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English in Southern Africa

Chapter · November 2018

DOI: 10.1057/978-1-137-01593-8_5

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 5
English in Southern Africa
Finex Ndhlovu and Liqhwa Siziba

Introduction
The previous body of sociolinguistics literature is replete with historical
accounts of the arrival of the English language in southern Africa (see, for
example, Lanham 1982; Gough 1995; Branford 1996; Kamwangamalu
2002; Meierkord 2005). These studies indicate that English-speaking
people made initial contact with southern Africa prior to the period of
formal British colonization of the region. According to Gough (1995: 1),
English explorers and traders who visited southern Africa from as early as
the sixteenth century introduced a vocabulary of the English language
describing the land and peoples they had come into contact with. In
1652, following the ‘discovery’ of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartolomeu
Dias in 1488 as well as Vasco de Gama’s ‘discovery’ of the Cape Sea Route
in 1498, the Dutch East India Company founded a refreshment station

F. Ndhlovu (*)
University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia
L. Siziba
English Department, North West University, South Africa

© The Author(s) 2018 65

T. Kamusella, F. Ndhlovu (eds.), The Social and Political History of Southern Africa’s
Languages, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-01593-8_5
66 F. Ndhlovu and L. Siziba

in the region that would later come to be known as Cape Town. The very
first major contact between the peoples of southern Africa and English
speakers happened in 1795, as a repercussion of the Napoleonic Wars.
Cape Town subsequently became a British Colony in 1806 thus marking
the beginning of a South African British culture that was further strength-
ened by the arrival of more settlers in 1820. The British then introduced
a policy of Anglicization in an attempt to outmanoeuvre the Dutch who
had been at the Cape territory since 1652. In the words of Kamwangamalu
(2002: 1):

The policy of Anglicization sought to replace Dutch by English in all

spheres of life. Anglicization required knowledge of English for access to
whatever resources were available in the colony. All official posts were
reserved for the English-speaking at the expense of the Dutch-speaking
population.

These struggles for resources and political control between the British
and the Dutch led to dispersions further north and east—what came to
be known as the Great Trek (1835–1846). This was a major exodus of the
Dutch from the Cape, moving into the interior of present-day South
Africa and other territories to the north in search of land where they
could establish their own homeland independent of British rule. The sub-
sequent discovery of gold and diamonds triggered the Anglo-Boer War
(1899–1902), which was essentially a struggle for control of the region’s
mineral wealth amongst the European colonizing powers, eventually won
by the British Empire (Reis Esteves and Hurst 2009). Prior to the Anglo-­
Boer War, the Dutch had already established independent polities in the
Eastern Cape (Grahamstown, Uitenhage and Graaff-Reinet) and the
then Transvaal region with Dutch/Afrikaans as the main language. The
victory of the British settlers in the Anglo-Boer War changed all of this
and strengthened the foothold of the English language in everyday social,
economic and political life in South Africa.
With time and following the expansion of the British colonial empire,
the English language became entrenched and started to spread to other
parts of southern Africa and to the rest of the African continent. A dis-
tinction has to be made here between South Africa—a country, officially
 English in Southern Africa 67

called the Republic of South Africa—and southern Africa, a region which

consists of various countries (formerly, colonies).1 English became a
dominant language of communication in southern Africa during the
nineteenth century as a result of the British settlements in 1820 (in the
Eastern Cape) and 1848–51 (in Natal) and the subsequent rushes to the
diamond mines of Kimberley and the gold mines of the Witwatersrand.
The English language spread northwards beyond the borders of present-
day South Africa during the nineteenth century with the colonial explo-
ration and exploitation of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi (formerly the
British colonies of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland,
respectively), especially by David Livingstone and Cecil John Rhodes.
This spread of English from the Cape Colony (the southern tip of
Southern Africa) also affected Bechuanaland (present-day Botswana)
which resisted incorporation into South Africa. While the area of pres-
ent-day Namibia came under German control in the late nineteenth cen-
tury, it was not immune to the spread of the English language from South
Africa, either. Mozambique and Angola remained under the control of
Portugal (until 1975) and did not come within the sphere of English. To
this day, these two countries remain as the only Lusophone areas in a
region whose linguistic ecology is dominated by the English language.
The level of English hegemony is, therefore, uneven amongst the 14
SADC member states, although evidence from recent sociolinguistics
studies suggests the language is gaining a foothold in the former
Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique (Mkuti 2011;
Hyltenstam and Stroud 1998).
Overall, the dominance of English in southern Africa varies along the
lines of colonial experience or type of colonialism that was exerted in
each territory. Countries that have an entrenched legacy of the English
language include South Africa, with the enclave of Lesotho and the par-
tial enclave of Swaziland, alongside Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and
Botswana. English is also a major language in Namibia, formerly known
as South-West Africa. Like elsewhere on the African continent and glob-
ally, the British had two types of colonies in southern Africa: settler colo-
nies and exploitation colonies. The former that include South Africa and
Zimbabwe were designed to be permanent homes for the colonizers along
the lines of what happened with Australia, New Zealand or Canada.
68 F. Ndhlovu and L. Siziba

Exploitation colonies, on the other hand, were precisely the sources of

human and material resources that were subsequently used to build and
develop both the colonial metropole and settler colonies. Therefore, while
English was and still remains the widely used language of administration,
education and other official/public domains in former exploitation colo-
nies such as Malawi, Botswana and Zambia, its penetration through the
population at large is not as deep and thorough as it is in South Africa or
Zimbabwe. For this reason, our analysis in subsequent sections will spe-
cifically focus on the status and political significance of English in these
two countries with some passing remarks on other officially English-­
speaking countries in the region.

Varieties of English in Southern Africa

Due to the dense nature of cultural and linguistic diversity in southern
Africa, the majority of people in the region use English as a second or an
additional language, a lingua franca and mostly as a language of educa-
tion from elementary schooling right up to higher and tertiary education.
As a result, there are national (state-wide) and/or ethnolinguistic (specific
to a given ethnic group) varieties of English in southern Africa.

English in South Africa

As already noted in the introductory section, the presence of the English
language in South Africa dates from the arrival of the British at the
Cape of Good Hope in 1795. As was the case in the majority of British
colonies, English was introduced first by soldiers and administrators
and then by Christian missionaries, settlers and fortune seekers. Lanham
(1982) posits that besides early encounters, there are three clearly iden-
tifiable historical phases in the formal establishment of English in South
Africa. First is the formal settlement and founding in 1820 of close to
4000 British immigrants on farms along the Eastern Cape frontier as a
barrier against Zulu attacks. These settlers are said to have been ‘mostly
 English in Southern Africa 69

from southern England, and primarily of working-class or lower mid-

dle-class backgrounds’ (Gough 1995: 2). A new ‘settler English’ lan-
guage variety then emerged on the Eastern Cape frontier largely due to
coexistence of British migrants from diverse linguistic and social class
backgrounds. While it had a strong influence of the sociolect-cum-
urban dialect Cockney from London, this early variety of settler English
in South Africa ‘also revealed features indicative of extensive interaction
with the Dutch farming community already established in the area’
(Gough 1995: 2). The second major settlement that brought English to
South Africa happened in the colony of Natal (or the Zulu ethnic area)
between 1849 and 1851. According to Branford (1991), this second
wave of British immigrants was typically of middle- and upper-middle-
class origin. They are said to have been predominantly from the north
of England and are said to have maintained stronger ties with Britain
than did their counterparts who had arrived in the 1820s. The mainte-
nance of stronger ties with England by this second wave of British set-
tlers meant that their variety of ‘settler English’ developed in a rather
different trajectory to the variety that had emerged in the Eastern Cape
frontier. The third wave of immigrants who brought English to South
Africa came in the 1870s after the discovery of gold and diamonds in
the Witwatersrand region. The discovery of mineral wealth saw the
arrival of the most affluent cohort of British immigrants with a strong
inclination towards Standard (‘Queen’s/King’s’, aristocratic, or now
simply ‘posh’) British English (Received Pronunciation)(Lanham 1982;
Branford 1991; Gough 1995).
Consequently, during the early years of the British colonial occupa-
tion of southern Africa, there emerged three distinct varieties of English
that reflected the different social class hierarchies of British immigrants.
The first is the prestigious upper-class variety that developed in urban-
ized areas populated by the wealthiest and highly educated British
immigrants. The second is the middle-class variety that developed in
Natal and which became the basis for the local norm. As the name sug-
gests, this variety is mostly associated with the middle-class segment of
British immigrants. And third is the low-status variety from the Eastern
Cape frontier, which became associated with working-class speech. The
70 F. Ndhlovu and L. Siziba

roots of this variety are traceable to the linguistic codes of British work-
ing-class immigrants (Branford 1991; Gough 1995; Kamwangamalu
2002).
The point of greater significance here is that inasmuch as they emerged
out of contact situations with local indigenous languages of South Africa,
these early varieties of South African English also emerged out of the
linguistic repertoires of British migrants who came from a diversity of
regional and social class backgrounds. The South African multilingual
situation simply added another layer onto the already complex English
language profiles from the colonial metropole. A majority of previous
studies on varieties of English in African multilingual contexts have
tended to overemphasize the influence of local language ecologies while
ignoring the equally important point about language diversity that was
exported from the colonial metropole (e.g. Banda 1996; de Klerk 2002;
Wissing 2002).
Owing to the language and culture contact situations that we have
just described, at least five varieties of English have been identified and
documented. Some such varieties include Coloured South African
English, Black South African varieties of English, South African Indian
English, Afrikaans English and White South African English. Each of
these varieties has unique socio-pragmatic features that owe their exis-
tence to the cultural profiles and linguistic repertoires of those commu-
nities in which they are widely used. This is because these varieties
emerged as a result of the British policies classifying the colony’s popula-
tion in line with the ethno-racial-religious categories as developed in the
process of legitimizing and rationalizing colonial rule. The colonially
constructed versions of specific varieties of indigenous languages epito-
mized a systematic and deliberate effort towards developing ‘command
over language’, which would ultimately lead to the development of a
‘language of command’ (Brutt-Griffler 2006). Most of these varieties
also have some reference works such as dictionaries, grammar books and
compendia. All varieties of South African English are covered in
Wikipedia (South African English, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/South_African_English, 2016).
 English in Southern Africa 71

(White) South African English

This variety is the one that is generally considered to be standard South
African English and is widely associated with the white South African
community more generally (South African English, Wikipedia: 2016).
According to Silva (1995) South African English (SAE) is a language
of many paradoxes that emerged out of a complex linguistic and cul-
tural mix brought about by processes of colonization and moderniza-
tion. There are as many first-language SAE speakers in South Africa as
the number of all the English speakers in New Zealand (Silva 1995).
English is perceived both as the language of communication and aspi-
ration and as an oppressive juggernaut because of its global power.
While politicians often brand English as a ‘colonialist’ and disempow-
ering force, many black parents see it as a crucial instrument for their
children’s advancement. And while the government espouses multilin-
gualism, in practice SAE is dominant in public life, for reasons of prac-
ticality and cost-­efficiency as well as due to ideology and history, the
apartheid-style tainting of education in ‘mother tongues’. SAE has
become a particular regional version of English, firmly rooted in South
Africa, because of a variety of influences from the languages surround-
ing it.

