Open Letter to Pastor Forbes

Pastor Forbes

Pastor,

I have been a keen follower of your weekly TV talk show, Discovering Truth, and let me use this opportunity to recognize and appreciate the invaluable knowledge and wise counsel you impart to the viewers, through this program, on various issues bordering not only on religion, but also pertinent social, economic and political matters. Your consistency, intellect and power of communication have made the program a unique current affairs brand transcending religion.

I must however say, that over the past several months, I have noticed with concern how you have tried to persistently dissuade the leadership of our country, government officials, our school going children and the public at large from speaking Gambian local languages in public. Often I heard you make reference, if I construe your statements and inferences very correctly, to the fact that English is our official language as well as the language of instruction and international engagement, therefore it must be the medium of public discourse around which a new national culture and identity must be built. You further decry the low level of proficiency and performance in English in our educational system, and attribute the problem partly to the disappearance of the olden days’ strict regime of discipline enforced through discouraging students from speaking vernacular both at school and at home.

Pastor, whilst English has become a public good essential for education, business and international connectivity, and as we promote strategies for English language proficiency in our educational system and government circles, it is dangerous for such a conversation to slide into minimizing the utility and value of our local languages. The issue of language is existential, as language is not only a means of communication, but a reservoir and vector of knowledge, wisdom, history, beliefs, and value systems that represent bona fide civilizations. Certainly, the British, or the French, would have had a lot to learn through the Mandinka, Wollof, Fula, Sarahule or Jola languages for example, if our ancestors had embarked on a colonial project or religious evangelism in Europe. The fact that there are words, aphorisms, concepts and philosophies in our languages that do not have Western equivalents is just one thing that explains the Gambia and Africa’s linguistic splendour.
Talking about building a common Gambian culture and identity around the English language is unbelievable. We must revisit the meaning of Gambia, removed far from its every day denotation. Is Gambia the mass of territory lying between Kartong and Koina plus all persons legally identifiable as Gambian; or is it the sum total of our territory, people, history and sub-cultures including our languages, customs, religions, traditions, institutions, laws and so on? For the country to be consequential there is no doubt that the latter is what could reasonably qualify as Gambia. All of the constituent parts forming a whole must be present and active for the whole to be alive.
There is no gainsaying, Pastor, that Western languages have introduced alternative and advanced modes of education in Africa, but our heedless fixation on them, as well as our oblivion to the power of language as an agent of social development have visited on us a state of cultural depravity where our identities have been muddled and our ingenuities subsumed. Effectively, discouraging the use of our languages amounts to systematically corroding their functionality, eradicating them, and eventually attenuating our humanity. Why enable this enduring tragedy when we can continue to maximally harness the opportunities provided by Western languages whilst protecting and preserving the integrity of our indigenous languages.
I am afraid, Pastor, that your position contradicts national education policy, as well as continental development policy – which espouses an African renaissance where Pan-African cultural assets including languages and folklore will be fully embedded in all school curricula and where African languages will be the basis for administration and integration (Agenda 2063). In furtherance of the objective to not only preserve indigenous African languages but also enhance their vitality for cross-border trade and integration, the African Union decided to establish the African Academy of languages (ACALAN) in Bamako, Mali. ACALAN has designated a number of African languages, including Fula, Mandinka and Wollof, as Vehicular Cross-Border Languages that must be promoted to support African integration. For more on the compelling testimony by ACALAN on the need to utilize and preserve indigenous African languages, please visit http://www.acalan.org/index.php/en/about-acalan/background
On the wider international level, UNESCO is leading efforts to promote the use of African languages and bridge the stark communication gaps that permeate governance, education and the social environment. A UNESCO-led initiative on investing in African languages has produced among many ideas, the following two major propositions as game changers for public policy in Africa:

  1. Opt for valuing and developing African languages as the most vibrant means of
    communication and source of identity of the majority of the African people, and
    construct all language policies accordingly (e.g. accept African languages as official
    languages and as languages for exams).
  2. Plan late-exit or additive mother-tongue-based multilingual education, develop it
    boldly and implement it without delay using models adapted to a country’s unique
    vision, conditions and resources.
    It was astonishing, Pastor, to hear you postulate that Mandinka is spoken only in the Gambia and three other West African countries (so therefore the language has marginal international import). For the records, please note that there are well over 20 million speakers of various Mandinka dialects in West Africa and parts of Central Africa. An even higher number of people speak different Fula dialects across the African continent and beyond. I refuse to buy the theory of an extant anxiety among some Gambians who identify with so-called minority ethnic groups, that they risk socio-economic and cultural subjugation under the current dispensation led by people who identify with so-called majority ethnic groups. Therefore, I am not inclined to believe that the anti-vernacular rhetoric in your commentary is triggered by such apprehension.

On a final note, I must commend President Barrow for harboring no complex whatsoever in speaking confidently and intelligibly in Gambian local languages. This way, he has surpassed the effectiveness of both his predecessors in communicating to the Gambian people. The President, his Ministers, government officials and the school going generation of young people in the country should be encouraged to take cue from this inspiring example. There is intelligence, wisdom, knowledge, articulacy, and fullness in our local languages, so let us be proud that we have them, let us continue speaking them, and let us preserve them!

A.M Fatty

Ends

9 Comments

  1. Otto Macauley- Fowlis.

    An important element of growth strategies is recognition of the importance of English, in order to communicate in the international business world. A focus on improved language skills will helped to attract more foreign investment, further increasing the need for English speakers in our country.
    This underpins the growth of national and individual wealth, and helps drive economic development. Workers with solid English language skills are therefore in the best position to take the fullest advantage of new opportunities in rapidly developing economies, therefore, the pastor made a very good point. We already have an identity. It is called Gambian!!!

  2. Otto Fowlis

    An important element of growth strategies is recognition of the importance of English, in order to communicate in the international business world. A focus on improved language skills will helped to attract more foreign investment, further increasing the need for English speakers in our country.
    This underpins the growth of national and individual wealth, and helps drive economic development. Workers with solid English language skills are therefore in the best position to take the fullest advantage of new opportunities in rapidly developing economies, therefore, the pastor made a very good point.

    • Mariama Darboe

      I concur with Mr. Fatty’s visionary analysis that our local languages are our cultural identity and ought to be leveraged for enhanced sustainable human development . Japan , China, Indonesia etc.have prioritized national languages and cultural identity yet their economies are among the strongest.
      Let’s seize the opportunity offered by the New Era to break the shackles of cultural inferiority complex and backwardness.

      • Ebrima Jatta

        If I may help you by enlightening some of your points, you are talking about Indonesia being among countries that prioritized national language. If I may ask, what is our national language?. Let me help with some knowledge about Indonesia. Indonesia is a country with over 250 million people and it has about thirteen thousand islands. It’s has over 300 different languages. After their independence, they decided to introduce a unique language called “Bahasa Indonesia” that can bring them together as a nation with shared identity. So we should try to promote English language as a national identity. Which does not mean that, we have to let go of culture, norms and values….thanks

        • Ebrima Jatta said “After their independence ( Indonesia) , they decided to introduce a unique language called “Bahasa Indonesia” that can bring them together as a nation with shared identity. So we should try to promote English language as a national identity” .

          Mr Jatta first of all, if Indonesia can developed Bahasa Indonesia as shared identity, why can’t Gambians develop mandinka language as a shared identity language? So instead of promoting the very idea of promoting local language which Indonesia did , you went to encourage us to promote English language as a national identity. I would say that is outright dishonest propaganda and it defeat your false claims and argument here . I hope you reflect on your statements.
          thank you.

  3. Otto Fowlis

    These are facts from Japan and China.

    In China, Hu states, gaining social status is another incentive to learn to speak English.
    “English proficiency has become a highly valorized form of cultural capital with strong exchange value in China,” he says.
    Feng agrees with this sentiment: “A lot of privileged jobs and lifetime opportunities depend on how successfully you did in your English tests in universities.”
    It appears Japan is making a similar push with its Global 30 Project, though to a lesser degree, with many Japanese universities offering degree programs in English. Last year, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that within three years, eight national universities would hire 1,500 researchers from around the world, with the medium of instruction presumably in English. However, there has been criticism that this has been all talk. According to Ryoko Tsuneyoshi, professor of comparative education at the University of Tokyo and author of “Communicative English in Japan.”
    The general trend has been to lower the starting age of compulsory English language education in a push for higher levels of attainment and improved pronunciation.

    We need to wake up!

    • Malick Sanyang

      Otto Fowlis, no one doubts the potency of English as a medium of international education and business. But to suggest we should abandon and shy away from our local languages in favor of English is outright madness. Who are we without our languages? This type of idea smacks of huge defiencies in Africa’s postcolonial education models.

      • Learning and excelling in English? Yes. Improving our English language skills for higher opportunities? Yes. But the question of whether English should be a preference over our vernacular is quite shameful, dubious and unenlightened. This is just another self-defeatist approach to every challenge we Africans face. Instead of living up to the challenge of investing in our languages and augmenting their utility and status, we are saying let’s give them up.

  4. I can’t agree more with Max, Malick and Habib. English for sure did not start as a global language and the English people were never ashamed of it. The question of language is, if you will, as much about opportunistic leveraging as it is about endogenous resourcefulness. Most importantly, it is about sovereign identity and cultural self esteem. The Chinese and Japanese will learn English, but will never dream of attempting to mount a campaign for their populations to ditch Chinese or Japanese.

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