I have been following the public discussion in the print and radio media concerning the subject of mother tongue in education. This debate was sparked by the gazette newspaper interview of kgosi Kgafela II where he was quoted as having expressed the flowing words of wisdom that “if you want to teach Batswana to be Batswana you must teach them in Setswana, their mother tongue. The same holds true for any nationality or ethnic grouping anywhere in the world. We must always pause to wonder why the “powerful”nations of this world do certain things in a particular way. We must think deep and very carefully about why they guard so strongly against erosion or conquest of their languages. There is a reason for that.
We must think for instance, why is it that the English for centuries have promoted their language to be the dominant language of the world; why the French and Afrikaaners refuse to speak English whilst promoting their own languages; why the Russians, Chinese, Italians, Arab nations and similar cultures have focused so many years in retaining their languages as priority languages in their countries. WHY! The Afrikaaners, like us, were subjects of the English at one point but they have resisted domination by the English language. What is it in language that has inspired all these so called civilised nations to safeguard their languages? Have these nations seen some powerful spirit or scientific benefit in language or speech which we in Botswana have not seen at all out of our blind ignorance? We know for sure now that all matter, all creation of God boils down to sound frequency. The healing, destructive, mind manipulation and other unseen powers of sound have been the subject of much scientific research in this century. A lot of modern technology owes its material origins from the works of scientists like Nicola Tesla “the present is theirs the future is mine” and Rife “nine tenths of criticism is a cloak of ignorance” who did extensive research on sound. There are researchers who have gone further to study the science of sound in the English language specifically and languages in general. The findings so far are astounding and worthy of visiting by all those interested in the subject of language beyond conventional linguistics studies. Until we fully appreciate these finer details of the subject of language we can never really appreciate fully what is happening to our very being by using and directing our present and future lives with a foreign language such as English. We have no clue what we are doing to ourselves. One thing for certain, that we can all see for ourselves today, is that the present system where English is a priority language yields hypocrisy and artificialness of a highly embarrassing nature. I am not suggesting for a moment that we should discard the English language.
In fact, it is encouraged that everyone should learn as many languages as possible. We should learn Ikalanga, Se Mbukushu, Ndebele, Shona, Venda, Swahili, French , German and so forth to enable us easy communication. Of utmost important, we must learn the international language of nature called LOVE. Learning and knowing these languages of other nations is one thing. Modelling our future along such languages when the cultural background of our parents is Tswana becomes another thing altogether. The latter has catastrophic far reaching consequences beyond the imagination of many people in Botswana. That on its own, without looking any far, leads to a complete spiritual takeover (colonisation) of a people by another. The colonisation invades our entire being like a cancer affecting all aspects of our lives from politics, economics and survival. It leads to total disappearance of a people calling themselves Batswana. Formal education is the most powerful tool for achieving this spiritual colonisation. If the education we feed our children is modeled to produce lost souls, then lost souls shall our society be. A lost soul is easy to manipulate and control in slavery. The end result is to create a slave population to feed the needs of those whose language is the template of our destiny. Look around you. It is happening right in front of our eyes. The children of the elite, who are groomed to be the leaders of tomorrow can’t speak their mother tongue, whether they are Tswana speaking, Ikalanga and so forth. Even some leaders today struggle to speak their mother tongue.
It becomes really depressing to see some of our Dikgosi suffering the same deficiency. What is happening to Botswana? And why are Batswana silent about this apocalyptic drama played right in our eyes? These elites are the same people who never question what is fed to them to feed this country by their masters whose language they have adopted. Botswana has turned into a testing and dumping ground for almost anything as a result. The elite political leaders impose and continue to impose western culture amidst all the hypocrisy generated from such imposition. We all suffer as a result.
