ON NEEDS, WANTS, AND THE DESIRE FOR FISH IN A TIME OF CHANGE:

THE PROBLEM OF HOUSING LINGUISTICS AT UCT.

Prologue.

The praise and imploration below is an abbreviated version of a traditional poem once regularly chanted on the beach by the ǂAoni (or
‘Topnaar’ people) of the lower Kuiseb River before they started fishing. The language is a variety of Namibian Khoekhoe, and is related to
the dialect that was spoken by the Khoi Khoi of the early Cape. It is tempting to think that similar praises might have been offered to the
ocean by early inhabitants of the Cape Peninsula, such as the ‘Goringhaikonas’, who are described in the Cape records as fishermen. The
poem was given by Fredrika Kasper of Walvis Bay to K.F.R. Budack, who transcribed and published it with the translation in 1977.

Hurib di gares Praise of the Sea

Huritse, huritse, gai-ǁgamtse, Sea, oh sea, you great water,

Sida ǂAonida ǁgamtse. *…+ Water of us the ǂAoni people. *…+
Gai-huritse, gai-ǁgamtse, You great sea, oh great water,
ǂAonida ǀgõada ǁgamtse: Water of the children of us the ǂAoni people:
u re, ǂn -domtse, Flow, you black precipice,
ǀGõanda gaisetse! Feeder of our children!
ǃNaerusa mã te re, Please give me the stingray,
ǀEteba mã te re, Give me the barbel,
ǀHoeba mã te re, Give me the whale,
Orobeba mã te re, Give me the sand shark,
ǁHanisa mã te re, Give me the steenbras,
ǂ -am-ǃnaba m te re. Give me the stock-fish.
u re ǁnuitse, Flow, oh fat,
Dãu re ǁganxa ǃna ǁgamtse! Flow, you water rich in meat.

To begin:

The recent revelation of the University of Cape Town’s plans for the Centre for African Studies and
proposals for the creation of a ‘ ew School’ resulted in an uproar of fury from some of the students,
senior postgraduates and researchers in affected departments. The anger has been intense on all
sides, as has been the accompanying anguish. While efforts have now been made to include all
concerned groups in re-opened discussions, it seems there is still some bewilderment on the side of
management and staff at the level of anger that was precipitated. For example, one of the
proponents of the New School was recently driven to ask what it is that we want. While it may have
been exasperated, this question was honest in its sincere expression of incomprehension and its
genuine desire for an answer. This suggests that it may now be possible to enter a new phase,
where the anger can be left behind and serious dialogue can begin.

It should be explained at the outset that the debate does not concern what we want: rather, it is
about what we need, as students at a contemporary university in Africa – specifically one that
aspires to change itself into a great African university. Really it is about what we hunger for. We
are starved for courses that are richer, courses that will fill us with the wonder of the continent’s
cultural treasures, and strengthen us to make real changes to ourselves and in our country.
This paper is written from the perspective of a researcher in one of the concerned disciplines,
namely Linguistics. Since the outcry was provoked in part by plans to move Linguistics to the New
School, this is taken as the point of departure. After brief discussion of the plan’s shortcomings, a
detailed alternative is offered, where Linguistics might be housed within the School of Languages,
and where aspects of African Languages and Linguistics in particular might be foregrounded.

THE PLAN TO RELOCATE LINGUISTICS TO THE PROPOSED ‘NEW SCHOOL’.

The present housing of Linguistics at UCT as a section within the Department of English Language
and Literature is embarrassing to anyone associated with the department and to the university as a
whole. Linguistics cannot be confined solely to the study of one specific language or the languages
of one specific region, being a theoretical discipline that focuses on the phenomenon of Language in
the abstract, as exemplified by particular language families (or even passingly indeed by a single
language). Apparently the shifting of the previously separate Department of Linguistics into the
English Department some years ago seemed a good idea at the time, since it harmonized with
research inclinations of then incumbent members of staff. The future needs of the discipline or of a
changing university in Africa were evidently not considered.

The recently announced plans to move Linguistics, along with a number of other departments, into a
‘New School’ for specifically African-focused critical enquiry in the Humanities are just as
problematic , and for much the same reasons. (It would be just as incongruous for a university to
place its Department of Linguistics within a School for American Studies, or to house Mathematics in
a Centre for Asian Studies.) While these ad hoc plans have been given an academic gloss, it is plain
that the primary motive has been economic expediency, made necessary by the struggles of small
university departments to survive in a new and harsh climate of financially-driven management.
These plans have engendered profound distress in students, senior researchers and other members
of the university community, who perceive the proposals to reflect a lack of candour, a lack of
academic purpose, and above all, indifference to the fate of the Centre for African Studies, at a time
when the conception and success of plans to ‘Africanize’ and transform the university are
increasingly being queried by troubled students and staff.

