[civsoc-mw] Use of indigenous languages

[trevor chimimba]

Adamson, 

The framers of our constitution were driven by the idealism of the moment and some element of rational pragmatism. If we are going to make our society fair there is nothing wrong to envision one where “local language” includes all languages spoken in the territorial space called Malawi. 

But when they were elaborating the constitution they did not start from a clean slate, there were material factors that they were working with. We had English as the official language and Chichewa as the National language. The  reference to English only was because there was a consensus on English (some of argue a continuation of a travesty). One the other hand the reference to other languages puts all other languages at par (correction of the 1968 travesty) while leaving society to agree on what those languages will be at any given moment in time (and there it is conceivable to take into account a number of factors, including resources, number of people speaking that language (without losing sight of the ideal goal that all languages are in play))(the politics of the golden rule: he who has the good rules). 

The constitution is a living instrument read with the utopia of idealism and the apology of our means (I am mangling the voice of some public intellectual here)!

> On Sep 23, 2020, at 9:14 AM, Adamson S. Muula <amuula at medcol.mw> wrote:
> 
> 
> What informed the choice of the 'local' language? 
> 
> On Wed, Sep 23, 2020, 1:51 PM Shadreck Kapanga Chirwa <shadchirwa at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>  Politics or not, most countries came with Bi-Lingual. In Malawi, used to be Chichewa and English, and even translations.
>>> 
>> 
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