Background

In assessment contexts, the relationship between language and performance has been studied from a range of perspectives. For instance, work linking the performance of students to the language of testing has questioned whether it is subject knowledge or language proficiency that is assessed when increasingly challenging forms of English are used in subject-content tests that are administered to non-home users of English (Menken 2008, 2010). Research has also analysed whether or not the wording of test questions is appropriate, given benchmarked cognitive competences (Ayvaci and Türkdoğan 2010; Garekwe 2010; Hoadley, Mather and Wood 2012). Work in test accommodation has outlined a range of language-based strategies (such as reading out/explaining questions, permitting the use of glossaries, simplifying language and translating) for ensuring that language is not a barrier to learners’ ability to demonstrate their knowledge (Thompson, Blount and Thurlow 2002; Abedi, Hofstetter and Lord 2004; Salend 2008). There has also been work examining the impact of a range of syntactic and rhetorical features of multiple-choice questions on first- and second-language users of English (Sanderson 2010). Quality assurance agencies have also been keen to evaluate examination papers for overall readability (Umalusi 2009).

South Africa's matriculation, or end-of-high-school, examination has for decades been administered in two languages (English and Afrikaans). In some provinces, because of the language profile of their learners and schools, the examination is administered bilingually: items in both Afrikaans and English are in the same question booklet. In such cases, the layout of the examination is such that one language section is followed by another language section.

Matric, as the examination is popularly called, is therefore an interesting site for investigating a relatively neglected topic: the cognitive affordances of bi- or multilingual terminology in assessment contexts. In the research on test accommodation, although glossaries are usually considered (Abedi, Hofstetter and Lord 2001; Salend 2008), in-depth analyses of the cognitive affordances of terminology (mono-, bi- or multilingual) are seldom offered and the contents of glossaries are frequently not terms but difficult general language words, presumably because terms are often critical to items being tested. In addition, while much of the research views test accommodation in multilingual contexts in terms of plural monolingualisms, the matric exam invites a unique co-languaging research lens as it is one of the few known national public examinations in bilingual format.

This chapter offers a brief overview of the language and culture debate and the Whorfian hypothesis in general, followed by a consideration of Sapir-Whorfian aspects in selected domains within the South African language planning and policy framework. The chapter concludes with recommendations as to how an acknowledgement of selected Whorfian perspectives could enhance language policy implementation in South Africa.

Developing a coherent understanding of the relationship between language and culture is highly complex, but it is inevitable when developing language policies, immaterial of context, that a slew of assumptions regarding language and culture are accepted, a priori. Taken together with the political and socioeconomic complications in South Africa any assumptions can echo and reverberate far beyond the stated goals and objectives, when policy, whatever it may deal with, continues to be a form of sociocultural engineering.1 The frame of reference for any policy developments requires that policy-makers embrace assumptions that will enhance and ensure implementation and efficacy. Exploring all aspects of the underpinning policy assumptions would require a dedicated text in its own right.

In this chapter the assumptions that feed out of the acceptance or rejection of the Whorfian hypothesis are explored and applied to selected domains within the South African language and cultural landscape. ‘The cultural landscape of South Africa tells a story of underdevelopment, disregard of certain cultures and also a story of preferential treatment of particular cultural communities and cultural practices’ (SANGONeT 2009). Against this backdrop, South African language policy-makers in the mid-1990s were faced with the same possible routes for addressing the legacy and how to take the country forward through viable and effective language policy creation. The response was the Constitution and a wide legislative framework aimed at correcting the impact of historical legislation and creating a fecund base for language and cultural development.

Document 4: The inhabitants of Bethelsdorp

The Memorial of divers inhabitants of the district of Uitenhage, sprung principally from the Gona and other Hottentot tribes,

Humbly Sheweth

That Memorialists have long been members of Bethelsdorp and can appeal confidently to their Missionaries and neighbours for testimony of their conduct as mechanics; and in their various pursuits.

That hitherto want of land has checked the natural increase of their cattle, and deprived memorialists of the just reward of industry; nevertheless, under great disadvantages, some of them have acquired waggons, oxen, cows, goats, sheep and other property; and all possess competent skill in husbandry and as mechanics.

That they wish to obtain grants upon certain tracts situated near the sea, between the Bosjesman and Sunday rivers, together with the Gora and lands adjacent in Uitenhage, at about half-way from Bethelsdorp to Theopolis and to settle there.

That they have been informed of applications being recently made for the said lands; but they submit their own claims to be superior to those of any other persons whatever, and especially to the claims of individuals already possessing extensive farms.

That memorialists know the value of instruction for their children, and of suitable means of religious communion for themselves; and trust to obtain the benefit of the provision recommended by His Majesty's Commissioners of Inquiry in that behalf; to which they doubt not they may be able, hereafter, in a reasonable time to contribute.

That it may be right to impose certain conditions upon memorialists, in order to secure these grants to their children.

Maseko et al. (2010) make a strong case for the promotion of the African languages on the Web. They specifically also refer to the role of information and communication technology (ICT) and, without naming it as such, they make a link to a specific type of language technology:

They continue to present an overview of the (limited) presence of African languages on the internet and, inter alia, address issues regarding stakeholders that have a role to play in promoting access to the internet in African languages: government, non-governmental organisations, universities and users (Maseko et al. 2010). The presence of African languages on the internet has increased to some extent over the last five years, while simultaneously significant and positive strides have been made in research and development in language technologies (LTs) in the South African context.

The aims of this chapter are to provide a perspective on the role of stakeholders in developing technologies and promoting access to African languages on the Web; to discuss some prerequisites for developing and implementing LTs to the benefit of the users of the nine official African languages of South Africa; and, finally, to focus on new challenges arising from the presence of big data.

Language technologies

Language technologies are enabling technologies that facilitate interaction between humans and computer systems, or between humans and humans through the use of natural language by computer systems. We are constantly implementing LTs in one way or the other, whether we are aware of it or not. Consider the frequent use of spelling or grammar checkers, or searching for information on a topic on any web-based search engine. The mere use of text queries in a web-based search engine implies a form of LT.

THE NATIONAL QUESTION: SOME EPISTEMOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Even though this chapter is primarily an exposition of the black consciousness approach to the National Question, it is ultimately an exploration of what an alternative conception of this question might have been outside of its dominant framing within twentieth-century Marxism. This conceptual re-framing is in the spirit of the Rhodes Must Fall campaign that started at the University of Cape Town on 9 March 2015. After concerted mobilisation – and resistance – the students succeeded in having the university agree to the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes. The statue came down exactly a month later, on 9 April 2015. Central to the demands of the students was a call for all inherited and accepted knowledge systems – including Marxism, non-racialism and black consciousness – to be the subject of renewed critique from the perspectives of black people, and black women in particular.

In the ensuing debates, students and staff have questioned the scientific rationality that informs both liberal and Marxist epistemologies. This rationalist epistemology, Kwame Anthony Appiah (2005) argues, can be divided into two categories. On the one hand is the hard rationalism that refuses to entertain anything that has no foundation in scientific fact. Opponents of the Rhodes Must Fall movement dismissed it as too focused on pain and emotion. And because race does not have such scientific validity, they have been insisting that it should be barred from political discourse.

Isaiah Berlin (2000: 22) pointed out that this argument harkened to the Enlightenment idea that solutions to social problems will be obtained ‘by the correct use of reason’. The logic is that ‘there is no reason why such answers, which after all have produced triumphant results in the worlds of physics and chemistry, should not apply to the equally troubled fields of politics, ethics and aesthetics’ (Berlin, 2000: 22). But Appiah also describes an alternative way of thinking about the world, and about race in particular, which he calls ‘soft rationalism’. This allows for the fact that identities are ‘unlikely to be settled by uncontroversially factual considerations’ (Appiah, 2005: 178). Or as Patrick Chabal (2012: 33) puts it, the ‘inability to conceive of other beliefs, other rationalities, confines our abilities to make sense of what we observe’.

