Language Policy Formulation in Multilingual Southern Africa

Language Policy Formulation in Multilingual Southern Africa Mubanga E. Kashoki Institute of Economic and Social Research, University of Zambia, Lusaka...
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Language Policy Formulation in Multilingual Southern Africa Mubanga E. Kashoki Institute of Economic and Social Research, University of Zambia, Lusaka, Zambia After attaining political independence from their erstwhile colonial masters, a major preoccupation for all ex-colonial African countries has been the formulation of national policies (economic, educational, political, social, etc.) considered appropriate to their mode of national development. None of these has proved more difŽcult to achieve than the formulation of language policies that reect the complex multilingual contexts of these countries. The present paper is an attempt to identify the causal factors that have led to this state of affairs. Part One deals with the historical background, and attempts to trace some sources of the problems that continue to complicate the process of language policy formulation. Part Two deals with present realities, and Zimbabwe and South Africa are used to illustrate ex-colonial African countries trying to formulate a comprehensive language policy. The two parts are linked by the observation that past and lingering societal perceptions, and consequently attitudinal orientations, can be said to play a part in rendering language policy formulation in highly complex multilingual countries an extremely intricate task. Keywords: language, multilingual, nation, nation-state, language policy, language policy formulation

Introduction The present paper consists of two interdependent parts, the Žrst being a brief, introductory outline of some root problems that continue to beset language policy formulation in ex-colonial, multilingual African countries with particular reference to Southern Africa. This section deals with the recent, historical past, while the second part, building on the Žrst, deals with the contemporary scene as exempliŽed by unfolding language policy formulation in two countries in Southern Africa, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

Some Root Problems Bedevilling Language Policy Formulation in Multilingual African Countries The historical source Today, the relatively modern notions of ‘state’, ‘nation state’, ‘nation’ ‘nationhood’ and ‘nationality’ not only have come to be understood or believed to be the natural order of things but, perhaps in consequence of this, are taken for granted. Yet this has not always been the case. As we know from history, in mediaeval Europe, for instance, there were few, if any, clearly marked territorial boundaries which one could refer to as ‘nations’ or ‘nation states’ in the modern sense of these terms. As Billig (1995: 20) has put it, ‘in 0143-4632/03/03 0184-11 $20.00/0 J. OF MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT

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mediaeval Europe there were few clear territorial boundaries’, pointing out that ‘mediaeval Europe comprised small cutting networks; no single power agency controlled a clear-cut territory or the people within it’. Matters are altogether different in our age. The bounded state, as we have come to know and understand it in modern times, is a fairly novel sociopolitical creation, a fact of sociopolitical modern life unknown to earlier generations. The birth of nation states, even in Europe, dates back no more than a couple of centuries. From this, two points are particularly salient. The Žrst is that made by Billig (1995) who observes that ‘the rise of the modern nation state brought about a transformation in the ways that people thought about themselves and about community’, adding that ‘it could be said to have brought about a transformation of identity, even bringing into the popular vocabulary the notion of “identity” itself’ (pp. 61–62). The second, of direct salience to what will be advanced later, is that the modern, tacit ideology which inheres in the concept of ‘state’ as a bounded territory consisting of a group or (more commonly groups) of people, referred to as ‘nation’, has given rise to such other terms as ‘nation state’, ‘nationhood’, ‘nationality’ and ‘nationalism’, and so on. To this dimension of the problem must be added the special historical nature of the majority of now independent African countries as ex-colonies. Unlike mediaeval Europe, which relied to a considerable extent on the notions of ‘language’’, ‘dialect’ and ‘culture’ as one of the motivating reasons for the eventual evolution of a nation state, African countries, as nations, have typically come into being involuntarily, largely on the whims of the colonial powers which decided their fate at table conferences or over a glass of port thousands of kilometres away. Thus, while Norway and Denmark, for example, represent instances where state formation was patterned in the main on the boundaries that were supposed by their originators to exist between ‘languages’ and ‘dialects’ (cf. Billig, 1995; Haugen, 1966), the majority of present-day African countries were given their intriguing shapes arbitrarily, as a result of decisions that carved up Africa according to the territory-acquisition interests of the particular colonising power. As popular discourse would have it, grandfather and grandson, brother and sister, and niece and uncle found themselves unconsulted on the other side of the border. This, however, is not to be unmindful of contrary views, such as those of Alexander (1989: 16–17) who argues that there is not much weight to the old argument that people were thrown together arbitrarily, that lines were drawn by imperialist politicians sitting in Berlin and Brussels simply with rulers through maps of Africa and that in this way arbitrary ‘nations’ were created. That argument is, to put it bluntly, nonsensical. He offers the explanation that ‘because every one of those political entities was created through the development of capitalist production processes, through the development of means of communication, including, for example, the development of linking languages for purposes of trade and exploitation’, the consequence was that ‘in the course of struggles, people come to identify with those territories/entities rather than with their original “tribes”’. While