Black South African Englishes (BSAE)

As the name suggests, these varieties of South African English are spo-
ken by the black population and owe their unique socio-pragmatic fea-
tures to the influence from the various first languages/mother tongues
of those who speak these varieties. For this reason, some scholars have
argued for a conceptualization of BSAE as a heterogeneous variety
which varies depending on its speakers’ first language(s) and levels of
competence (Meierkord 2005; de Klerk 2003; Gough 1995; Mesthrie
1992a). Drawing on the work of Platt (1975), Mesthrie (1992a: 45)
examined the socio-pragmatic features of variation in BSAE by using
four concepts. The first is that of basilectal variation, which describes the
72 F. Ndhlovu and L. Siziba

form of English spoken by people who have little contact with L1

English and who have received no or only little formal education. The
second is acrolectal variation, a term that describes the form of English
used by educated speakers who, however, show slight differences from
the L1 English spoken in other parts of South Africa as a whole. The
third concept is that of pre-­basilectal variation, which refers to BSAE
spoken by people whose command of English is makeshift and who
have difficulties in expressing themselves even about domestic topics.
And, finally, the fourth is post-­acrolectal variation, which describes BSAE
that draws largely on the norms of the local L1 variety and is spoken by
a small group of well-­educated people who have acquired newly created
jobs as television announcers (especially in programmes geared to the
needs of Indian listeners) (Mesthrie 1992a: 65).

South African Indian English (SAIE)

This is one of the well-known and well-documented varieties of English
in the South African Linguistics literature. Professor Rajend Mesthrie
of the University of Cape Town, for example, has written quite exten-
sively on SAIE. His work includes two SAIE dictionaries (1992b, 2010)
and several sole-authored and co-authored learned journal articles (e.g.
Mesthrie 2005, 2007; Mesthrie and Dunne 1990). There is also an
entire Master’s thesis by Lisa Wiebesiek (2007) focusing on SAIE. The
emergence of SAIE is traced back to the system of Indian indenture
that was established in South Africa in 1860 and lasted until 1911
(Wiebesiek et al. n.d.). Indian migrants who arrived in South Africa
towards the end of the British Empire, this time, provided cheap labour
for the Natal sugar cane plantations. These migrants were from various
linguistic backgrounds, including Dravidian languages (mostly Tamil
and Telugu), Urdu, Bhojpuri, Awadhi and Hindi and its dialects,
Gujarati, Marathi and Konkani (Mesthrie 1992a). SAIE arose out of a
language contact situation and the subsequent language shift that
occurred when Indians were denied full access to Standard English by
having been barred from English-medium schools. This outcome was
 English in Southern Africa 73

also largely influenced by the colonial and apartheid social and educa-
tion policies of the late nineteenth century that overhauled different
colonial categories of population into ‘peoples’ who were to be kept
separate in line with the old imperial principle of ‘divide and rule’
(Childs 1990).

Coloured English
This is a variety of English spoken by the South African ethnic group
referred to as Coloureds. In Southern Africa the term Coloureds is an
ethnic label for people of mixed ethnic origin who possess ancestry from
Europe, Asia and various Khoisan and Bantu ethnic groups. In South
Africa particularly, this group emerged when the Dutch-speaking male
settlers coerced and violated Khoisan and Bantu women through infor-
mal sexual unions. Like most ethnic groups in South Africa, Coloureds
use English as their dominant second language after Afrikaans. Prior to
the Anglicization process that started in 1795, the Coloured community
spoke Dutch/Afrikaans as their mother tongue. As a result a specific vari-
ety of English heavily influenced by Coloured Afrikaans emerged from
the 1960s to the 1970s (McLean and McCormick 1996). In the words of
Lanham and Macdonald (1985: 17), ‘typical Coloured English is marked
in pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and usage by features which
mark the extreme form of Afrikaans English and […] [e]xtreme SAE’. It
is important to note that the shift to English did not result in the total
abandonment or decline in the use of (Coloured) Afrikaans, which still
remains the first language (or mother tongue) for many within the South
African Coloured community. This means most Coloured people in
South Africa are bilingual (in English and Afrikaans), while others are
even multilingual as they are competent speakers—or at the very least,
have a working knowledge—of other major South African Bantu lan-
guages, such as Zulu or Xhosa. The current democratic political dispensa-
tion, which began in 1994, has, however, accelerated the spread and the
growing social value of English amongst most South African ethnic
groups, including the Coloureds.
74 F. Ndhlovu and L. Siziba

