Freedom of speech is ultimately to speak one’s language

Khanyile Mlotshwa
I remember in 1999 reading a story where the godfather of Ndebele literature, Ndabezinhle Sigogo, told a group of literature enthusiasts at a writer’s workshop held at the National Art Gallery in Bulawayo, not to worry that IsiNdebele language is under threat, “just keep speaking the language” so that it survives into the future.
Although, in Chinua Achebe’s words, it is hard to tell when the rain began beating us, the fear of our language dying or that maybe it is already dead, has been with us for a long time now.
In Matabeleland today, some languages are spoken by a few people, even though there are many people who identify with the language. Most people who call themselves BaKalanga cannot speak Tjikalanga. From whatever angle, this is the reality of the evil twins of colonialism and coloniality.
According to the Unesco, about half of the world’s 7 000 languages are spoken by fewer than 10 000 people. Of the 7 000 languages, about half are at risk of extinction by the end of the century. For some of the languages that end had already come and for some it might be earlier than the end of this century, which is still so young.
The emergence of digitalisation has taken the stakes higher. Indigenous languages are barely there online. This is not surprising considering that, despite the recognition of many languages in the constitution that the nation adopted in 2013, not much has been invested in ‘resourcing’ the languages.
It is commendable that some of these languages are taught at schools today. However, one wonders if there have been any efforts by language experts, especially, to put together study material, dictionaries, and even encourage authorship in these languages. To be clear: this is more a labour of love than an issue of resources.
Though it may seem insignificant, the churches – especially the Catholic Church – failure to develop liturgy in the two languages of Tjikalanga and Sesotho is shocking. Christianity is a big and influential religion and a large part of most people’s lives. Yet these people cannot worship God in their languages.
When people are sheepishly shepherded into digital enclosures, it is clear they will lose not only their land, but their languages, their history and their culture as well. So much for responsible adoption of Artificial Intelligence when people who cannot write or read their mother languages are thrown into the digital dungeons where English rules!
I was struck by something I read recently. Writing in a powerful postscript for the Elgar Encyclopedia of Political Anthropology where he bemoans corporate neoliberalism, neoliberal subjectivity and algorithmic surveillance as some of the pathologies of our colonial digital present, Tim Ingold, asks: “After writing, will speech be the next victim of digitization?”
I have sat with Ingold’s question, and the question has sat with me for many days now.
I was struck. I was struck more by the morbid thoughts that started a merry dance around my mind. I remembered that that diligent student, Plato, recorded his student, Socrates, arguing that writing would cause people to forget more. I wondered if once we have canned our languages we will forget the beautiful words of our ancestors.
A few months back, I read a story on how linguists have helped save a language, siPhuthi, spoken among 1 000 people in the remote Daliwe valley in Lesotho and parts of the Eastern Cape in South Africa. The article said while siPhuthi remains under threat from the dominant Sesotho in Lesotho and Xhosa across the border in South Africa, it has undergone a remarkable revival. Despite a few people speaking the language, it has gained a dictionary, a Bible translation and official recognition thanks to the labour of love of the linguists and activists.
This gave me hope that there is a way home through the rain. In a Christian metaphor, there is a way to Heaven through the cross and the tomb.
I said, in Matabeleland, today, many young people who identify as Kalanga, San, Sotho and other minoritized ethnic groups, cannot speak their mother languages. As the Zulu people say, sekwafa amadoda kwasala izibongo! IsiNdebele is slowly trudging in that direction and is most likely to be one of the languages that would be dead by the end of this century unless something happens.
Linguists emphasize that intergenerational transmission is more important than absolute numbers in language survival. This is probably what Sigogo meant when he said, “just keep speaking the language.” I add “just keep speaking the language to your children so that that they speak it to their children,” so that it lives to the end of the world. However, if speech is the next likely victim of digitization, how do we ensure that we keep speaking our languages, all our languages, to our children so that they speak the same words to their children?
The Zulu people in South Africa are a good example of a people who have ensured that their language adapts and will ensure that it lives to the end of time. IsiZulu language’s vitality and will to live can be, genealogically traced from a time when it was largely oral through both print and broadcast media. There are so many exciting IsiZulu television dramas even on more modern platforms like Netflix. That is not a miracle or by accident at all.
Zulu people have always spoken their language proudly wherever they are and considered to be sufficient to carry the sum of their experiences and who they are. Before Hlala Kwabafileyo and S’gudi S’naysi on public television and the Showmax telenovela, The Wife, and Shaka Ilembe on Mzansi Magic, there was Gibson Kente and then Mbongeni Ngema on theatre stages. Actress, Thembi Mtshali-Jones, once told me she was on stage before there was radio in South Africa.
Maybe the cart has gone before the horses for us. However, we are making it worse plunging into digital spaces when we have already lost our languages offline. We must embrace the sacrifices and the hard work of indigenizing digital spaces. I went to school long ago, and my mother did not hesitate to fetch you, pull you by your ear out of class, if you went to school without doing what she had assigned you at home! In that most of our grandchildren have sadly wandered to digital spaces, we should be worthy ancestors and reach them with content that appeals to them in our languages.
Languages speak to who we are and how we come to inhabit whatever part of the earth we occupy. The work of reviving and maintaining our languages is about our own survival as humans. We do not want to exist as shells emptied of any content. Or as ghosts: people who are not there but somehow here.
We will do well to take Ingold’s counsel on the pitfalls of the colonial digital present and the posthuman world it is forcing on us. He describes what we all see when he talks about posthumanist futures as a regime of virtual reality, artificial intelligence and fully automated work. So many jobs, including writing, slowly become obsolete. With AI, talent is not necessary, we can all write! I say this, with a straight face, but without meaning it.
In Ingold’s words, echoing Frantz Fanon, rather than the Silicon Valley posthumanism, we need a new humanism whose newness “lies less in a repudiation of the past than in its rejuvenation.” We need to bravely continue speaking to our children the way our parents spoke to us, which is the way their parents spoke to them, and so on.
Khanyile Mlotshwa is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of KwaZulu Natal (UKZN) in Pietermaritzburg. For the 2025/2026 academic year, he is a fellow at the University of St. Gallen Collegium, Switzerland, whose theme is Re-thinking freedom.