History of Coloniality in the South African Language in Education Policy: Toward Decolonization of Language and Literacy Pedagogies

• In Event: Transnational Decolonial Praxis From Kemet to Abya Yala: Connecting Latinx, Black, Mestizo, and Indigenous Research

Abstract

In South Africa, like many other colonized countries, it is common for colonial languages to dominate the education system while Indigenous languages are seen as incapable of teaching scientific, economic and mathematical concepts and literacy. Additionally, it is common for proficiency in the colonial language and script to be seen as a marker of being educated and for being literate (Abdulatief, Author A & McKinney, Forthcoming). Kapp (2006) shows how English as a singular language in South African schools is value-laden with connotations of progress, modernity, knowledge and empowerment, which are also firmly entrenched in notions of literacy and education. Thus, notions of progress, development and modernity are associated with colonial languages while backwardness and underdevelopment are associated with African languages, hence they are marginalized and invisibilized in the education system. This paper argues that South Africa’s Language in Education Policy pre-1994, and language in education policy in practice post-1994, as well as the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS, 2011), are profoundly underpinned by and entangled in the colonial matrix of power. Maldonado-Torres argues that making a decolonial turn, is about making visible the invisible and about analyzing the mechanisms which produce such invisibility or distorted visibility (2007). Drawing on decoloniality theories as espoused by African scholars, Ngugi wa Thiong’o (1986); Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013); Finex Ndlovu (2013) and William Jethro Mpofu (2013) and by Latin American scholars, such as Maldonado -Torres (2007) and Walter Mignolo (2007) I analyze language ideologies which have shaped the past and current language policies in print and in practice as well as those which have informed the CAPS. I argue that language ideologies are the mechanisms that have made it possible for colonial languages to continue to dominate while Indigenous African languages are marginalized and invisibilized. I argue that creating third spaces (Anzaldua, 1989) to transcend language and literacy binaries is a way towards decolonizing language and literacy pedagogies.

Author

• Xolisa Guzula