Afrikaans English
This is a variety of English used by the Afrikaner (formerly known as
‘Boer’, which is Dutch/Afrikaans for ‘farmer’) communities in South
Africa and Namibia. White South Africans differ significantly from other
white African groups, because they have developed a sense of European-­
style nationhood by having established a distinct language, culture and
faith of their own in Africa. These are perceived as national symbols that
Afrikaners use to legitimize their claim to South African nation-
hood (Elmes 2001). The English variant used by this ethnic group heav-
ily borrows from their first language, in this case Afrikaans. Linguistically,
Afrikaans English is a mixture of both Afrikaans and English syntaxes
and lexicons. The vocabulary of the language reflects more than just
words but the existing sociocultural environment in which the language
is used, that is, a multilingual society. Afrikaans has provided a number
of significant contributions to South African English more broadly. Elmes
(2001: 85) notes that ‘about half [of ] the words in the national lexicon
that are distinctively South African originate in Afrikaans: words such as
“kloof ” (valley), “veld” (open country) and “dorp” (village)’. Overall, the
sociolinguistic and pragmatic nuances of Afrikaans English are strongly
influenced by the Afrikaans language, which is the first language of the
majority of people who speak this variety of English.
To conclude the discussion on English in South Africa, it is worth not-
ing that following the advent of democracy in 1994, one of the immedi-
ate tasks of the new South African government was to redress skewed
apartheid language policies by instituting a human-rights inspired policy
that recognizes 11 official languages (English, Afrikaans, Sepedi, SeSotho,
Setswana, SiSwati, Tshivenda, Xitsonga, isiNdebele, isiXhosa and isi-
Zulu). This provision is written in the National Constitution (Act 108 of
1996), which ‘enshrines plurilingualism’ (Beukes 2004: 5). However, the
de facto position is one where English and Afrikaans still remain
entrenched as the languages of widest communication in official domains
such as education, the media and the law courts. These two languages are
also the only visible ones in the linguistic landscape in places such as
supermarkets and signage and in the labelling of most consumer goods
and services.
 English in Southern Africa 75

English in Zimbabwe
The English language came to Zimbabwe in the late 1890s following formal
British colonial occupation of the territory that they named Southern
Rhodesia. The language was then propagated and spread through the colo-
nial system of education, which was largely pioneered by several Christian
(Protestant) missionary organizations including the London Missionary
Society, the Wesleyan Methodist Society, the Roman Catholic Church, the
Methodist Episcopal Church, the Anglicans, the American Methodists and
the Dutch Reformed Church (Doke 1931; Chimhundu 1992; Ranger 1985,
1989). Operating under the umbrella body known as the Southern Rhodesia
Missionary Conference (SRMC), these missionary organizations carved
amongst themselves spheres of influence across the entire Zimbabwe plateau
where they each set up mission stations and mission schools that served both
as centres for spreading Christianity and harbingers for the propagation of
colonial education. Although the SRMC invented (created) new versions of
indigenous African languages to be used as languages of ‘command’ (Brutt-
Griffler 2006), nevertheless, English became the main medium of instruction
from elementary to tertiary education. To this day, English retains the colo-
nially inherited status of being the country’s de facto official language. Unlike
South Africa, Zimbabwe does not have well-documented varieties of English
that follow ethnic or linguistic divides. This may be attributed to the British
system of colonial education that promoted and advanced the use of Standard
(British) English in the country. To this day, English is used as the medium of
communication in the following spheres of Zimbabwean national life: educa-
tion, business and law, politics, economy and the mass media. As a result,
English is spoken across the entire spectrum of the Zimbabwean society,
regardless of ethnic or other affiliation.

English in Education
The provisions of the policy on the teaching/learning of languages make it
mandatory for English to feature both as a subject and as a medium of
instruction in Zimbabwean schools. English is a compulsory subject at sec-
ondary school level from Form 1 up to Form 4. Because of its dominance
76 F. Ndhlovu and L. Siziba

in the primary and secondary school curricula, English has subsequently

become the language of education across the entire Zimbabwean education
system. In their detailed analysis of the role and place of English in the
country’s 14 universities, Ndhlovu and Masuku (2004: 284) observe:

For anyone to be enrolled into any program in any Zimbabwean tertiary

institution he/she must have passed Ordinary level English language with
a Grade C or better.

This requirement applies even to prospective students of African lan-

guages because at university level, for instance, African languages are cur-
rently taught using English as the medium of instruction. In a section
dealing with findings from language experts and associations, the
Nziramasanga Commission2 reported that:

Evidence from the Zimbabwe Languages Association states that the present
Education Act of 1987 is characteristically colonial because it promotes
English at the expense of developing African languages. English has
remained entrenched as the medium of instruction as well as the key to
qualification for education and training at all levels and therefore as the key
to employment, upward social mobility, and international dialogue.
(Government of Zimbabwe 1999: 161)

As can be seen from the foregoing discussion, all the available evidence
does confirm that English is the de facto language of education in
Zimbabwe. This is in spite of the fact that the National Constitution of
the Republic of Zimbabwe confers official status to 16 languages that
include Chewa, Chibarwe, English, Kalanga, Khoisan, Nambya, Ndau,
Ndebele, Shangani, Shona, Sign Language, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda
and Xhosa (Government of Zimbabwe 2013).

English in the Media

English turns out to be the predominant language in Zimbabwe’s print
and electronic media. The country’s major daily and weekly newspapers
(both independent and state-owned) all publish in English. On radio and
 English in Southern Africa 77

television, most programmes are broadcast in English. Of the four radio

stations in Zimbabwe, two broadcast English programmes only, namely,
Spot FM and Power FM. Despite the 75% local content policy promul-
gated by the Ministry of Information and Publicity in year 2001, news
items and programmes on Zimbabwe Television (ZTV) are mostly in the
English language. However, a few slots are also allocated to news items
and current affairs programmes in Shona and/or Ndebele on ZTV
(Government of Zimbabwe 2001; Ndhlovu 2009).

