Background

The end of colonialism and the political independence of the former European colonies in Africa stimulated a constant debate, in both Africa and expatriate ‘development expert’ circles, on the ‘language question’ in the African postcolonies. Two issues dominated this debate: first, national language policy regarding which language or languages were to be given ‘official language’ status, particularly in constitutional documents, and second, whether or how indigenous African languages were to play any role in the national system of formal education in cases where the ‘official’ language of the country was not an indigenous African language. The basic choices lay between

More than half a century after independence for most African countries, this debate is still haunting intellectual and political discourse, mostly in the often highly ideologised semantic contexts of ‘development’ and ‘globalisation’.

A case in point is a recent review article by Aceme Nyika, entitled ‘Mother Tongue as the Medium of Instruction at Developing Country Universities in a Global Context’ and published in the South African Journal of Science. The salient points raised in that article were lucidly topicalised in the journal's ‘Highlights of the latest issues’, as follows: