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AFRICAN VOICES NEWS
The African Voice May 2006
Sanibonani,Molweni,Dumelang! Guys, majents, maleyidis ... eish, what can we say ... sisemva kwexesha. We are late, but not dead! We're sorry we've taken so long to put a new newsletter together, but really, you will see, we HAVE been busy ... bringing out a new book, writing a column for the Sunday Independent, teaching short courses ... and we will be at the Cape Town International Book Fair, nogal! Read on.
XHOSA FOR THE CLASSROOM This textbook is for non-Xhosa-speaking educators and student teachers working in predominantly Xhosa-speaking communities. It is divided into school subjects (Maths, History, etc) and encourages the educator to use key phrases and concepts in Xhosa immediately. Xhosa for the Classroom is the brainchild of Professor Zubeida Desai of the Education Faculty at the University of the Western Cape. Professor Desai heads the Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa (LOITASA) project, which is investigating the effects of mother-tongue instruction in township schools. She has herself successfully completed a course in Xhosa with African Voices. Ukrelekrele! (She is intelligent!) The book was made possible through funds received by LOITASA from NUFU and the Norway-South Africa Research Co-operation Programme. If you want to buy a copy of the book, please contact Rhona Wales at the Faculty of Education, University of the Western Cape, telephone: 021 9593888 TESSA'S COLUMN IN THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT Once a month Tessa writes a witty column about the language observations of a group of merry drinkers at a local bar - kwaMzoli. If you live in Cape Town, you should try squeezing yourself into this famous Guguletu pub one day - the meat is wonderful and the atmosphere sparkling. Anyway, we like the column a lot, because it is really funny and charming, like Mzoli's clientele. Her last one (Sunday Independent May 21) revealed the startling fact that zuma means "rapist" in Xhosa. S'true! You can find all the columns right here in the Media section of our website. CAPE TOWN INTERNATIONAL BOOK FAIR 17-20 June We're going to be at the Cape Town International Book Fair, so if you have any influential distributor friends, just send them down our way. We will be at stand 14c with the Amabukabuka crowd. R W Johnson, in the posh UK magazine Prospect (May 2006), writes that South Africa's language policy is "mad" and that it "seems certain to guarantee the death of most of the languages it claims to protect". Check out the article (ominously entitled "Goodbye isiXhosa"). Let us know what you think. You are all probably sick to death of hearing about Zuma, but we thought the fact that he is a polygamist might be something we could expand upon. The Greater Dictionary of Xhosa defines isithembu (polygamy) as the "practice of having more than one wife and therefore more than one house". To say that someone (like Zuma) is a polygamist in Xhosa you use the associative -na-, eg UZuma unesithembu. (Zuma is a polygamist). Exactly the same word (isithembu) is used in Zulu. Dr Manton Hirst, writing in Vanishing Cultures (p.20), observes that among the Xhosa "chiefs and wealthy men with large herds of cattle married more than one wife and, in some instances, had as many as four or more wives. They were usually distinguished in rank according to different houses. Among the Xhosa the principal cleavage was between the Great House and the Right-Hand house." Dr Hirst later explains: "The Great Wife of a chief was usually a woman of rank, the daughter of a chief from a neighbouring chiefdom." We tried hard to get some robust analysis of polygamy, but weren't that successful. The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Economic Development and Tourism has this to say about the practice: Polygamy
The practice of having several wives indicates a man's social standing, wealth and virility. The first wife will initiate the acquisition of further wives as they are a help around the house. She, along with the grandmother exerts a powerful influence in the family. |