English in Law and Administration

There is currently no legislation that actually serves as the defining
instrument for the status and use of Zimbabwe’s languages in law and
administration. However, because the constitution of the Republic of
Zimbabwe and other legislative documents are all written in English,
the use of English in the country’s legal and administrative affairs (both
central and local government) is the actual norm. Sometimes Shona
and Ndebele are used in exceptional cases such as in school classrooms
where teachers tend to code-mix languages and in Parliament where
some members of the legislative assembly often switch from English to
either Shona or Ndebele. These two languages are also often used out-
side the formal business and administrative structures in everyday social
interactions depending on the region of the country (Shona in the
Eastern and Northern and Ndebele in the Southwestern parts of the
country).
English is used as the main medium of communication in the prom-
ulgation of statutes, national policies and parliamentary debates. The
Constitution of the Republic of Zimbabwe is written in English. And
although to date it has already been translated into Shona and Ndebele,
the English version is the legally binding. As a result, all the legal provi-
sions enshrined in the Constitution are interpreted and enforced on the
basis of the English original of this document. The country’s judicial
system, which is modelled on Roman-Dutch Law (borrowed from
South Africa), operates in the medium of English language, and for any
legal practitioner to be appointed as a judge of the High Court or the
78 F. Ndhlovu and L. Siziba

Supreme Court of Zimbabwe, he or she must have been trained in

English. Article 82 subsection (1) of the Constitution of Zimbabwe
states:

(1) A person shall not be qualified for appointment as a judge of the

Supreme Court or High Court unless –

(a) he is or has been a judge of a court having unlimited jurisdiction in

civil or criminal matters in a country in which the common law is
Roman-Dutch or English, and English is an official language; or
(b) he is and has been for not less than seven years, whether continuously
or not, qualified to practise as a legal practitioner

i. in Zimbabwe
ii. in a country in which the common law is Roman-Dutch and English is
an official language; or
iii. if he is a citizen of Zimbabwe, in a country in which the common law is
English and English is an official language. (Government of Zimbabwe
1996)

The cited section of the Constitution of Zimbabwe shows that English

is the country’s language of law and records. All the cases brought before
the Magistrates Courts, High Court and the Supreme Court are tried in
English, with interpretations into local languages when necessary as pro-
vided for by Articles 14 and 18 of the Constitution, which state that:
A person who is arrested or detained shall have his or her charge or
reason for arrest or detention explained in a language that he or she
understands (Government of Zimbabwe 1996).
But still, the bottom line is that all law court business in Zimbabwe is
conducted in English. Because the country’s judicial system operates in
English, all government policies are enunciated and debated in English.
Therefore, the Parliament conducts all their business in English. In the
House of Assembly, while individual parliamentarians may opt to use
either Shona or Ndebele, Members of Parliament are expected to be flu-
ent in written and spoken English since all the bills and legal instruments
tabled before the House are always written and debated in English.
 English in Southern Africa 79

The annual national budget statement, the monetary and fiscal policy
review statements as well as the President’s state of the nation address deliv-
ered in Parliament are always in English. As the country’s de facto official
language, English is also used in conducting local and international busi-
ness and trade. In short, English is the language of administration as it is
also widely used in official correspondence at national, regional and local
governance levels in Zimbabwe. English is also sometimes used by political
elites to distance or demarcate themselves from the masses—what Myers-
Scotton (1990) calls ‘elite closure’. According to Myers-Scotton:
Elite closure is a strategy by which those persons in power maintain
their powers and privileges via language choices. This is accomplished in
two general ways: (a) through linguistic divergences from the masses in
terms of the linguistic varieties known by the elite and (b) through sup-
port of official language policies as well as unofficial usage allocations that
designate a linguistic variety known largely only by the elite as necessary
for participation in situations which yield power (Myers-Scotton 1990:
25).
Therefore, current policy frameworks and everyday practices in both
formal and non-formal public domains show that English is the de facto
official language of Zimbabwe.
The status and political significance of English in South Africa and
Zimbabwe (and across the entire southern African region) is determined
by both practice and formal national language policies. In both countries,
language policy has always been associated with attempts to discourage
perceived centrifugal and secessionist tendencies supposedly stemming
from the underlying ethnic/linguistic diversity, thus promoting a situa-
tion where English has emerged as the de facto language of the widest
communication in the mainstream domains of language use. Therefore,
although linguistic diversity is indeed a sociolinguistic reality in both
South Africa and Zimbabwe, and although both countries have legislated
multilingual language policy frameworks, the effect of such policies is
invisible in the mainstream domains of civil service, law and administra-
tion, business and commerce, the media, and general public discourse
(Ndhlovu 2008). English dominates in these spaces.
However, to fully explain the position of English in the southern African
language economy, we also need to situate the debate within broader
80 F. Ndhlovu and L. Siziba

