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131 CHAPTER NINE Overpowering the anti-African values ghost in us: Reflections on the introduction of African languages in the school system PHILIP MUTAKA 0. Introduction During a recent conference of Linguapax Afrika held in Yaounde, Cameroon, on December 12-13, 2006, there are a number of very personal remarks that the three special guests gave in a plenary session and which encapsulate the wishes and fears of most African researchers as they ponder upon the potential success or failure in introducing African languages in the school system. These remarks are the following: (a) From Professor Felix Marti of Linguapax international: For a sustainable development of sub-Saharan Africa, there is an urgent need for Africans to - Reject completely the neo-colonialism perspective in the way they run their businesses in the continent. African countries are too dependent on the western world, most particularly on France and the USA, and to a certain extent, on China as well. It is high time that Africans find an authentic way embedded in the cultural aspects of their cultures that will lead them to the development path. Even in matters of religion, it would be desirable that their Christian religion or their Islam be different from the one of the imported colonial masters. They have to find a way of living their Christian religion or Islam in a way that harmonizes with their genuine cultural values; - Promote an inter-African cooperation at the political, economic, and intellectual levels. The right way would be for them to start with subregional cooperation and aim for an inter-African globalization; - Promote the cultural communities in their diversities. This means that, they should encourage communities to be autonomous at the cultural and political levels, much as the Catalan and the Basque communities live side by side with the Spanish in Spain; - Concerning the management of cultural diversity, it is important that all the languages be officially recognized as a way to reinforce the cultural identities of the different communities. This means that Africans would find their full cultural identities through the practice of their mother tongues, lingua francas they eventually speak, and the official (imported) languages such as French and English. The governments should see to it that these languages are used as official languages and in the media, for example, on radios and in the internet. - Most importantly, the teaching of these languages in the school system has to be judiciously organized, and great emphasis should be put on their oral knowledge. 132 (b) Professor Adama Samasekou, former Education minister of Mali and current Secretary General of ACALAN (Académie Africaine des Langues, an organ of the African Union) emphasized, among other things, that some of the objectives of ACALAN are - To promote the African transborder languages as a way to reconstitute the intercultural tissue of Africans that has been torn apart by the colonial powers at the 1885 Berlin conference during which Africa was subdivided into colonies by Western powers; - To promote the conviviality between languages: the lingua francas spoken in the African continent would be reinforced by the mother tongues that are rightly called identity languages (langues identitaires in French); (c) Professor Maurice Tadadjeu of the University of Yaounde 1 and winner of the 2006 Linguapax prize for his work on the promotion of African languages expressed, among other things, personal fears that might prevent the success of the implementation of African languages in the school systems in various African countries. Those fears are the following : - Many elites including the intellectual class and government people do not seem to care at all about African languages. Even when they publicly support the promotion of these languages in the school system, they cannot be taken seriously as long as they do not foresee a budget line in their annual budget for the implementation of measures aiming at promoting African languages. - The new generation, especially in urban milieus, has no faith in those African languages. Many youths do not even speak these languages. - Africans should beware of the aid they obtain from foreign donors for the promotion of African languages. This might be a trap in that, once the program fails, this will further reinforce the supremacy of the official languages that have been imposed by the colonial powers. To my mind, the various concerns expressed by the above scholars translate a malaise that the different stakeholders in the promotion of African languages have not succeeded to pinpoint. It is a malaise that is experienced by the...

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