As far as Linguistics is concerned, the proposed relocation even plays once again to the special
research interests of a majority of the presently incumbent fulltime members of staff and the
overwhelming majority of current postgraduate students and other researchers, whose combined
work in Sociolinguistics with reference to various contexts that are local, and hence automatically
‘African’, makes for a seemingly natural fit with the New School, at least on the surface. (The
special trimming needed to enhance this fit includes acceleration of an already-begun cutting back
of focus on Indo-European languages.) Yet is likely that the very accommodations needed on a
long-term basis to keep Linguistics fitting comfortably into the New School will ultimately leave the
department incapable of delivering not only some of the stated academic goals of the school itself,
but much of the other fundamental research pressingly needed in the field of African Languages and
Linguistics. It is not clear that any attempt has been made in the course of the lengthy and closed
discussions leading up to the proposal of the New School to work out what these needs might be.
Of course there is nothing ‘wrong’ with Sociolinguistics, and it should hardly be necessary to have to
affirm this. Many fields covered by this sub-branch of the discipline have theoretical frameworks of
their own, and much of the work is not only of academic interest but of cultural, social and historical
relevance. It is undisputed that there are some outstanding scholars working in such areas at South
African universities. And of course it is greatly desirable, and long overdue, that UCT’s epartment
of Linguistics should start to include a far greater focus on studies in African Languages and
Linguistics. Yet it is for this very reason that the department cannot afford to whittle away the
study of fundamental core theoretical linguistics, sometimes referred to as General Linguistics.

Two examples are given next to illustrate areas where limitations will arise if the Department of
Linguistics is ensconced within the New School.

i. Work involving the university’s archives, which it has been suggested the New School will
foster. Some of the archive material consists of manuscript documentations of Khoesan and
other African languages of our region, made by linguists such as Dorothea Bleek and Ernst
Westphal. Africanists around the world are immensely grateful to the university for having
made some of these materials freely accessible via the library’s website, and for planning to
publish others. At the same time, various early sound recordings have recently come to
light, including some that were made on to wax cylinders. These are now being re-recorded
digitally, in preparation for publication or website dissemination. It is rather a considerable
problem, however, that there is no-one in Linguistics at UCT with the necessary specialized
knowledge to identify the different languages reflected in the recordings and to collate the
sound-tracks with the handwritten notes, descriptions and metadata. This task will be
enormous, and in the case of Dorothea Bleek’s material (proper study of which could
contribute to eventual sorting out of the ǃUi group overall) the work would probably be of
sufficient depth and originality to constitute a doctoral thesis.

ii. Language and migration, which it is stated will be another focus of the New School. Of
course this is an important area of research. And under this heading, no doubt someone
will think to study the case of those San communities who, during the years of regional
conflict, were compelled by circumstance and their own relative powerlessness to act as
trackers for the SA National Defence Force, against the Liberation Forces. Having been ‘on
the wrong side’ of history, these communities found themselves unable to remain in their
own countries in the aftermath of the war, and had to be relocated to South Africa. Some
members of this newly created community in South Africa speak a variety of Khwe , which
belongs to the Khoe family, and for which there is a reasonably well-established
orthography. But other members speak a language belonging to the very different Ju
family. (Anecdotal reports suggest that at least two different dialects of ǃXun are spoken by
these communities, although no-one has formally investigated the situation.) While there is
a well-established orthography for Juǀ’hoan, which belongs to a different division of the Ju
languages, it is only very recently that a dictionary and reference grammar to serve
Northwestern ǃXun have appeared, and it is by no means a given that the orthography
reflected in these works could be adopted straightforwardly by the speakers who have had
to migrate to South Africa. What is needed in order to address the urgent practical needs of
these speakers is, once again, a thorough knowledge of Khoesan linguistics.
Both cases sketched above, which arise directly out of the research agenda identified by proponents
of the New School, point to the need for a specialized knowledge of Khoesan Linguistics (which itself
is merely one branch of African Languages and Linguistics in general). The only way to acquire this at
present is to begin with a strong foundation in General Linguistics, which requires at least three or
four years of concentrated study, and then to work independently through the extensive scholarly
literature (much of which is in German). The latter process can take at least six years, while proper
mastery of the field takes at least a decade. There is much in the existing scholarly material that
requires to be approached with academic caution, and a necessary guide through this maze is a
capacity for the kind of critical thinking best developed through acquaintance with the general
principles of linguistic meta-theory and methodology. Yet the relocation of Linguistics to the New
School, with its implicit sacrificing (or at least cutting back) of General Linguistics, is likely to ensure
that UCT will have no role to play in the regeneration of Khoesan Linguistics as an active academic
field in South Africa.

The simpler solution would naturally have been to restore Linguistics to its original status as an
independent department. This option was presumably considered by the decision-makers – but
their reasons for rejecting it have not been made clear. If it was because of some inherent
administrative abhorrence of small and uneconomical departments, then this is cause for even
greater concern, since it would seem ominous for various other departments. It is surely true,
nevertheless, that the Department of Linguistics is in need of more staff. Some suggestions for its
expansion are made below, and it will be seen that if Linguistics were to be given an extended
academic capacity, and if it were to be combined with various departments of language and
literature – perhaps under the ‘roof’ of the School of Languages – this could enable it to reach a
reasonable level of self-sustainability. (If the motives for proposing the New School were financial,
it is puzzling that it should seem to offer so little that is in any way ‘marketable’ or even likely to save
the university money.)

The section below offers for discussion a housing solution for Linguistics that is based solely on
academic considerations of the needs of the discipline itself, and the needs of an innovating,
research-driven African university. The Department of Linguistics at UCT came up for review of a
couple of years ago. Had senior postgraduate researchers been invited to participate, the
suggestions that follow would have been offered then. These ideas are naturally not the only ones
around, and no doubt there are dozens of students who have given just as much thought to the
subject and who could contribute alternative and even more extensive solutions, if they were only
asked. But there may be one or two points below that are worth considering or possibly even
adopting in some modified form, after much wider debate and extensive consultations.