African and international perspectives. Although Africa is amongst the

most linguistically diverse regions of the world, with multiple
local/indigenous languages accounting for almost one third of the world’s
living languages (Batibo 2005), it remains one of the continents (others
being the Americas, Australia and Oceania) in which ex-colonial languages
are the declared official languages of the state. English, French, Arabic and
Portuguese are the most widely used languages at national, regional and
continental levels of administration. There are many factors that sustain the
popularity of these languages, even in those countries that have declared
their unwillingness to continue embracing anything to do with their for-
mer colonial masters. English remains the declared official language and
the political elite’s preferred medium of widest communication in many
postcolonial African countries. In southern Africa in particular, English is
the de facto language of government administration, national business
transactions, official national communication and education in at least
eight countries: Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa,
Zambia and Zimbabwe (Chisanga and Kamwangamalu 1997). This is in
spite of the national constitutions of these countries that prescribe multiple
official languages. Furthermore, in some of these countries, English has
now a significant number of first language speakers. This is particularly the
case amongst the Coloured and Indian communities in South Africa,
Namibia and Zimbabwe. Such a scenario may in turn deepen racially con-
strued social and ethnic cleavages in these states.
Though the national language policies of individual southern African
states are generally designed with good intentions, they also have a dark
side. They often result in unintended consequences, such as the social,
economic and political exclusion or marginalization of speakers of minor-
ity ethnic languages. In much of southern Africa, language policies have
been notoriously deployed as a key organizing tool for subtle cultural
oppression and social exclusion in at least two ways.
First, language policies sometimes wrongly consign languages and
their associated cultural identities into bifurcated categories of ‘superior’
and ‘inferior’, ‘useful’ and ‘less useful’, or ‘important’ and ‘unimportant’.
This breeds all sorts of injustices, inequities and exclusions, as the for-
tunes of ethnolinguistic groups and individuals within them are directly
connected to those of their languages. In multi-ethnic and multilingual
 English in Southern Africa 81

southern Africa, language policies can determine who has access to

schools, who has opportunities for economic advancement, who partici-
pates in political decisions, who has access to governmental services and
who gets treated fairly by governmental agencies (Brown and Ganguly
2003). Language policies can determine who gets ahead and who gets left
behind. Language policies do, indeed, affect the prospects for ethnic suc-
cess—for both ethnic groups and their members as individuals. Politics,
economics, community development, advocacy activities and active par-
ticipation in all other aspects of life have remained elusive for the major-
ity because they are conducted in languages other than those spoken and
easily understood by all sections of society, both local and trans-local. For
example, participatory democracy requires that deliberations of legisla-
tors be conducted and communicated in languages understood by and
accessible to all citizens, including those labelled as ethnolinguistically
differentiated sociological minority groups.3 This, however, is not the case
in southern Africa where English reigns supreme as the sole medium of
communication in these important domains of public life.
The second problem about language policies is that these have tradi-
tionally proceeded along the route of what has come to be known as the
‘standard language ideology’. Language ideologies are beliefs that we
hold about what constitutes a language. Our responses to the question
‘what is a language?’ explicitly or implicitly betray our language ideolo-
gies. On the other hand, the related concept of ideologies about a lan-
guage refers to beliefs that we hold about what a language is for, or why
we need a language. Our responses to the question ‘what are languages
used for?’ betray our ideologies about language(s). Both language ideolo-
gies and ideologies about language are cultural representations—whether
explicit or implicit—of the intersection of language and human beings
in a social world. They both link language to identity, power, aesthetics,
morality and epistemology—and, indeed, to just about everything else
we do in life. Ideologies and beliefs about language are also deeply rooted
in personal biographies and in political and educational contexts
(Shohamy 2009). Through such linkages, language ideologies and ide-
ologies about language underpin not only linguistic form and use but
also significant social institutions and fundamental notions of person
and community (Woolard and Schieffelin 1998). The southern African
82 F. Ndhlovu and L. Siziba

language economy is underpinned by the standard language ideology,

which has promoted the rise of hegemonic languages such as English at
the expense of other less standardized language varieties. The latter are
deemed incapable of assuming the roles of ‘communicative currency’
and ‘language(s) of widest communication’ that English currently plays.
For this reason, English has consistently been projected as the language
of power, politics and upward social and economic mobility even during
the days of liberation struggles against colonialism and apartheid.
In South Africa, access to the English language was a particularly sig-
nificant part of the struggle against the apartheid social engineering pro-
cess in which people were separated and confined into Bantustans and/or
Homelands (i.e. prospective ‘indigenous nation-states’) based on their
ethnic languages. The political significance of English in South Africa
became more pronounced from 1948 onwards when Afrikaans-ization of
the country’s social and political life took centre stage. The 1953 Bantu
Education Act brought English to the limelight as the Black South
African population resisted the imposition of Afrikaans as the language of
education and instead demanded the use of English. Contestations
around English and Afrikaans in apartheid South Africa resulted in one
of the darkest episodes in history where several school students lost their
lives in the Soweto uprisings of 16 June 1976. In the words of
Kamwangamalu (2002: 2):

The aftermath of the Soweto uprising saw Afrikaans emerge, in the minds
of Black South Africans, as the language of oppression, and English as the
language of liberation against apartheid. From that time onwards up until
the birth of democratic South Africa in 1994 English has never looked
back. Rather the language has become far more hegemonic than any other
language in the land.

