JONATHAN JANSEN | Swahili? Mandarin? Premier, it’s all Greek to people swerving past potholes

Imagine your car’s engine packs up and you stumble on the perfect solution: brand new wipers with colourful side mirrors that everyone can see. Ridiculous? Not in the world of social or, in this case, educational policy. A policy is not always meant to be implemented.

In the case I will represent, policy offers a powerful symbolism wielded in the hand of unscrupulous politicians. It is meant as a distraction from real problems by appealing to our emotions. It affords the politician short-term legitimacy while the supposed beneficiaries of the policy remain stranded in place.

Gauteng premier Panyaza Lesufi is one of the most cynical politicians in this regard. He is all about symbolic gestures at the expense of substantial change, from the time he was the MEC for education in Gauteng to his preening role at present as the premier of the same province. Shamelessly ambitious, you would be seriously misguided if you thought he has anything less than the presidency itself in his sights.

His modus as MEC, and that of his successor, was to wait for a “racial incident” at a school and then rush to the scene of the crime with an entourage that included media and staff. The spectacle that followed was often comedy that not only undermined school governance authority but failed to deal effectively with racism in the first place.

Apart from racism, nothing stirs the political heartstrings of South Africans like language. So when the premier announced that Swahili and Mandarin would be added to the curriculum of Gauteng schools, I knew that this was political spectacle all over again. Swahili so that we can connect to this power language of East Africa and strengthen bonds of solidarity with our continental neighbours. Mandarin because China is becoming a major force in global politics and economics — and we better learn this language to be able to co-operate and compete with this powerhouse.

Let me say the obvious: languages not only deepen our social and cultural understandings of the world but they do indeed enable us to strengthen transborder relationships. So far, so good — except this move has nothing to do with such higher purposes.

It is, like the wipers on a broken car, a distraction from the collapse of Johannesburg. The collapsing inner city beyond the Bree Street explosion. The water-shedding on top of the load-shedding. Rampant crime in the CBD. The hijacking of buildings. The closure since 2021 of the Johannesburg City Library and the demise of other cultural centres that rob children of reading books and Wi-Fi access and the resources that build our humanity.

Let me ask you this: how many children in Thokoza or Orange Farm will ever need Swahili at home or travel to Kenya or Tanzania for commerce? How many South African entrepreneurs from Mamelodi or Atteridgeville will work with business partners in Beijing or Shanghai? You know the answer.

If anything materialises this time, it would be small pilot programmes that would fade from the scene faster than you’re able to say the magic words, the ‘decolonisation of languages’

Here’s the real puzzle: why would you push these two foreign languages when our children cannot read at the grade level in local languages?

Forgive the repetition, but our grade 4s cannot read for meaning in their home languages. Furthermore, if we needed any expansion of languages it would be to include an African language in every South African school so we can communicate better with each other. That would make much more sense since so many of our children in the Western Cape, for example, are cut off from poetry, music, literature and art in isiXhosa. Now that would move the needle in terms of social cohesion.

But Lesufi is playing to his political gallery. Maybe there are opportunistic resources available for connections to China; let’s put on the back burner their neocolonial ambitions. How better to signal your Africanness than by appealing to African languages beyond the immediate Sadc region — and this in a country where locals regularly attack other-African traders for the sin of trading here and test their localness by demanding that the person speak a word in isiZulu.

The previous minister of basic education tried this stunt before with these languages. Nothing happened. If anything materialises this time, it would be small pilot programmes that would fade from the scene faster than you’re able to say the magic words, the “decolonisation of languages”.

We are being played and the best way to respond to Lesufi is to ignore these distractions. Ask about the potholes, the water-shedding, the city library and the collapse of Africa’s wealthiest city. Ask about the mismanagement and corruption and the unresolved murder of the whistle-blower Babita Deokaran. And ask about the precarious state of learning in our own languages, as one study after another has warned.

Then try to restart your car with the broken engine by switching on the wipers.