Alvine Kapitako
Windhoek
A South African-based professor of sociology has stressed the need to protect the African culture, including languages because that is where “our strength lies”.
Professor Kwesi Kwaa Prah, who spoke at the Katutura Youth Centre on Saturday said “language is our core that’s why we must defend it at all cost. Everything we known in African culture is in our words,” said Prah, who is also a Pan-Africanist.
He spoke at a symposium in memory of Pan-Africanist, Bankie Foster Bankie, who died recently.
Prah said in response to a question that no society on earth develops on the basis of a foreign language.
“All societies which develop, develop on the basis of the languages which the majority of the people speak. There was never a situation in which a language spoken by 10 percent of the population or less becomes the language of develop,” said Prah.
He also added: “The moment you start using a minority language you’re dividing your society into two, those who use it and those who don’t.”
The tragedy, however, is that Africans do not see the relevance of their own languages.
Prah also made reference to a recent situation in South Africa where students from the universities were talking about decolonising the university by changing the language policy.
“They were talking about the need to have a twin-truck position for English and Afrikaans. And you ask yourself what is happening to our children. They don’t think about their own languages. They are fighting two masters. The culture of two masters and they don’t see the relevance of their own,” said Prah.