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Alexander’s focus seems to be on consequences, the present argument is concerned with cause and not effect. More to the point, in the context of the present argument, the largely arbitrary nature of the manner in which present-day African countries came into being as sovereign nation states is directly responsible for their present highly multi-ethnic, multicultural and multilingual ‘national’ character – sometimes, as in the case of Tanzania and Nigeria, containing as many as 100 or more ‘languages’ or ‘dialects’ within their borders, excluding for the moment the metropolitan language of the coloniser. Billig (1995) makes a number of apt observations which lend additional force to this argument. He points out that ‘the idea of a dialect had little use before nation-states started establishing ways of speaking and writing’, the result being that before too long not only did the distinction between ‘language’ and ‘dialect’ become a vehemently contested political issue but, often, ‘the boundaries between languages, and the classiŽcation of dialects have followed the politics of state-making’ (Billig, 1995: 33). He continues: The creation of Norwegian is instructive. The decolonization from Denmark was marked by a struggle for language. First, the state of Norway was to declare its own language, creating a spelling to match so-called Norwegian patterns of talking, rather than Danish ones. Similarly, he goes on, ‘when the Dutch went their way politically, their form of lower Franconian was to become a separate language, in contrast to other forms which have become known as dialects of German’ (p. 33). Thus, by the time these Europe-based developments had been transferred to the African continent, principally as a result of colonisation but also through other multiple forms of cross cultural contact, African countries had come to inherit two interrelated problems which have continued to bedevil their efforts at ‘nation building’. On the one hand is the inheritance of artiŽcial ‘national’ boundaries and on the other is the inheritance of largely artiŽcial distinctions between ‘language’ and ‘dialect’. Each constituent part of this twin problem contributes in no small measure to complicating the policy decisions that need to be made regarding, Žrst of all, questions of ‘nationhood’ and, secondly, the manner in which the ‘nation’ can optimally utilise its linguistic and other culture-related resources. In either case multiplicity and diversity constitute the crux of the issue. The vast majority of African countries are characterised by a multiplicity not only of peoples but of ‘languages’ or ‘dialects’ within the ‘national’ boundaries. In these circumstances, while it is possible to please some of the people some of the time, it is not possible to please all of the people all of the time. It is on this volatile and shaky foundation that languagepolicy formulation in multilingual, multi-ethnic African countries typically tends to ounder. Some consequences of the historical source For many years after attaining political independence, even up to the present day, the predominant preoccupation of most newly independent African countries has been a search for ‘national integration’ which in the