A SUGGESTED ALTERNATIVE: PLACING LINGUISTICS AT THE HEART OF

THE EXISTING SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES.

The proposal here is for Linguistics to be housed at the heart of an expanded School of Languages.
An arrangement of this essential kind, treating Linguistics as a natural complement to studies in any
particular language, is made by many modern universities around the world. It should go without
saying that the ideas below would have to be sounded out in the first place with the present School
of Languages, by which is meant potentially affected students and researchers as well as academic
staff members. It can safely be declared upfront, however, that there is no intention to trample any
other department, no matter how small. To the contrary, some of the desiderata include the
strengthening of certain departments of languages and literatures, while it is conceivable that some
smaller departments may gain a more secure foothold as a result of the suggested association. As it
happens, the ‘School of Languages’ at UCT presently exists only as a notion, since the individual
departments under its mantle are located in a number of separate buildings, with a main presence in
the Beattie Building and the Arts Block. While not ideal, this means at least that there is also no
‘space agenda’ here (given the lack of a building for anyone to take over).

The discussion and suggestions below are arranged under the following headings:

A. Languages within the School.

What additions could be made to the languages already offered by the School?

B. Linguistics as a possible addition to the School.

Concerning the needs of the discipline itself: what does the study of Linguistics involve?
What could Linguistics look like at a great African university?
How would an expanded School of Languages be staffed and funded, and where would it be housed?

A. Languages within the School.

The School of Languages at UCT presently encompasses all of the university’s language departments
with the exception of English. Needless to say, discussions about the expansion of the university’s
language offerings should really be conducted in some wide-open university forum. The
suggestions made below are highly tentative and largely offered only as examples of what might be
possible. It is taken for granted that courses might be changed at any time to meet the needs or
requests of a particular group of students, for example those speaking the Afroasiatic language,
Amharic, or to take full advantage of the temporary presence of particular scholars travelling here
from elsewhere in Africa or other parts of the world.

The teaching of any language, whether to novices or advanced students, naturally includes the study
of that language’s associated arts, and may also cover other cultural aspects as well as the history of
the relevant society. It is part of the dream for this School that it might steadily build itself up to
become a beacon in Africa for visiting writers, poets, performers and thinkers, and that the
university might one day become celebrated for the vibrancy of its literary culture as well as for the
range and luminosity of its academic studies in Linguistics.

What additions could be made to the languages already offered by the School? A few
suggestions.

The Department of African Languages would require a drastic revision upwards of its staff
complement in order to offer the fair sampling that would be ideal of the continent’s four major
language groupings. For example, a suitable language to represent Afroasiatic languages (other than
Arabic and Hebrew, which are already taught at UCT) might be the Chadic language, Hausa, which is
widely used as a lingua franca in parts of northern Africa. (The term ‘Afroasiatic’ is somewhat
clumsy, but is meant to encompass the reality that some languages of one of the branches of this
super-family have a distribution outside Africa, in the Middle East.)

It is appreciated, though, that it may be more realistic to focus on languages of the southern region,
including selected languages from Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Mocambique –
perhaps particularly languages spoken by students at the university who are from these countries,
and who may desire to study their own language and its associated literature and other arts at an
advanced level. Since the vast majority of languages from these regions belong to the enormous
group of languages referred to as the Bantu family, it would seem a good idea, nevertheless, to
include at least one language from West Africa, so as to give representation to some other branch of
the Niger-Congo super-family. (The term ‘Bantu’, which is a neutral label for an abstract category of
languages, became heavily loaded in South Africa because of its historical misappropriation and
pejorative use as a term of reference for people. A few linguists have suggested alternative names
such as Kintu or Sintu, but these have not been widely taken up, and linguists throughout the rest of
the continent and the world continue to use the long-established term for this group of languages.
The Bantu family of languages, which forms a sub-group of Niger-Congo, is thought to consist of
anything between 300 and 400 languages. The nine members of the family officially recognized in
South Africa today obviously constitute only a tiny fraction of these.)

It would seem appropriate for UCT’s School of Languages to try and offer most if not all of our own
country’s still extant indigenous languages, including South African Nama, which is, of course, one of
the many disparate Khoesan languages. At present, the only university in South Africa that comes
close to realizing this ideal appears to be Unisa.

The colonial languages of Africa, including Arabic and English, are on the whole already represented,
but it may be worth emphasizing that some of these, such as German, French and Portuguese, are
indispensible for the linguistic study of certain families of African languages because of the scholarly
work published in them. What is more, there are African students from various parts of the
continent who are not merely proficient in languages such as French or Portuguese but have studied
them and their literature at an advanced level, and may wish to include them as degree subjects. It
would seem foolhardy to phase these languages out merely on grounds that they are Indo-
European. Given that Linguistics makes an excellent companion major for any major in a particular
language, it may be added that it would be a pity if the Department of Linguistics were to
discontinue offering such European-oriented courses as Romance Linguistics.

Another non-African language that has established a presence here – in this case many centuries
ago, and in circumstances not entirely understood – is Malagasy. This language of Madagascar is
classified as a member of the Malayo-Polynesian sub-family of the Austronesian super-group, and is
most closely related to certain languages of Borneo. While it might not be practical to offer the
language as a subject, an occasional set of lectures by a visiting scholar would be of great interest.