The hegemonic preponderance of English in South Africa becomes

clear when one looks at the legislature, the law courts, the media, the
education system and public life in general. English (in its various forms)
dominates all these spheres of social and political life. This is so in spite
of South Africa’s documented language policy that confers official lan-
guage status to 11 other languages (9 of them are African). All 12 (includ-
 English in Southern Africa 83

ing English) are supposed to enjoy equal functional and institutional

statuses. However, as we have already indicated, the actual patterns of
language practice have retained and entrenched the exclusive use of
English, with Afrikaans frequently employed alongside it, as the medium
of communication in mainstream educational, economic, social and
political domains (Heugh 2000). This effectively means that English still
prevails as the sole official language of South Africa.
We, therefore, argue that although the language policy of South Africa has
received international acclaim as a model for a human-rights inspired policy
framework, it still remains an enterprise that entrenches the dominance of
English in the community and the society writ large. The hidden language
policy of South Africa can, therefore, be typified as one guided by the assim-
ilation-tolerance model (Ruiz 1984), whereby the law merely prescribes the
use of several languages without any express commitment to ensuring that
people from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds do actually have
the opportunity to use languages other than English in all spheres of life.
Therefore, unlike in the colonial and apartheid era where racial or eth-
nic difference underpinned the ideology of linguistic imperialism and
cultural domination, the hidden language policies in present-day South
Africa and Zimbabwe are premised on perceived social or political class
differences. The ruling political elites and intellectuals appear to have an
insatiable appetite for the English language to a point where the African
official languages have been essentialized as identity markers for the less-­
educated subaltern. In the case of Zimbabwe, a recent book by Ndhlovu
(2015) brings to the fore the glaring double standards of the ruling politi-
cal elite in Zimbabwe who denounce all vestiges of British colonial impe-
rialism by preaching the gospel of indigenization, while simultaneously
embracing and actively promoting the widespread use of English at the
expense of local indigenous languages.

Social and Cultural Dimension

Previous sociolinguistics studies have long suggested that English has indeed
been transmogrified and nativized in many parts of postcolonial Africa where
it thrives side by side with local indigenous languages (Crystal 2006; Davies
84 F. Ndhlovu and L. Siziba

1991; Graddol 2006; Gough 1996). However, much of the focus on the
African indigenization of English in previous research has been on linguistic
processes, such as semantic extensions, and lexical and syntactic transfers
from local languages into English. In this section, we seek to build on and
extend the discussion in new directions on the ownership and appropriation
of English in southern Africa by focusing on two sociolinguistic aspects: the
pragmatic and symbolic dimensions of English. These two explanatory para-
digms are pertinent to understanding how the perceived social capital of
English is often strategically deployed in communicating ideas about free-
dom, independence, cultural affirmation and discourses on the possibilities
of social transformation and change in postcolonial African countries.
First is the symbolic dimension of language, which has been widely
discussed by pioneering social theorists: Pierre Bourdieu (1991), Norman
Fairclough (1992), Braj Kachru (1986) and Ruth Wodak (1989). In his
seminal book on Language and Symbolic Power (1991), Bourdieu defines
symbolic power as that which exists because the person who submits to it
believes that it exists. In the context of the discussion on symbolic
­functions of English in postcolonial Africa, the realization that power and
language are interlinked is indicative of the need for us to transcend
purely formal language studies by looking more ‘critically at the ways in
which language is implicated in societal power relations [because lan-
guage] is never neutral; it empowers and disempowers’ (De Kadt 1991:
1). In Zimbabwe, the deployment of English in communicating
Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) propa-
ganda from year 2000 onwards (see Ndhlovu 2011, 2015) exemplifies
the widespread strategic appropriation of the symbolic power that is resi-
dent and firmly located in the English language. As Galbraith noted
almost half a century ago, ‘the supreme and most insidious exercise of
power lies in shaping people’s perceptions, cognitions and preferences in
such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things’ (in
De Kadt 1991: 2).
Therefore, instead of seeing a remnant of the colonial legacy, most
postcolonial African elites see in English an effective tool for putting
across their case and for being heard, because the English language car-
ries a symbolic power that African indigenous languages do not have.
So far, leaders like Robert Mugabe and his close allies in ZANU PF
 English in Southern Africa 85

have received a barrage of criticism from Western capitals for their

extravagance and an extraordinary appetite for everything Western at
the expense of poor, ordinary citizens. Such criticisms have been backed
by practical action in the form of ‘targeted’ or ‘smart’ sanctions aimed
at curtailing ZANU PF politicians’ access to first-world lifestyles.
However, none of the European and North American countries impos-
ing these sanctions has raised the question of access to the English lan-
guage as an issue. This is an inadvertent admission that English now
belongs to everybody, including African leaders who have denounced
everything Western. What is most interesting is that over the one and
half decades of strained relations with Harare, the English-speaking
Western world has never argued against what appears to be ZANU PF’s
double standards when it comes to their denunciation of all things
Western. ZANU PF has also never rejected English as a vestige of colo-
nialism in the same way they have denounced all other things. Similarly
insatiable appetite for English by the ruling African National Congress
(ANC) political elite in South Africa is demonstrated by their well-
known preference for educating their children in former white-only
(apartheid ‘Model C’) schools that have English as the only or main
medium of instruction (Heugh 2000; Ndhlovu 2013). This is where
the argument of this chapter about the ownership and symbolic func-
tions of English lies. Both the English-speaking world and the political
elites in English-speaking southern African countries are subject to the
‘ideological nature of [the English] language, which wields all the more
power in that it generally remains unperceived’ (Connolly 1983: 225).
Another dimension to the symbolic functions of English relates to its
role as a marker of social class and multilingual identities. In this connec-
tion, English sustains and perpetuates power relations in the sense that it
is the educated users of English who are recognized as elites in many
African societies. Perceptions and ideas about being educated are indexed
in English language proficiency because the ‘command of English is seen
generally as an indication of education’ (De Kadt 1991: 8) and this con-
fers high social status and prestige. Furthermore, many African people
who profess to have multilingual identities, whether on the African con-
tinent or in the diaspora, identify English as one of the languages linked
to their sense of who they are. For Kachru (1992), the increased use and
86 F. Ndhlovu and L. Siziba