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main entails conscious efforts aimed at welding pre-independence disparate ethnic entities into a ‘uniŽed nation’. The early stages of ‘nationhood’ was a time when the search for ‘national’ lingua francas, generally in the sense of ‘national language’, was either much in vogue or a much desired goal. This was the time when Tanzania, for instance, was paraded by the international intellectual community as a country that had the good sense to choose a single language out of a multiplicity and to designate, and utilise, it as a ‘national’ language. Parallel with this, it was also the time when, besides the search for ‘national’ languages, the ideology of ‘one-party state’ for a while held sway in the political sphere. In academia, the period was characterised by a urry of scholarly activity, principally in the disciplines of political science, sociology and sociolinguistics, predominantly preoccupied with matters of ‘national integration’. Relevant examples of this are the efforts of Bell and Freeman (1974), Fishman et al. (1968), and Smoke and Betsi-Enchill (1975). Why? Precisely because both the notion of ‘national language’ and that of ‘one-party state’ were directly linked to the ideological perspective of bringing about the desired ‘national integration’ (expressed in Zambia succinctly in the motto ‘One Zambia, One Nation’, to be found engraved in bold relief on the ‘national’ coat of arms). In large part this ideological orientation led to the retention of the metropolitan language inherited from the departing colonial power as the (principal or the only) ofŽcial language in the post-independence era. This is aptly exempliŽed by what one scholar has to say about Mozambique. Ganha˜o (1979: 2) observes that: The decision to opt for Portuguese as the ofŽcial language of the People’s Republic of Mozambique was a well considered and carefully examined political decision, aimed at one objective – the preservation of national unity and the integrity of the territory. The history of appropriation of the Portuguese language as a factor of unity and leveller of differences dates back to the foundation of Frelimo in 1962 (cited by Lopes, 1999: 105). These sentiments as a reection of the ideological predispositions that prevailed at the time in inuential political circles Žnd a close parallel in the defence a Zambian scholarly analyst offers as a justiŽcation for Zambia’s choice of English as the ofŽcial language in the post-independence era. In his turn, Mwanakatwe (1968: 213) writes: all leaders now accept that the strength of national unity lies in the recognition of the legitimate hopes and fears, as well as interests, of the diverse elements which constitute the Zambian nation – that is the several tribes scattered in all parts of the country. It is unity in diversity [original author’s emphasis] which is being forged without exacerbating intertribal conicts and suspicions which have disruptive effect. Because of this fact, even the most ardent nationalists have accepted the inevitable fact that English – ironically a foreign language and also the language of our former colonial masters – has deŽnitely a unifying role [my emphasis] in Zambia.

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As an outcome of the problems under discussion here, a core difŽculty in all this has been a general lack of understanding and appreciation of the meaning to be attached to the basic concepts themselves: ‘nation’, ‘nationhood’, ‘national integration’, ‘national unity’ and ‘ethnicity’ (or more commonly ‘tribalism’). These terms have remained for the most part ill-deŽned, if any attempt to deŽne them was ever made at all, which all too often was not the case. In the Žnal analysis, three camps can be identiŽed as having emerged in this kind of situation: (1) the ‘integrationist’ or ‘national unity’ ideology camp; (2) the ‘diversity’ ideology camp, i.e. those leaning towards a greater appreciation of ‘diversity’ as a primary ingredient in the ‘national’ character of the nation state and the need therefore to take due account of such diversity in the country’s planning and development efforts; and (3) the ‘middle-of-the-road’ ideology camp, i.e. those with a reasonable appreciation of the standpoints of both (1) and (2). A second conclusion that could be drawn at this point is that, in the intervening period between the attainment of independence and now, the ‘integrationist’ or ‘national unity’ ideology has tended to predominate and has captured the imagination of the ‘nation’ and, because of protracted socialisation (indeed indoctrination), it is the one to which most people, both the leadership and the led, would readily relate today. At the opposite end of the scale, again because of relentless indoctrination, the average citizen is more likely to be averse to any suggestion or manifestation of ethnicity (especially when perceived as ‘tribalism’), whether in word or deed. The contemporary scene The contemporary scene is marked by a growing concern in academic as well as (although comparatively only recently) in political circles with issues pertaining to language shift, language decline and especially language extinction. Arising from this is a palpable swing, particularly since the late 1970s, to a growing realisation of the need to preserve all mankind’s languages. It is in recent times, more than in the past, certainly in multilingual African countries, that we have begun to see language as one of the fundamental human rights. Namibia and Malawi, for example, both members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), provide illustrative examples of the contemporary scene. Namibia’s Constitution provides that every person shall be entitled to enjoy, practise, profess, maintain and promote any culture, language, tradition or religion subject to the terms of this Constitution and further to the condition that the rights protected by this Article do not impinge upon the rights of others or the national interest. Closely echoing these lofty sentiments, the Malawian Constitution of 1995 stipulates that ‘every person shall have the right to use the language and to participate in the cultural life of his choice’. Of special signiŽcance here is the fact that, unlike in the past, the framers of the 1995 Malawian Constitution

