Roy and I have just returned from an education
symposium with the iniquitous Timothy Gortharn, national head of the Governing
Body Foundation & nothing to do with the Madame Tussauds wax museum in
London. After years of facilitation, Very Basic Education Minister, Angiesline
Motshektogone, has come to the conclusion in her infinite lack of wisdom that
all pupils in national schools should learn an African language & that the
chosen language must be a dialect from the Hottentots called Khoikhoi as the
Hottentots are the only indigenous tribe from the southern tip of Africa that
we now refer to as our South Africa. Motshektogone based her choice on the need
for more multicultural integration in South Africa but is clearly oblivious
that oil & water don't mix.
Objections were lodged by the Department of Very
Basic Education on the grounds that there are other very difficult home
languages that could be chosen. The wonderful sounding Ndebele, which is spoken
by a small percentage of people who did not migrate north to the more fertile
lands but went a long way towards destroying Zimbawe, should also be
considered. On the otherhand, the fact that the Afrikaaner still hasn't grasped
elementary English grammar, or even the basic phonetics of the English language
despite being taught English at school for the last two centuries, & in
fact still languish in some form of idiot Pigeon English with an accent only
emulated by those with cleft palates, seems to have also escaped Motshektogone.
A referendum by the man'age'ment had shown that Northern Sotho was popular with
the poorer tribes, and the most popular language is from the Nguni language,
that is Zulu. Nearly a quarter of the populace click their way through this
communication medium and devoutely follow their leader, Gotya Brutal-Lazy,
through thick & thin & bush & the odd toying toying march through
Durban burning & pillaging the place to sunder.
Motshektogone has indicated that many of the
general public had failed dismally in the workplace when they revert to either
English or Afrikaans, much as most Afrikaan sports presenters fail dismally
when asked to discuss 'ruckgby' tactics in English on air. Only an alien from a
higher sphere could possibly understand them. Her office had researched the
amount of productive hours that were being lost in dissemination of the native
tongue, and, when she returned from a fully salaried extended sick leave of
three years, she had decided to take it right to the top. When seated alongside
the President at the Gotcha wedding at Sun City last week, Motshektogone
decided to broach the subject using her mother tongue of Tswana to ignite his
curiosity. When Motshektogone was escorted out ten minutes later, she was
experimenting with a new version of sign language and only just man'age'd to
retain her portfolio by endorsing the President & agreeing that the
President had no recollection of the Gotcha's flight plans or the reasons for
border control.
An adamantine Morechekstogone was insistent that
the new criteria should be in place by the new year irrespective of any budget
constraints. She went on to say that it was indeed time as the metric (sic)
pass rate in rural areas had risen from 11% to 32% in just sixteen years. If
the education books could be delivered timeously and not by some parastatal
department owned by municipal employees, more schooled in corruption and
thievery than anything else, then progress might be quicker. Gorthan had
reminded her not to forget what had happened to the previous Education
Minister. She said she was not forgetting any thing of the sort as she had not
known it in the first place.
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