudes of the immigrant sector were then compared to those of the South African students and the informal sector. Although there was consensus on the viability of Swahili in South Africa, the two groups differed in the emphases they placed on the various themes. The immigrants favoured the learning of Swahili within the South African context, for the promotion of intercultural communication which would facilitate their integration into the community, and for African unification. The South African respondents saw value in learning it for travelling beyond the borders of South Africa. The study concludes with a consideration of the implications of such findings for promoting the learning and teaching of Swahili as an additional language in the South African context.

Keywords:

• language
• identity
• multilingualism
• language ecology
• language learning

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their very constructive comments on our initial drafts of this study.

Notes

1. The African languages mentioned in this study are referred to without the noun class prefix. This is the custom in international publications when referring to the African languages. The South African Constitution, however, refers to them with their prefixes, e.g. isiXhosa, Sesotho, isiZulu, etc. The same would apply to KiSwahili.

2. The South African Census data only refer to the languages spoken at home. It does not reflect the number of citizens who may actually use the language regularly, as a second, third or fourth language. To some extent, this was captured in our data for other South African languages.