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elected to make no reference whatsoever to what the ofŽcial and/or national language ‘shall be’ (cf. Kayambazinthu, 1999: 56), a provision so characteristic of other constitutions. To this list should be added Mozambique. After specifying that Portuguese shall be the ofŽcial language, the revised Mozambican Constitution of 1990 goes on to provide that ‘the state shall value the national languages and promote their development and their growing usage as vehicular languages and in the education of citizens’ (see Lopes, 1999: 104). Recognition today of language as a human right can further be seen from its being reected in the language policies that have been formulated or are in the process of being formulated. South Africa and Zimbabwe, to be considered in some detail below, are a case in point. At the continental level as well, there is evidence of a recognition, albeit only implicitly, of language as both a right and a resource. At this level, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU)’s Language Plan of Action for Africa as adopted in 1986 enjoins member states ‘to ensure that all languages within their boundaries are recognized and accepted as a source of mutual enrichment’. Thus, all in all, what we see in recent times as compared to earlier decades is a growing trend away from an overemphasis one selection and prescription of a single language as the country’s only ofŽcial and/or national language and towards a recognition of linguistic diversity as a universal fact of life and as a potential resource to be harnessed for the common good. Problems of a multilingual policy For the past three decades or so, multilingual African countries have been single-mindedly preoccupied with bringing about ‘national integration’. Because of decades of perceiving multi-ethnicity (otherwise referred to as ‘tribalism’), as well as multiplicity of languages, as being antithetical to ‘national integration’ or ‘nationhood’, it has proved exceedingly difŽcult to promote a multilingual policy in most African countries. It can be reasonably predicted that language-policy formulation that now lays special emphasis on according every language a niche of its own is bound to encounter great difŽculty in winning popular support. From the standpoint of those operating from the ‘national integration’ perspective, the new philosophy of language as a (human) right can only mean turning the clock back. Indeed, as evidence of this, I have come across arguments in Zambia to the effect that encouraging the preservation and promotion of the traditional ceremonies of the various ethnic communities is tantamount to encouraging the re-emergence of ‘tribalism’. It is therefore perfectly conceivable that the new emphasis on language rights will be accorded the same reception.

Comprehensive Language Policy in the Making: South Africa and Zimbabwe as Cases in Point Introductory remarks In the case of South Africa, two policy documents are relevant to the discussion, the Žrst being Towards a National Language Plan for South Africa, the Žnal report of the Language Task Group (LANGTAG) and the second being

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the Final Report on the Language Policy and Plan for South Africa presented to the Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology by an Advisory Panel in August, 1996 and in February, 2000 respectively. With regard to Zimbabwe, the relevant document is that titled Report on the Formulation of a National Language Policy (1998). Fundamentals At the level of basic principles, language-policy formulation as an aspect of overall language planning is grounded in the principle of language as a (human) right. In South Africa, for instance, the 1996 Constitution stipulates that ‘everyone has the right to use the language and to participate in the cultural life of their choice’, with the proviso that ‘no one exercising these rights may do so in a manner inconsistent with any provision of the Bill of Rights’. In Zimbabwe, the same principle is expressed forthrightly in the 1998 report itself. There, among many other principles, is the ‘recognition of linguistic rights as human rights which all citizens are entitled to enjoy in a participatory democracy’. Both the South African and Zimbabwean formulations can be interpreted as echoing the sentiments of the OAU Language Plan of Action for Africa which calls upon member states ‘to ensure that all languages within their boundaries are recognized and accepted as a source of mutual enrichment’. At this point, an examination of how these fundamentals are expressed in the language policies being formulated in the two countries might be instructive. Guiding principles and/or strategic goals Besides the fundamentals cited above, the principles used to guide actual language formulation are another area showing close similarity of approach between the two countries. These are presented in Table 1. It can be seen from both sets of principles that what emerges prominently is emphasis on the following underlying notions: (1) the protection and promotion of linguistic and cultural diversity by recognising societal and individual multilingualism as both a resource and a natural phenomenon of human life; (2) the recognition that judicious utilisation of all the linguistic resources available constitutes a fundamental cornerstone of democracy; (3) the need to develop and promote the use of indigenous African languages marginalised in the past; and (4) the development and sustenance of the necessary structures and programmes to support the language policy when duly established. Range of public domains taken into account A comprehensive language policy is one which aims at taking the entire spectrum of national life as its province. It seeks among other things to respond to the country’s local, national, regional and international communication needs while at the same time paying due regard to public domains. In this sense the approach adopted by South Africa and Zimbabwe is instructive. The two countries coincide in regarding the domains of education, law, media and interpreting/translation as deserving special attention – South Africa differing from Zimbabwe only in the wider range of public domains that have received focused attention. These include the public service and the private