A rambling, ramshackle house on the plots, early evening.

The set comprises an untidy, cluttered office adjacent to a workshop [part of which we see through a double-door opening in the rear wall]. There is a large desk [SR], creaking beneath the weight of grubby files and ledgers. The swivel chair behind the desk looks as though it has been attacked by a pack of rabid hyenas. The single back seat of a minibus taxi serves as a sofa; a neatly-folded old Pep Stores blanket is draped over it. In front of the seat, a cloth-covered crate serves as a coffee table. On a tatty notice board on the wall behind the desk there is a garish calendar, designs for metal gates, signs and memos. Against the back wall is a tiny washbasin, with an old bar-type mirror above it. Beside it is a table on which stands a decrepit miniature fridge. A tall, narrow, battered, padlocked metal locker stands at the entrance to the workshop. It is festooned with Orlando Pirates memorabilia – an old team photo and decals. There are various makeshift shelves against other walls, all weighed down with accumulated bric-a-brac. In the middle of the wall [SL] there is a window, in front of which hangs an ancient venetian blind, permanently semi-open. An archway leads to the interior of the house [downstage SR] and a small vestibule leads to the [front] exterior door [downstage SL]. A metal bucket stands centre stage, midway between the desk and the car seat.

As pre-set lighting slowly begins to fade, Johnny Clegg's ‘Your Time Will Come’ [from Heat, Dust and Dreams] kicks in over the sound system. The song continues as lights fade up on the empty office. Presently, DWAYNE, a tanned, weatherbeaten individual in his early sixties enters, breathing heavily [SL]. A real East Rand Cowboy, he wears an old brown leather bomber jacket, checked shirt, well-worn denim jeans and veldskoene. He packs a revolver at his hip and wields a battered, bloodied baseball bat. Stopping just inside the doorway, he picks up a piece of newspaper and wipes the bat clean, tossing it onto the car seat. Reaching for the bucket, he places it beneath the tiny basin. He heads for the fridge-table and, uncapping his Klipdrift brandy bottle, notices his hand is shaking rather badly.

The road to the establishment of a military wing of the ANC was as bumpy as the road to China for military training. For years, since the first news came out that the ANC would form an armed wing, Andrew Mlangeni had been a diehard supporter of the idea, but throughout those years it had never crossed his mind that he could be part of it, as he believed it was for a select few, much higher in the ANC hierarchy and at a level of leadership he didn't think he had reached. Nor did he think the armed wing would become a reality soon, and the approval by the ANC (which he received through unofficial sources) took him by surprise as he had known that the ANC National Executive Committee (NEC) (of which he was not part) was strongly opposed to violence as part of the struggle.

A hint that the ANC was implementing plans to establish an armed wing entered Andrew's consciousness the moment he heard that the ANC NEC had given Nelson Mandela the go-ahead at one of its June 1961 meetings. He was not comfortable, however, with news that, in granting Mandela permission to establish the armed wing, the NEC had suggested (or, rather, implied) that it was a ‘Mandela thing’ and should not be seen to be part of ANC establishment plans. ‘I fully supported the idea, even though I still did not think I would personally be part of it,’ he confessed.

A glimpse that Mandela may have earmarked him as one of the first recruits of the army came one day after the meeting of the SACP's area committee at Mofolo in Soweto. Mandela invited Andrew to accompany him, a rare request that caught him off-guard. Mandela took him to a deserted spot and suggested they do push-ups together for a while. After the push-ups, Mandela told Andrew that he had wanted to see if he was fit, and was satisfied that he was. ‘You have just become my first recruit outside the High Command,’ he said to a bemused Andrew – who later admitted that he hadn't really understood what Mandela had meant. Mandela then took Andrew back home to Dube before disappearing into the darkness as usual.