The School of Languages already has a small but outstanding Department of Classical Greek and
Latin. It may be worth considering the complementary addition of another classical language,
namely Sanskrit, for which there may well be some demand.
The School of Languages at UCT has recently acquired the welcome addition of a Department of
Mandarin. It would seem desirable to continue this trend of looking outward to more distant
horizons by offering a few other languages, such as Japanese or Malay. (It is sobering, though, to
recall that the total number of languages spoken around the world is thought to be near 7 000.
Under the circumstances it is hardly surprising that no serious attempt is made here to include
attention to the indigenous languages of the Americas, or Australia.)

It may be a good time for the School of Languages also to introduce a Department of Sign Language.
A course that provided some proficiency in Sign Language would enhance the value of a degree in
any of the professions, including teaching, law, social work and various branches of healthcare.

The very large Department of English Language and Literature could be invited to take up a natural
place within the School of Languages. This Department has already for a number of decades offered
literary studies of work from Anglophone countries or texts in English translation from diverse parts
of Africa. It has also been very much open to studies of film, popular culture, and consistently alive
to emerging genres and the possibilities of new forms of dissemination, including electronic means.

B. Linguistics as a possible addition to the School.

Concerning the needs of the discipline itself: what does the study of Linguistics involve?

Linguistics is, of course, not normative or prescriptive, but is rather an analytical and descriptive
discipline that focuses on the capacity that many consider definitive of our species – namely, the
ability to use language. The core aim of an undergraduate programme in General Linguistics is to
develop a fluency in the terminology and some of the mainstream theoretical frameworks
commonly enlisted for talking about the phenomenon of natural human language, which may be
studied with synchronic or diachronic reference to a particular group of languages or even
occasionally an individual language. The focus is on such components as phonetics and phonology,
tonology, morphology, lexis, syntax, semantics and pragmatics; along with reference to such sub-
systems as those expressing tense and aspect, or number; plus examination of such possible
typological properties as the sub-categorization of nouns into genders, the morphological expression
of semantic roles and information structure, the presence of an ergative sub-system, or the use of
serial or multi-verb constructions. For illustrative purposes, it is generally useful in such a
programme to provide a bird’s eye view of some of the many diverse families that make up the
languages of the world.

Certain applications of Linguistics, such as the design of a standardised spelling system and set of
writing conventions (that is, an ‘orthography’) or the standardisation of languages are dependent on
a grounding in General Linguistics of the kind outlined above. The appreciation of style in any
sphere of the language-associated arts may also be enhanced by familiarity with the methods of
linguistic analysis, which means that the study of General Linguistics is of equal value to students of
literature and orature in any language, and students of practical translation.

Students of descriptive Linguistics also need a familiarity with the meta-principles and touchstone
case-studies that universally guide the building of theories in the discipline. These principles provide
essential underpinnings for projects such as the preparation of an original full-length analytical
description of a language, or the postulation of proto-forms for an hypothesized ancestral language,
or the documentation of an endangered language. The same principles are the necessary drivers of
any critical examination of an existing hypothesis or analysis.

Language may also be studied as an aspect of human behaviour, in contexts of actual use, with
reference to a wide range of individual and social phenomena, including: use of different registers
within a given language, multilingualism, code-switching, language shift, or the emergence of inter-
languages; as well as primary acquisition in childhood of one or more languages, and secondary
acquisition through instruction. Some practical applications of Linguistics, such as language
planning and translation studies can benefit from familiarity with work in Sociolinguistics, while the
methodology of teaching other languages can usefully draw on topics covered in Psycholinguistics.
These important sub-branches rest inescapably on a thorough foundation in General Linguistics.

What could Linguistics look like at a great African university? Undergraduate

programmes, postgraduate programmes, and research programmes and projects.

 Undergraduate programmes.

An ‘Africanized’ programme in linguistics at undergraduate level would surely cover almost exactly
the same ground as the programme outlined above. However, specific differences could include:

i. Greater African reference. A stronger African focus could be achieved simply through
greater efforts to draw illustrations from and ensure coverage of features reflected in the
continent’s approximately 2000 languages, as well as possibly wider reference to
sociolinguistic situations in African countries other than our own.

ii. A course to facilitate learning of a non-colonial language for professional and research
purposes. A specially tailored semester course could be offered for students, researchers, or
those intending to enter any of the professions who might desire a basic familiarity with an
additional or non-colonial South African language. For example, speakers of one of the
Nguni languages may wish to acquire some familiarity with a language from the Sotho-
Tswana group; or speakers of English may wish to learn one of the country’s indigenous
languages. Such a course could provide a general orientation and introduction to the
targeted language family, together with essential knowledge of basic metalinguistic terms,
which could then lead into a follow-up semester course where a sister department provided
an accelerated elementary course in the specifically desired language, even if to provide no
more than a limited but functional reading or communicative proficiency. (A number of
profession-specific language courses have already been introduced at other universities in
the country, for example at Rhodes.)