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Table 1 Guiding principles of language policy in South Africa and Zimbabwe South Africa

Zimbabwe

· promoting and protecting linguistic and cultural diversity

· recognition of language variation and multilingualism as universal phenomena which can be accommodated within a national policy framework that unites communities by removing fears of domination of individual linguistic groups by others

· supporting democracy through the entrenchment of language equity and language rights

· recognition of linguistic rights as human rights which all citizens are entitled to use and enjoy in a participatory democracy

· asserting the view that multilingualism is a resource

· recognising the complementary roles of local, regional, national and international languages that are based on community needs, choices and usage patterns

· redressing the marginalisation of indigenous languages

· reversal of trends towards the perpetuation of cultural domination through the use of languages of foreign origin in the more crucial domains

· facilitation of individual empowerment and national development by promoting the equitable use of the ofŽcial languages and thus ensuring that all South Africans have the freedom to exercise their language rights by using the ofŽcial languages of their choice in a range of contexts. This applies in particular to equality of access to government services and information

· promoting to full functional capacity those indigenous languages that will be used for national and ofŽcial purposes

· creation of structures and programmes that will protect and develop languages so that each will Žnd its own space in the life of the nation

sector; bodies supported by the Government; national and provincial legislatures, as well as local government. Both countries seem to consider education as perhaps the primary building block for successful implementation of a comprehensive language policy. Once again, South Africa differs from Zimbabwe only as regards the degree of elaboration of the language-in-education policy. Thus, while Zimbabwe appears content to state the provisions in rather general terms (such as which languages will be taught in primary schools and what the medium of instruction will be at the different levels of the education system), South Africa’s

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policy pays more attention to detail. These details include giving the right to the individual to choose the language of learning and teaching within the overall framework which requires the education system to promote multilingualism; the maintenance of home languages while providing access to, as well as effective acquisition of, additional languages (under the rubric of ‘additive multilingualism’); protection of individual rights whereby, for example, the learner has the right to ‘choose the language of teaching upon application to the school’; speciŽcation of the rights and duties of the school so that, for instance, when determining the language policy for a particular school, the governing body must stipulate how the school will promote multilingualism through using more than one language of learning and teaching, and/or by offering additional languages as fully-edged subjects and/or applying special immersion or language maintenance programmes, or through other means approved by the head of the provincial education department and by specifying the rights and duties of the provincial education departments. What is perhaps most noteworthy about the language policies currently in the making in South Africa and Zimbabwe is the signiŽcant break from past practices when language policy formulation, apart from being largely piecemeal, was predicated for the most part on an overemphasis on monolingualism (usually through the metropolitan language of the former colonial power). In consequence, a great many languages not accorded an ofŽcial status were marginalized or not given any role whatsoever to play in the affairs of the nation. Both countries regard redressing these sins of the past as one of the principal goals of their comprehensive language policy. Finally, one other common denominator is the reliance by both countries on the 1986 Language Plan of Action for Africa as well as on the 1997 Harare Declaration (this being, as it were, the Žnal communique´ of the Intergovernmental Conference of Ministers on Language Policies in Africa).

