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International Mother Language Day Celebration 2021

23 March 2021 | Story Mbali Moiketsi

The Office for International Affairs recently celebrated International Language Day. This year, we invited all faculties to submit the names of people who would be willing to contribute video clips to educate us about their mother tongue. The videos submitted were from diverse academic staff members and postdoctoral fellows currently based in different parts of the world. Extensive research has created this edutainment video, featuring famous language quotes, indigenous languages across the African continent, and business languages used across the African continent. Some of the indigenous languages on the African continent are fading away, caused by colonial influence.

Fun facts:
From 1994 to 2013, South Africa was in the Guinness Book of World Records for most official languages. These are Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Sepedi, Sesotho, Swati, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa, and Zulu.

Since the adoption of the 2013 Constitution, Zimbabwe now holds this title with 16 official languages, namely Chewa, Chibarwe, English, Kalanga, Koisan, Nambya, Ndau, Ndebele, Shangani, Shona, Sign Language, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda, and Xhosa. Zimbabwe therefore now holds the Guinness World Record for the country with the largest number of official languages.

Albeit the main languages in Zimbabwe are English, Shona and Ndebele, the minor languages are Chewa, Chibarwe, Kalanga, Koisan, Kunda, Lozi, Manyika, Nambya, Ndau, Nsenga, Tsonga-Shangani, Sotho, Tjwao, Tonga, Tswa, Tswana, Venda, and Xhosa.

WATCH: International Mother Language video

News Archive

Stanford University hosts book launch for UFS Prestige Scholar

2015-12-14

Dr Christian Williams, a member of the Vice-Chancellor’s Prestige Scholars Programme, had his book launched by Stanford University. The book called National Liberation in Postcolonial Southern Africa: A Historical Ethnography of SWAPO’s Exile Camps will be available in South Africa early in 2016.
Photo: Sonia Small

A launch for the much-anticipated book by Dr Christian Williams from the University of the Free State (UFS) was sponsored by the Humanities Center and the Center for African Studies of Stanford University in the USA, among others.

The launch of the book, National Liberation in Postcolonial Southern Africa: A Historical Ethnography of SWAPO’s Exile Camps, coincided with the 40th anniversary of Angola’s independence.

The book was published by Cambridge University Press in September 2015, and the launch at Stanford was on 16 November 2015.

This groundbreaking study, which will be available in South Africa early next year, has already been lauded for its invaluable contribution and the depth of its scholarship. The author is a senior lecturer in the Department of Anthropology of the UFS, and member of the Vice-Chancellor’s Prestige Scholars Programme (PSP). He is a former Fulbright scholar, and holds a doctorate from the University of Michigan in History and Anthropology.

National Liberation in Postcolonial Southern Africa follows members of the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) through three decades of exile in Tanzania, Zambia, and Angola.

It highlights how different Namibians experienced exile, as well as the tensions that developed within SWAPO as Namibians encountered one another while officials asserted their power and protected their interests.

It also follows the return of Namibians who lived in exile to post-colonial Namibia, examining the extent to which divisions and hierarchies that emerged in the camps still continue to shape Namibians today.

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