iii. A course to facilitate teaching of a non-colonial language to children at primary school level.
In a minority of schools in contemporary South Africa there are some learners whose home
language is either one of the colonial languages, or an African language not widely spoken in
 the home neighbourhood. (At some schools this may even the situation for as many as half
of the children.) A welcome course for prospective teachers might be one designed to
facilitate the teaching of some basic communicative proficiency in a local African language to
such learners, particularly at the primary school level. Naturally it would be desirable for
teachers to be first-language speakers of the language if possible, but it should be noted that
ability to speak a language is not in itself a qualification to teach it effectively.

iv. A course to facilitate teaching of a colonial language to children. It hardly needs saying that
in the overwhelming majority of primary schools in South Africa, it is not the most pressing
concern of teachers to develop conversational familiarity with an indigenous language not
already spoken by the children. Rather, in accordance with official policy, it is the very hard
task of teachers to develop complete fluency on the part of young learners in speaking,
reading and writing the colonial language that will become the medium of teaching and
learning for most of their subjects by the end of the primary phase, and for almost all
subjects at the secondary level. This learning is sometimes expected to take place in social
contexts where few adults in the community use the targeted colonial language in everyday
communication, where very few if any children use the targeted language in the playground,
and where there may be extremely limited access to the diversity of appealing, child-friendly
materials that ordinarily support acquisition at this level. It is not clear that primary school
teachers in South Africa are universally being given suitable skills and the extensive support
they need in order to meet this enormous challenge. While it would be greatly desirable to
offer a course that could help to meet these professional needs of prospective teachers, it
seems likely that more research (and perhaps more social engagement) may be needed first.

It may be worth mentioning at this point that multilingual societies are the norm rather than the
exception throughout the modern world, although it is true that not every country makes every
language spoken by a significant number of speakers within its borders into an official language.
Some governments designate just a few languages as ‘official’, while they nevertheless accord
formal recognition to various regional and sub-regional languages, each of which may be used as a
local medium of instruction, for example, or as the language of local administration. (Some South
African researchers interested in language planning and policy have indeed made a point of visiting
other countries that have found solutions to problems of far greater complexity than our own.)

It may also be worth pointing out that the number of languages spoken in South Africa today is fairly
small in comparison with many other countries in Africa and elsewhere around the world. The
statistical tables given by Ethnologue show, for example, that Cameroon is home to 279 languages,
of which just one is an ‘immigrant’ language, the Central African Republic has 82 (11 immigrant),
Ethiopia has 88 (3 immigrant), Nigeria has 521 (7 immigrant), and Tanzania has 129 (1 immigrant).
The same source gives the total number of languages spoken in South Africa as 40, of which 16 are
described as ‘immigrant’.

If there is anything exceptional about our own country, it is perhaps the extreme nature of our social
inequity. The many resources that the majority of South Africans still cannot easily access include
fluency in one of the languages of power. In the case of adults, this can lower the chances of
obtaining work in certain sectors. In the case of children at school, this can mean a reduced chance
of access to a full education. One of the factors entrenching this situation is arguably the
withholding of resources by South African universities – insofar as they may be denying prospective
teachers the kinds of courses that would suitably strengthen them.

 Postgraduate programmes.

There would be no intention to do away with existing postgraduate courses and elective topics. It is
only suggested that various Masters and perhaps even taught Doctoral programmes could be added
to the present offerings. (Other universities in the country have already introduced some notable
programmes, such as the MA in Translation Studies at the University of the Free State, or the MA in
African Languages for Professional Contexts at Stellenbosch.)

A tentative example of just one possible programme is sketched below for illustration and to serve
as a starting point for discussion. The course outlined would provide a well-rounded background in
African Languages and Linguistics, and would serve as a strong foundation for future research in
almost any area concerning African Languages.

 A postgraduate course in African Languages and Linguistics.

The course could be offered as a two-year taught programme leading to an MA degree, with the
option of exit after the first year with an Honours degree; or alternatively it could form the basis of
a taught Doctoral programme. With some modifications and scaling-down, the same outline could
serve as the basis for an introductory course, conceivably even at undergraduate level. All classes,
for both years, should ideally be conducted as seminars, and students could be expected to deliver
mini-presentations (on provided topics) during these. Supplementary teaching could be provided in
the form of tutorials or practicals, and lecturers should ideally also meet regularly with individual
students. For both years, final assessment would probably be based on a combination of marks for
coursework, practical work, an open-book examination, and a mini-dissertation. It might also be
possible (and certainly would be desirable) to include fieldtrips.

The course would aim to be text-based, in the sense that students would be presented with
numerous samples of narratives or poetry, such as the poem used as the Prologue to this paper.
These would not only provide illustrations of particular structures or systems and provide material
for further analysis, but would also serve as an introduction to some very great cultural treasures.

Training and practical hands-on experience should ideally also be provided in the use of various
programmes for computer-aided recording, documentation and dictionary-making (such as Praat,
Toolbox and TshwaneLex). This could in itself constitute another option, taken either in the first or
second year.

First year of programme. The aim of the first year would be to provide students with a good outline
knowledge of the four linguistic ‘phyla’ or ‘super-families’ indigenous to Africa, namely Afroasiatic,
Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo and Khoesan. While the course should ensure a robust theoretical
understanding of a diversity of linguistic structures, it should also equip students to make their first
forays into practical fieldwork, or to analyse previously collected language data.