Conclusion The implied or unstated connection between the recent historical past and the contemporary scene can be reduced to the following proposition. Generations now old enough to hold positions of inuence have been nurtured for decades on a surfeit of the sociopolitical persuasion that perceived cultural diversity in general, and multiplicity of languages in particular, as not just potentially divisive but a disintegrative factor. Such people are most likely to be antithetical to sociopolitical philosophies that now place a special premium on language as a human right, regarding a variety of languages not as a problem but as a resource. Salient here is the experience of the black population of South Africa with the Bantu Education Act of 1953. Designed in part by the apartheid regime as a response to the universally accepted educational principle that the child learns most effectively in the mother tongue, the Bantu Education Act nonetheless was widely perceived by the black population as a nefarious stratagem designed to hoodwink them into embracing an ill-

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conceived and ill-intentioned language policy, inherently injurious to their interests. In both South Africa and Zimbabwe there is a trend among the indigenous populations towards monolingualism. In both countries, both during and after the colonial era, the native population came to regard a single language – English – as the language of prestige, social mobility and economic empowerment. Successive generations, while not altogether abandoning their ancestral languages, have come to own a great deal of pragmatic allegiance to English, and the leanings towards utilitarian monolingualism are all too evident in most spheres of national life, particularly in the case of the younger generations. Thus the challenge is to have multilingualism, rather than monolingualism, seen as a more practical and beneŽcial alternative in terms of both individual and social advancement. Verhoef’s observations (1998) are especially germane. Based on the Žndings of a small-scale language survey conducted in 1996 among high school teenagers in the North West Province of South Africa, she found that ‘despite the language policy which grants opportunity for the optimum development of indigenous languages, English is consolidating its position as the de facto language of power and economic and administrative advancement’ (p. 192). This led her to recommend that indigenous languages must be utilised for the same (practical or utilitarian) purposes as Afrikaans and English. Besides attitudinal orientations, both South Africa and Zimbabwe have to contend with the fact that their peoples have a multitude of social and economic needs, all crying out for attention. What does not seem clear is whether implementation of a complex language policy will emerge as a top priority amidst a host of other urgent ones. A Žnal point is that both countries have become multi-party democracies, but at this point only in a nascent, fragile way. Consolidation of multi-party democracy represents yet another problem likely to affect the implementation of language policy. In Zimbabwe, in particular, where multiparty politics have assumed a highly polarised character during Robert Mugabe’s tenure as President, implementation of a multilingual language policy would seem to face a particularly uncertain future. Correspondence Any correspondence should be directed to Prof. Mubanga E. Kashoki, Institute of Economic and Social Research, University of Zambia, PO Box 30900, Lusaka, Zambia ([email protected]). References Alexander, N. (1989) Language policy and the national question. Logos 9 (2): 13–22. Baron, R and D. Byrne (1991) Social Psychology and Understanding Human Interaction. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Bell, W. and Freeman W.E. (1974) Ethnicity and Nation Building. Beverly Hills: Sage. Billig, M. (1995) Banal Nationalism. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Fishman, J., Ferguson C. and Gupta J.D. (eds) (1968) Language Problems of Developing Nations. New York: John Wiley.

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Haugen, E. (1966) Language Conict and Language Planning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kayambazinthu, E. (1999) The language situation in Mozambique. In R. Kaplan and R. Baldauf (eds) Language Planning in Malawi, Mozambique and the Philippines. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Lopes, J. (1999) The language situation in Mozambique. In R. Kaplan and R. Baldauf Jr (eds) Language Planning in Malawi, Mozambique and the Philippines. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Malawi (1995) Malawi Government Constitution. Zomba: Government Printer. Mwanakatwe, J.M. (1968) The Growth of Education in Zambia Since Independence. Lusaka: Oxford University Press. Namibia (no date) The Constitution of the Republic of Namibia. Organisation of African Unity (1986) The Language Plan of Action for Africa. Addis Ababa: OAU Secretariat. Schmidt, W. (1993) The nation in German history. In M. Teich, and R. Porter (eds) The National Question in Europe in Historical Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smoke, D. and K. Betsi-Enchill (1975) The Search for National Integration in Africa. New York: Free Press. South Africa (1996) Towards a National Language Plan for South Africa: Final Report of the Language Plan Task Group (LANGTAG). Pretoria: Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology. South Africa (2000) Language Policy and Plan for South Africa: Final Draft. Pretoria: Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology. Verhoef, M. (1998) In pursuit of multilingualism in South Africa. Multilingual 17, 181–196. Zimbabwe (1998) Report on the Formulation of a National of a National Language Policy. Harare: National Language Policy Advisory Panel.