nativization of English by nonnative speakers is symbolic of the creation

of non-Western multicultural identities. This does indeed suggest that
English has been appropriated and added to the nested hierarchy of lan-
guages that define and shape multilingual African identities. As Chinua
Achebe argued in the 1970s, nonnative speakers of English now own and
control this language (Achebe 1975), which has become part of their
linguistic repertoire. The example of Zimbabwe that Ndhlovu (2011,
2015) discusses shows that during the diplomatic and political standoff
between Harare and the West, members of the ZANU PF regime—made
up of nonnative speakers of English—managed to appropriate the lan-
guage, turn it to their advantage and assert themselves through it
(Chisanga and Kamwangamalu 1997). This is connected to the explana-
tory paradigm focusing on the pragmatic functions of English.
The pragmatic function of English is based on the perceived commu-
nicative dimension of the language, whereby, in many postcolonial coun-
tries, English performs the important sociolinguistic roles of elucidation
and neutralization (Chisanga and Kamwangamalu 1997). Overall, the
tendency for linguistic homogenization in the postcolonial context has
seen the unreflective continuation of English language hegemony. Such
hegemony always goes undetected due to seemingly democratic, liberal
and accommodative language policy pronouncements. It is notable that
southern African national language policies that sustain the dominance
of English reflect the self-serving interests of the political leadership. The
ultimate consequence is that there is always an ideological connection
between the goals of language policies and political interests of
policymakers.

Conclusion
This chapter has argued that the English language assumed the hege-
monic status of language of access to political power and social and
economic opportunities in southern Africa from the early years when it
was introduced by the first waves of British immigrants. The superior
and preponderant position of the English language that was imposed
through the Anglicization policy that followed British occupation of
 English in Southern Africa 87

the Cape Colony continues to this day. Therefore, it can be argued that
the social and political history of English in southern Africa reflects the
history of the global spread of the Anglophone version of Euro-
American modernity such as colonial imperialism, Western models of
development (‘progress’) and Christianity as the ‘normative’ religion.
For this reason, we conclude that any discussion on the English lan-
guage in southern Africa and the African continent in general has to be
always located within broader social, political and economic contexts of
world history dating back to the onset of the expansion of the so-called
Western civilization.

Notes
1. The countries that fall within southern Africa are those that belong to the
regional economic and political organization known as the Southern
African Development Community (SADC). Prior to 1992, SADC was
known as the Southern African Development Co-ordination Conference
(SADCC), established in 1980.
2. The Nziramasanga Commission was set up by the Government of
Zimbabwe in 1998, to inquire into the state of the country’s education
system. This commission was made up of 12 members and named after
the chair of the commission, Dr. C.T. Nziramasanga.
3. The term sociological minority, also known as a subordinate minority,
refers to a group that does not constitute a politically dominant section of
the total population of a given society. It is not necessarily a numerical
minority but may include any group that is disadvantaged with respect to
a dominant group in terms of social status, education, employment,
wealth and political power.

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Literature: Grammars, Dictionaries and Other

Works
The number of grammar books, dictionaries and other reference works that spe-
cifically focus on English in southern Africa is relatively small. This is because
the teaching and learning of English in the region has always been based on
material imported from the United Kingdom and other parts of the
Anglosphere (usually, the British Commonwealth, or recently from the
United States) where English has a very long history of documentation. The
92 F. Ndhlovu and L. Siziba

following are amongst the best known grammar books and dictionaries of the
discussed varieties of English in Southern Africa.
Branford, J. (1991). A dictionary of South African English. Oxford: University
Press.
Branford, W. R. G. (2002). South African pocket Oxford dictionary (3rd ed.).
Oxford: University Press.
Kavanagh, K., Mantzel, D., van Niekerk, T., Wolvaardt, J., & Wright, M.
(2002). South African concise Oxford dictionary. Goodwood: South Africa
Oxford University Press.
Longman, M. M. (Ed.) (2001). Francolin illustrated school dictionary for Southern
Africa (2nd ed.) (first edition Francolin Publishers, 1997). Edited by Dorothea
Mantzel and Bernd Schulz.
Mesthrie, R. (1992). A lexicon of South African Indian English. Leeds: Peepal Tree
Press.
Mesthrie, R. (2010). A dictionary of South African Indian English (p. 260). Cape
Town: UCT Press.
Oxford University Press. (2010). Oxford South African Concise Dictionary (2nd
ed.). Goodwood: Oxford University Press. (Revision of South African Concise
Oxford Dictionary). Edited by the Dictionary Unit for South African English.
Oxford University Press South Africa. (2006). Oxford South African multilingual
primary dictionary. Goodwood: Oxford University Press.
Silva, P., Dore, W., Mantzel, D., Muller, C., & Wright, M. (1996). A dictionary
of South African English on historical principles. Goodwood: Oxford University
Press.

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