During the recent debate on the motion of no confidence against President Zuma in the National Assembly, I picked up a detail in how EFF members referred to the president.
Everyone noticed that they refused to refer to him as "the Honourable President", opting instead to call him his sons' father.
I have to wonder, though, how many people noticed that when they called him Duduzane's dad, they did so in English, but when they called him Edward's father, it was uBaba ka-Edward.
If you just frowned and asked, "So what?" all I can say to you is, "Oh ye of scant appreciation for the complex relationship that we natives have with the English language."
You see, during the good ole Bantu Education days, English was the prime differentiator between the "enlightened" and the "unenlightened". Between the smart and the dull. Between the Christians and the amaqaba (the pagans).Mark Gevisser explains the phenomenon so eloquently in his biography of former president Mbeki, Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred. In practical terms, at school (the arena of enlightenment) you were expected to communicate in English. And as soon as you exited the gates, you reverted to your "heathen" isiZulu (in my case).
People of my generation will bear me out on this one, but we even had "home" clothes, usually tattered rags with holes. But come Saturday, ahead of a trip to town to communicate in English, we would don our "town" clothes, complete with underpants.
Yes, "home" clothes never came with underpants in my hood. And because of the many holes in everyone's shorts, there were plenty sightings of wrinkly brown toads after school.
I must sheepishly confess that I have a warm affinity for the English language. But one of the things that keeps me awake at night is that during my lifetime I will wake up one day and my precious isiZulu will have gone the way of Aramaic, the Son of Man's mother tongue. That would be a tragedy.Our indigenous languages are carriers of thousands of lyrical, textured nuggets of witticisms. For instance, my old man is currently visiting us. After being frustrated by the shoddy service we received from someone, I offer the explanation that she is being exceedingly lazy.
Without skipping a beat, he offers an alternative explanation: that she is isidunyelwa in general. It's a word I haven't heard in a long time, used to describe slow-witted individuals. The direct translation is "one who lives with constant noises in his/her head". Or, as one of my friends said, "one who hears 'vroom' in his head all the time".
And Xhosa-speakers will appreciate how difficult it is to translate to English that someone undiqhel' ikaka. Ditto BaSotho and o ntloela masepa. Or isiZulu and ungijwayela amakhekhe omngcwabo kagogo wakho. In English, all of the above come out as "You, sir, seem to be taking the levels of familiarity between us too far", which is a disappointingly sterile version of these potent statements.But back to my original point. I have come to a space where I do not believe the Red Berets ever do or say anything that is not carefully calculated. And that includes their synchronised walkouts whenever the Honourable President makes one of his rare appearances in parliament for those question-and-giggle sessions.
Judging by the rate at which they are amassing degrees, I suspect they leave parliament and head straight for the nearest library. So when they went out of their way to refer to Duduzane's father in English and uBaba ka-Edward, they deliberately took the battle back to the Bantu Education streets.
Duduzane is the polished, erudite and worldly son of the president. The "going to downtown Dubai" son. And Edward ... well, maybe he's the "stay at home and hurl abuse at former ministers" son who represents the "home clothes" sans underwear and wrinkly toads peeping through the tatters.
But I could be wrong. It could be that I'm just a victim of the invasive and corrosive effects of the linguistic predator that is the English language.
• Follow the author of this article, Ndumiso Ngcobo, on Twitter: @NdumisoNgcobo..