A. First semester.
 Theme 1: Overview of the languages of Africa. This could include an abbreviated introduction
to Nilo-Saharan, and might also touch briefly on languages with an early colonial presence on
the continent, such as Arabic in northern and north-eastern Africa, and Malagasy in Madagascar.
The outline should give students a good idea of the main defining characteristics of the four
African phyla, plus an understanding of their various sub-divisions. More detailed study of
selected representatives of three of the four phyla could be undertaken as indicated below.

Theme 2: Introduction to the Khoesan group, with particular attention to the southern African
members.

Linguistic revision could run throughout the first semester, and should preferably take a practical
form. As a convenient way not only of consolidating key concepts but also of introducing linguistic
design features which may be unfamiliar (such as serial verbs, or semantically contrastive tones),
students might like to undertake limited theoretical study of the Khoesan language, Juǀ'hoan. The
point would not be to try and achieve actual proficiency, but to introduce students to the general
structure of a ‘non-Khoe’ Khoesan language. By the end of the course they should be able to analyse
(‘parse’) written examples of the language, and should also be adept at recognizing, transcribing and
producing the different clicks. A useful spin-off of this exercise would be that students should find
themselves more fluent in the general meta-language of theoretical linguistic studies.

B. Second Semester.

Theme 3: Introduction to comparative and historical Bantu Linguistics.

Theme 4: Introduction to Ancient Egyptian and Coptic. The speakers of this Afroasiatic language
invented a system of writing that was subsequently taken up and adapted by others to create
new scripts, which in turn were modified again and gave rise eventually not only to the Roman
alphabet used on this page, but also to various scripts of the Middle East, such as the system of
writing used for Arabic. Spanning Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian and Coptic, the texts, which
date from 3 000 BCE up until the 14th century CE, represent the world’s longest continuous
record of a language. As such, the corpus gives an unparalleled insight into the ways in which a
language changes over time. The texts in this ancient African language arguably represent one
of humanity’s greatest cultural treasures.

Second year of programme. The second year would offer scope for more intensive study of some of
the areas covered in the first year. The actual coursework component would be dependent upon
the interests and availability of suitable lecturers, both local and foreign, but should also be decided
on in consultation with students.

Themes could include:

i. West African branches of Niger Congo.

ii. Certain little-explored topics, such as African auxiliary codes, including drum languages,
whistling languages, ‘secret’ languages, and the use of avoidance terms.
iii. Indigenous systems of writing (other than the hieroglyphic and later demotic scripts of
Egyptian) such as the fidæl used for Ethiopian languages such as Amharic and Tigrinya, from
 the abugida originally developed for Ge'ez; or the system used for the ancient language of
Meroe, which is thought by some scholars to have been Nilo-Saharan.
iv. African pidgins and creoles.
v. Students seeking to conduct further research in the area of Khoesan Linguistics could
undertake more intensive study of the Khoe languages, possibly in conjunction with actual
tuition in a Namibian Khoekhoe dialect such as Nama, or one of the Kalahari Khoe languages,
depending on availability of teachers. Students might also focus on more specific aspects of
some of the Ju, Taa and !Ui varieties, including those that now exist only as archive
languages.
vi. Another option might be to take might take a Pan-African, cross-linguistic approach in
examining selected themes, such as tonology, tense and aspect, gender systems, the
indication of information structure, or multi-verb constructions.
vii. Students could contribute to a survey of topics urgently in need of further research.
Participation in such a process could help students to identify a subject for their own future
work.

Students planning to proceed to work on a doctorate could be encouraged to write the mini-
dissertation in the form of a review article (literature survey) covering the intended topic. Where it
seems appropriate, students may alternatively be encouraged to write the dissertation in the form
of a paper for submission to an accredited journal. If the course described above is offered as a
taught Doctoral programme, it would probably need to be supplemented by the additional
requirement of a mini-thesis that reported on original research.

 Research programmes and other projects.

The question here is: What specific needs might inform the main directions of investigative and
practical work by academic staff, postgraduates and researchers in Linguistics at a great African
university? The general principle of academic freedom should never be compromised, it should go
without saying. Nevertheless, there are so many pressing fundamental theoretical as well as
practical research needs in the vast field of African Languages and Linguistics that it would seem only
appropriate to ensure that these are being addressed, even if they are not prioritized over, or seen
to replace, any other topics that researchers may choose to explore.

Admittedly, any contemporary South African linguist attempting to address this question is bound to
feel a certain consciousness of absurdity – like a tiddler in a rock-pool wondering what the needs of
the ocean are. The following sketchy observations are made in precisely such a state of awareness.
What is really needed is a much greater array of suggestions from linguists all over the continent.

i. Fundamental theoretical studies. There is a huge amount of fundamental work still to be

carried out when it comes to the four super-families of African languages: Khoesan, Niger-
Congo, Nilo-Saharan and Afroasiatic. For all of these groupings, which do not even
necessarily consist of systematically related languages, the bulk of the work of ‘historical
reconstruction’ has yet to be accomplished. Here it may be necessary to emphasize that the
principles of linguistic reconstruction can hardly be taught to students without reference to
and extensive study of the work that has been accomplished in the reconstruction of Proto-
Indo-European, since this immense achievement provides the touchstone for such
work. While an extensive body of some 10 000 reconstructed roots now exists for Proto-
 Bantu, the group of languages for which this might be considered ancestral constitutes only
one sub-family of the Benue-Congo branch of the Niger-Congo super-family. For Niger-
Congo itself, no reconstructions have yet been advanced. What is more, even for Proto-
Bantu, no intermediate stages have yet been set up, so that these reconstructions cannot
even be sequenced into etymological series. There are grounds for suspecting, moreover,
that Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo are related at some level, yet linguists are a long way off
from being able to demonstrate this formally. The implications could be immense for our
understanding of Africa's early, unwritten past.

