Bring back that mother-tongue question

| Wednesday August 3, 2011 00:00

The census will provide the government and other stakeholders in policy-planning with invaluable data about the nation and its demographics.  The census provides an opportunity to kill several birds with one stone.  For example, any citizen will be curious to know how big our population is.  Many will be wondering if the census will reveal that the cities have grown or shrunk and which among Botswana's villages will be declared 'Africa's largest village'.  A question that far too many people would be interested in is that concerning their ethnicity.  For example many would want to know how many people are of the Mbukushu, Yeyi, Kalanga, Subia, Afrikaans, Ndebele, Shona, Herero, various San and other indigenous African ethnic groupings.  This question would inform the nation about the growth or decline of the various ethnic groupings in the country and the progress of their languages.  Data on the speakers of these languages, their Setswana or English speaking ability, would help shape legislative, legal and marketing decisions for various stakeholders.  It would be quite revealing to know how many people speak the 20 'Sesarwa' languages most of which are not mutually intelligible. 

There is no doubt that some of the languages are spoken by as few as 200 people.  Those languages are facing extinction, as are the cultures that gave birth to them and the tribes that speak them.  The fact that we tend to lump 'Sesarwa' as one language - as did the Census Office in the initial census form, shows that we need to understand more the issue of the various Sesarwa languages and the demographics of their speakers.  But government has at the last minute removed this greatly important question.  And the reason?  The Ministry of Education and Skills Development would have needed the question for education policy-planning and implementation - where the issue of mother-tongue would be considered with a view to improving learner-understanding of the curriculum, but has changed its mind.  Then again, it was never really a question for the education ministry alone!  From the look of it, it appears government would have a problem, albeit one that it will not say, with any question that seeks to linguistically isolate the population.  The language-in-use question - that government apparently wants to use - wants the respondents to say if they speak English or Setswana and some other language.  That is sad indeed because the question fails to take into consideration that some of the languages are spoken by a very big part of the population so much that it becomes an insult to classify them as 'other' Batswana need to know if the population of those speaking Setswana, English and other specific Botswana languages is growing or declining.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with the census report showing that a particular group accounts for the largest numeric increase, and which parts of the country have the highest concentrations of the most commonly spoken non-English or Setswana languages.  The nation deserves to know and whatever insecurities government may have about such information being made public would be totally misplaced.  Government should, therefore, bring back the mother-tongue question.

                                          Today's thought

'The better the information it has, the better democracy works.  Silence and secrecy are never good for it.'

                                            - Kate Adie