Document 34: Field cornets as leaders of Khoekhoe forces

Ludovick Peffer, Andries Pretorius, David Jantjie, Cobus Fourie, Fieldcornets, to Colonel William Sutton, 18 May 1846

Eland's river Post

Sir,

Your having kindly allowed us respectfully to represent to His Excellency through yourself our wishes as to the way in which we may be allowed to serve Her Majesty during the present war, we humbly beg leave to state as follows:

1st That we are anxious to serve the government cheerfully and to the utmost of our power as burghers in the same manner as the Boers who serve under Sir Stockenström.

2nd That we do not wish for pay for doing as good subjects, but trust that the government will be mercifully pleased to give food to all who are now or may hereafter become destitute in consequence of the war being prolonged, as also some sort of clothing to those who are naked or nearly so and have not the means of purchasing it

Should it be in His Excellency's power to grant us any indulgence in any way he may think proper as a reward for any service we may be fortunate enough to perform, it will be thankfully received when the war is concluded.

INTRODUCTION

Economic regulation is largely about regulating the natural monopoly parts of value chains and generally involves the regulation of enterprises that are, or were, state-owned. Regulating access to, and pricing of, essential infrastructure, key inputs and bottleneck goods and services that cannot be easily replicated is considered necessary to ensure that fair access is provided and that monopoly prices are not charged (Viscusi, Vernon and Harrington, 1998). Economic regulation is also seen as a mechanism by which significant market failures can be corrected, or entrenched dominant positions kept in check. In certain industries, such as network infrastructure, the private sector will underinvest as the social returns are generally greater than the private returns, given the large externalities generated. In such industries, economic regulation is necessary to ensure sufficient investment. Therefore, the scope of economic regulation is broader than just controlling access and pricing. Dynamic considerations such as the impact on investment decisions, the impact of infrastructure on the development path of the economy, and the creative role of competitive rivalry all need to be part of an effective economic regulatory regime.

While economic regulation is often viewed as the control of market power in instances where competition is either not possible or not desirable, competition policy is about regulating the potentially anticompetitive behaviour of dominant players and addressing structural changes through the merger regime or through conditions. In this sense, economic regulation is predominantly ex ante, where the rules of the game are set out upfront, while competition law enforcement is largely ex post, where past anticompetitive conduct is prosecuted after the fact, except for the merger regime where accretions of concentration which could potentially lead to anticompetitive outcomes are curbed ex ante. However, this dichotomy is imprecise, as even economic regulation mainly uses past conduct and data to determine the future course of action and competition policy aims to influence future conduct through changing past undesirable behaviour. The two are even further interrelated – regulation is required for competition to flourish, for instance, to ensure access to essential facilities or inputs.

INTRODUCTION

After months of talks between unions associated with the Trade Union Advisory Coordinating Council (TUACC), the Federation of South African Trade Unions (FOSATU) was inaugurated on 13 April 1979. FOSATU was the first federation of predominantly unregistered trade unions with a truly national reach to operate openly in South Africa since the late 1960s.

FOSATU membership reached 140 000 in 1985 (Baskin, 1991: 49); it was ‘by far the strongest working-class organisation’ opposing apartheid in the early 1980s (Schroeder, 1988: 54). The largest strike wave since the 1940s took place in 1981, and FOSATU played an integral role (Yudelman, 1984: 271). FOSATU was also associated with the distinct radical politics of South African ‘workerism’, and had a mass base among black workers.

‘Workerism’ was widely identified as the dominant political current within FOSATU in the early 1980s (for example, Mahomed, 1984). Although workerism was not the only current in the federation, and was not restricted to FOSATU (Byrne, 2012), its core positions remain relatively unknown. This is partly because workerism was highly controversial at the time, the subject of fierce, often misleading polemics (for example, Toussaint, 1983; Comrades in Africa, 1984; Nhere, 1984; Nyawuza, 1985). Coupled with a lack of dedicated studies of FOSATU or its affiliates, this has left workerism's actual positions largely obscured from view.