ii. Language description. In Africa, as in other parts of the world, there are numerous
languages that remain only poorly described, and for which there may not even be standard
orthographies. The presentation of a full-length original description of a language is often
considered an academic contribution deserving of a doctorate. Such descriptions are
sometimes made with reference to particular theoretical frameworks, perhaps to test the
applicability of a certain formal approach to some new language, or to motivate some
adjustment to the descriptive model. Needless to say, a thorough grounding in General
Linguistics is indispensible for studies of this kind.

iii. Language documentation. Of the continent’s approximately 2 000 languages it is estimated

that 300 may be seriously at risk, while around 200 are either on the verge of becoming
extinct, or have already died. In the case of a documentation, the ideal is to obtain as
comprehensive a record as possible for posterity, with transcriptions and translations, and
copious examples, not only of vocabulary, phrases and sentence patterns, but also of
discourse spanning as many genres as possible, including stories and poetry. The practical
reality of linguistic documentation means that a good comparative knowledge is required of
the relevant language group, as well as some general knowledge of neighbouring languages
(if only to avoid the embarrassment of failing to detect loanwords). It is preferable to use a
descriptive meta-language that is transparent and not tied to any specific formalist
framework that may quickly become dated. The terminology of functional grammar fits this
purpose well.

The Khoesan languages of southern Africa are almost all highly endangered. It is only the
Namibian Khoekhoe dialects of the Nama, Dama and Haiǁom – and South Africa’s
Richtersveld Nama – that can perhaps be considered stable. (In Namibia, Khoekhoegowab is
one of 13 national languages, and may be studied in that country as a subject for matric and
at university level, while South African Nama is currently enjoying a revival, thanks in part to
the efforts and support of PANSALB. However, other languages and dialects of the Khoe
family, such as Korana, known as ǃOra in the language itself, Naro, Khwe, or Tshua , are
endangered to a greater or lesser degree, and in some cases are bordering on extinction.
The same is true for languages of the Ju family, namely the dialects of the various ǃXun and
Juǀ’hoan sub-groups of Angola, Namibia and Botswana; languages of the Taa family, such
as the dialects of ǃXoon; the ‘ hybrid’ Eastern ǂHoan; and the last remaining varieties of
the South African ǃUi family, namely the Nǀuu dialects of the ǂKhomani.
 The flickering out of these diverse languages represents the loss of an intangible heritage, as
much for our region of Africa and all of us who live here, as for the concerned communities
themselves. The factors that have created this situation are inevitably complex, but
certainly contributory is the reality that the very diverse Khoesan languages are spoken on
the whole by communities that are not only relatively small, but were also historically of a
lowly social status. (The records are full of references to the ‘Batwa’ or ‘Masarwa’, who
were treated by members of other communities as people of lower caste, and were often
even semi-enslaved.) The marginal social and economic status of Khoesan communities
persists to this day throughout most of southern Africa, while the low estimation of Khoesan
languages in South Africa is perpetuated in part by their exclusion from the academic
offerings of our universities, as well as the lack in South Africa of a concerted and well-
supported research focus on these languages. It seems a national shame that the
desperately urgent work of documenting Khoesan languages is currently being carried out
by academic linguists from Namibia and Botswana, Germany and America, and that
theoretical studies are being made almost exclusively by these same scholars, plus others
from Holland and Japan.

iv. Other theoretical studies and practical research projects. In addition to the kinds of
fundamental research sketched above, there is also still considerable scope for theoretical
studies in such areas as dialectology, the emergence of inter-languages, and language shift,
to mention only some. Of particular urgency is further research to gain some understanding
of the processes that underlie or may contribute to successful secondary acquisition of a
language by instruction, particularly in the context of multilingual communities, and in
situations where voluntary or compelled migrations and colonial legacies have created not
only an inequitable distribution of resources and skills, but also certain perceptions
concerning the relative status and value of some languages. Lastly, there remain many
practical needs, such as the development of orthographies and standardisation of languages.

How would an expanded School of Languages be staffed and funded, and where would it be
housed? Posts needed, suggestions for self-funding, and the question of a building.

The ideas sketched above have included some allusion to potential staffing needs of individual
departments of specific languages. Naturally these cannot be sensibly expanded on until firm ideas
have been arrived at concerning future offerings that the School of Languages will make.

 Posts needed for Linguistics.

For the Department of Linguistics, there would probably need to be a staff complement of eight or
nine full-time academics at various levels, to cover (i) core aspects of General Linguistics, topics in
meta-theory, and African language families (four or five staff members, depending on areas of
expertise) and (ii) topics in Sociolinguistics and Psycholinguistics (three or four staff members).
Gaps could be filled in by visiting scholars, through collaborative arrangements and exchanges of
academics with other universities in our own country and the region more broadly as well as the rest
of Africa, and possibly also through transcontinental sharing of lectures by teleconferencing. The
discussion above will have made it clear that new staff should be actively involved in areas of
urgently needed research and well able to direct postgraduate research.