We are fast losing our identity. Soon there will be no people identified as Batswana. Thus, it is so accurate that “in order to teach Batswana to be Batswana, you must teach them in Setswana” just as the English or French teach their children in English or French to become English or French respectively. What we are doing in Botswana, with disastrous consequences, is that we are teaching Batswana children to be something in between English and Batswana. Nature does not know or allow this hybrid. It will reject it as it rejects all creations inconsistent with natures plan for earth. A Roman man or woman will carry his Roman culture and being wherever he goes in the world.
That is why we feel them even today through adoption of their laws, Roman Dutch law, and their religion, Roman catholic church, so far away in a desert country called Botswana. We have adopted without questioning whilst the Roman remains true to his natural being. But nature never goes wrong. That much we all should know by now. It is God’s creation. If god created you to be Motswana, be thankful that you are Motswana and strive to learn and know more of what God holds for you in your being Motswana, in as much as the English and the Romans have for centuries explored what God holds for them as English and Roman. Their exploration has taught them to retain their culture no matter how exposed they may become to other cultures. They have studied the origins of their cultures as far back and beyond biblical GENESIS/REVELATIONS and have seen WHY they should not easily change that which has been passed onto them by God. We should not allow ourselves to suffer anymore the psychological malady called assimilation crisis, suffered by people like Michael Jackson. This is a condition where a person loses his identity and human spirit by trying in vain all his life to assimilate into the culture of another, with obvious disastrous consequences, as befell the king of pop in his last ten to fifteen years.
Unfortunately, our political leaders are ignorant, and most suffer acute stages of assimilation crisis. They have a limited understanding of history. To many, history begins in 1966 and the future ends with their term of office. They literally have no concept of national future nor plan as to what will happen to this country when money runs out or is rendered useless. They have changed so much that which was passed onto us Batswana by God and our forefathers without knowing or caring to know WHY things have been the way they found them before independence, and centuries before then. Diminishing the value of our mother tongue was the greatest mistake ever to be made by the political leadership of this country. The second big mistake was destruction of our culture through denigrating the institution of traditional leadership which is the very custodian of the cultures and future of this country. The politicians were hopelessly consumed in their egocentric perception of the present, so much such that they could not see the obvious good value in our language and culture when such was so conspicuously visible before their eyes. To this day most remain blind to this reality. We must therefore always pause to seek understanding of what it is in the sound of a language that makes it powerful and crucially, what it is in the sound of language that gives mother tongue the value seen by the English, French, Germans, Chinese, Russians and Arab nations, but not us ! One fundamental rule of life is that we must never be quick to change that given to us by nature.
The same rule goes on to emphasise never to discard that received in inheritance, we all know what happens if we do. Ke Moila. Our language and culture are the most valuable inheritance from our forefathers. Our national anthem says so. The consequences of disregarding these rules of nature are truly regrettable. We Batswana have begun to pay the ultimate price for our sins. That is partly why we die like flies from man made illnesses and remain blinded by ignorance of the realities concerning the curability of such illnesses when the rest of the world has woken up. We remain the only or one of the few guinea pig nations where vaccines are experimented under the guise of donations “for the care of the health of Batswana”, at a time when the rest of the world has seen through the fraud of such vaccines. Some countries have rejected them. Our people are like the zoo lion released into the wild which dies from starvation amongst plenty animals to feed from. Spoon feeding programmes engineered by unseen masters represented by government have turned us so.
Esiah 6, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you [the priestly nation] have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you that you shall be no priest to Me; seeing you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children.” Lack of knowledge shall be the wrath of nature upon those who spit upon that given by God. The end game will be the time when money becomes worthless and every foreigner here goes back to their respective homes to survive. We are not equipped to survive such a scenario because we have discarded that given by nature, our language and culture. Our culture carries the natural survival tools inherent in every other culture of a people anywhere in the world. Language is the portal to experience that culture. It is time for the young generation of this country to wake up fast and take control of the future of this country to avoid complete dilution or disappearance of a people identifying themselves as Batswana. All of you, wherever you may be, should be ashamed of yourself if you and your children cannot speak or fluently speak your mother tongue. You are a disgrace to us and our forefathers who watch from their graves with great sadness.
KE NAKO.