Since the existing department already has a staff quota of five fulltime academics, additional funding
would need to be found for three or four lecturers. (One of the existing posts is for a limited term,
being funded by the SA Research Chairs Initiative, and it is not clear what arrangement has been
made to keep a university post in reserve for the incumbent. The department is also fortunate to
have a highly respected Bantuist currently on its staff, but this arrangement is sadly temporary and
part-time.) The current standard academic package for a Lecturer on the permanent staff at UCT is
annually R403 124, and for a Senior Lecturer it is R494 716. Assuming the optimum creation of
posts for two Lecturers and two Senior Lecturers, the maximum overall amount needed in additional
annual funding would be: R1 795 680.

 How the School might become partly self-sustaining.

It is understood by all that the Arts – and Humanities more broadly – are supposed by tradition to
receive minimal funding, and to be tolerated only as a necessary nuisance. In acceptance of this
well-established principle, a few suggestions are listed below that might offer ways of allowing the
School of Languages to earn its own keep. Essentially, the idea is that the School could offer a range
of highly attractive courses not only to students but also to members of the general public. Most of
the suggestions have already been made or at least obliquely implied in the body of the proposals
for expanded African content, so that the public courses would not require much additional
preparation on the part of lecturers.

A few suggested offerings:

i. Well-structured, prestigious taught Masters and Doctoral programmes. Sponsorship of

bursaries could be sought from the Department of Arts and Culture.
ii. High-powered postgraduate courses in specific skills currently in high demand, such as
techniques for the teaching of a new language, including English, to others.
iii. Short-term certificate courses in any of the languages taught by the school, including Sign
Language, to members of the general public.
iv. Short-term certificate courses for teachers, who may be able to receive sponsorship from
the Department of Education.
v. An accelerated program to learn English, for members of the general public as well as
prospective students.

Other ways of achieving partial self-funding could involve:

i. Partnerships with one or more of Cape Town’s independent language schools, with a view to
offering short-term certificate courses in TESOL (training for the Teaching of English to
Speakers of Other Languages) to members of the general public as well as students.
ii. Partnerships with existing independent units and GO’s, with a view to acquiring contract
work from African state departments in such areas as the development of orthographies,
language documentation, or language standardisation.

 Physically housing the School of Languages: the question of an ‘own’ building.

It is understandable that when proposals for the ‘New School’ were first presented, the idea of
acquiring offices in the beautiful Ernest Oppenheimer building must have been appealing. The
Linguistics Department, for example, is currently accommodated in the basement of the Arts block,
where the only workspaces available to researchers are three perches at a communal counter
recently installed in a narrow book-room. By contrast, the Oppenheimer building offers light and
airy spaces throughout a series of different levels, and every open area contains at least one
artwork. In particular, the entrance floor is dominated by a wondrous and magical giant fish, a
Kavavangaheti, carved by the late Jackson Hlungwani. Who would not want to inhabit such a
space?

However, it was made clear at the beginning of this paper that really it is a question of needs rather
than wants that we are trying to discuss. A question that might be pertinent, then, is whether the
School of Languages truly needs to be consolidated into a single building. One of the promises of
the New School is that it will encourage some sort of inter-disciplinary synergy. Of course there is a
great deal to be gained when scholars from a range of disciplines share their respective
understandings of some topic in which all have a common interest. In the case of Khoesan
linguistics, for example, the specialist knowledge of historians and anthropologists has recently been
of invaluable assistance in making sense of some puzzling linguistic data. Yet the particular
collaboration alluded to took place between a linguist from UCT – and an historian and
anthropologists from the University of the Free State. It seems, then, that multi-disciplinary
interactions may not depend so much on physical proximity as on the particular research interests
(and perhaps even the personalities) of individual academics.

It might be added that, by an odd oversight, the New School does not propose to include History.
How then is it decided what disciplines might make a suitable mix? If some of the younger students
in Linguistics were to start drinking coffee with students in Mathematics and Computer Science,
would they be censured? Given the intended focus on ‘critical enquiry’, it seems strange that
Philosophy has not also been included in the New School. We are left wondering whether those
academic departments and units in Humanities that have been excluded from membership of the
New School should be supposed to practise something other than critical enquiry.

If all that is desired is to facilitate cross-communication, perhaps it might be more relevant to

canvass the university community to find out what kinds of spaces people feel an actual need for,
beyond the existing food-courts and coffee-bars. It might also be queried whether the
preoccupation with the number and size of individual offices ‘owned’ by an individual department is
really shared by students or researchers. Some of us would be well content with nothing more than
a small carrel or cubicle, if only it could be one of a large ring or square of them placed around the
perimeter of a central common room that invited regular use as a friendly and comfortable place for
holding consultations, workshops and seminars. In short, it is likely that the idea of an own building
for the School of Languages can be set aside as an extravagant wish rather than a real need.

To end:
Everything above has been offered as the expression of nothing less than an acute need. Even so,
the setting out of these alternative proposals was prompted by a baffled and plainly sincere enquiry
concerning what it is we want. Since the question was posed, it seems not inappropriate to end by
expressing something that really is no more than a wistful desire, on behalf of all who inhabit either
the Beattie Building or the creaking Arts Block. Please, could we have a fish too – or some other
beast? Something giant and magical, with grained hints of metamorphosis and surprising
transformations lying in wait within its curves.