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International Review of Education

, Volume 64, Issue 6, pp 737–757 | Cite as

“If you don’t have English, you’re just as good as a dead person”: A narrative of adult English language literacy within post-apartheid South Africa

  • Anna Kaiper
Original Paper
First Online:

Abstract

This article centres on the narrative of Thuli, a 62-year-old black South African domestic worker taking English language literacy classes outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. For Thuli, English literacy is of vital importance because, as she claims, “if you don’t have English, you’re just as good as a dead person”. Drawing primarily on the methodology of narrative inquiry, this article employs human narratives to expose the links between individual, social and political histories. Specifically, it centres on the life narratives of Thuli and the ways in which her stories are integrated into the complex history of language learning and adult education within South Africa. Utilising these coexisting histories and HERstories, the author of this article seeks to understand the multiple forces that impact a learner such as Thuli to become literate in English. By highlighting Thuli’s narrative as well as demonstrating the roles that both the author as the researcher and Thuli as the narrator play in the creation of her narrative, the author attempts to exhibit the power of the narrative in further understanding nuances of language, power and identity. Moreover, the author ventures to expose the ways in which the links between these concepts continue to affect adult learners in postcolonial South African adult basic education (ABE) and language learning. Finally, the author links Thuli’s experience to two of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), namely Quality education (SDG4) and Gender equality (SDG5). In addition, the author attempts to reveal how the links between both goals are missing in policy documents. Using this narrative as an example of the complexity of English within South African ABE, what becomes apparent are the ways in which the desire to learn English is both individually nuanced and laden with historically (re)produced ideologies.

Keywords

English language literacy adult basic education South Africa narrative inquiry domestic work language and identity the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 

Résumé

«Si tu ne parles pas l’anglais, tu comptes autant qu’un mort»: récit de l’apprentissage de l’anglais par une adulte en Afrique du Sud post-apartheid – Cet article gravite autour du récit de Thuli, employée de maison sud-africaine noire âgée de 62 ans, qui suit des cours d’anglais à l’extérieur de Johannesburg. Pour elle, apprendre l’anglais est indispensable car, selon son expression,«si tu ne parles pas l’anglais, tu comptes autant qu’un mort». Essentiellement au moyen de la méthodologie de l’enquête narrative, l’auteure de l’article exploite des récits personnels pour révéler les liens entre histoire individuelle, sociale et politique. Plus concrètement, elle se penche sur les narrations de Thuli et sur la façon dont ses récits s’intègrent dans l’histoire complexe de l’apprentissage linguistique et de l’éducation des adultes en Afrique du Sud. En examinant ces histoires coexistantes et les récits de la narratrice, l’auteure cherche à cerner les nombreuses forces qui influent sur une apprenante telle que Thuli dans son apprentissage de l’anglais. En analysant le récit de cette dernière et en éclairant les rôles que jouent dans la création du récit l’auteure en tant que chercheuse et Thuli en tant que narratrice, l’auteure tente de démontrer le potentiel du récit pour mieux comprendre les nuances inhérentes à la langue, au pouvoir et à l’identité. L’auteure se risque en outre à montrer que les liens entre ces concepts affectent aujourd’hui encore les apprenants participant à l’éducation de base des adultes et à l’apprentissage linguistique en Afrique du Sud post-coloniale. Enfin, l’auteure relie l’expérience de Thuli à deux objectifs de développement durable (ODD) des Nations Unies, à savoir Éducation de qualité (objectif 4) et Égalité entre les sexes (objectif 5). Elle tente de démontrer que les liens entre ces deux objectifs sont absents dans les documents stratégiques. Ce récit pris comme exemple de la complexité de la langue anglaise dans l’éducation de base des adultes révèle que le souhait d’apprendre cette langue est à la fois nuancé individuellement et chargé d’idéologies (re)produites par l’histoire.

Introduction

A: “If you were able to read and write [in English], do you think that you would feel different? Different with yourself?”

T: “Yes, yes.”

A: “How?”

T: “I would feel different because I can knock on the door, I’ll be able to open it. You know when you’ve got [English] education, it’s like a master key, you’ve got a master key which opens each and every door. If you don’t have English, you’re just as good as a dead person.”

(Thuli, personal communication, July 2015)

In January 2016, the United Nations’ post-2015 development agenda, entitled the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development became officially adopted (UN 2016). It comprises a total of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Within the agenda, there are two separate goals that undeniably intersect. SDG4 emphasises the promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all, while SDG5 calls forth gender equality and empowerment, including the recognition and value of domestic work. Although these intersections might not initially be apparent, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported in 2014 that an estimated 774 million adults, of whom two-thirds are women, remain unable to read and write (UNESCO 2014). The number of domestic workers around the world is estimated to be about 53 million (ILO 2013), most of whom are women. Because many women become domestic workers due to a lack of educational opportunities, it is vital to explore and understand the educational experiences of these adult female learners.

What also becomes essential, however, and what is absent in the SDGs, is the role of language within conceptions of both domestic work and lifelong learning and literacy. Around the world, many educators and researchers of adult education have called for policies and practices that recognise the teaching and use of indigenous and multiple languages in education and within the broader public. And yet, those who seem likely to benefit most from such language policies are seeking to pursue studies of English. Drawing on the SDGs as well as on policies regarding multilingualism, this article explicitly focuses on the English language learning of South African domestic workers, and on one woman’s narrative in particular.

Thuli’s HERstory 1: the beginnings

While in Johannesburg, South Africa, during the summer of 2014, on my first of three visits, I was invited to observe a volunteer English language class for predominately isiZulu-speaking female domestic workers.2 These 15 self-identified Black African women, aged 45–75, most of whom lived with their white employers, and all of whom had received an inequitable education under apartheid,3 were spending what little free time they had learning English.

This might not seem surprising at first, primarily due to the internationalisation of English and its emergence as the lingua franca of globalisation. For example, some people might assume that these women needed English to communicate with their employers, especially because the largest number of native English speakers in South Africa is found in Gauteng Province, where Johannesburg is situated (STATS SA 2011). However, while many of their employers did speak English, they also spoke languages such as Afrikaans and Greek in the home. Moreover, many of these women had effectively communicated with their employers for five to twenty years. Other people might suggest that they were studying English in the hopes of improving their job prospects (Casale and Posel 2011; Chiswick and Miller 2003), but most of these women were of retirement age4 and expressed little interest in finding new positions. Moreover, at present, only 12 per cent of the population in South Africa uses English as a main language of communication (Posel and Zeller 2015).

IsiZulu, on the other hand, is the strongest and most frequently used language in the country, with almost 25 per cent of the population identifying as native isiZulu speakers (Heugh 2007) and over 60 per cent identifying as isiZulu, isiXhosa and Sepedi speakers (Posel and Zeller 2015). In addition, while the number of native English speakers is higher in Gauteng Province than elsewhere in South Africa due to the ethnic and linguistic diversity of the province, isiZulu remains the most widely spoken language in Gauteng, with 19.8 per cent of people being native isiZulu speakers and 13.3 per cent being native English speakers (STATS SA 2011).

With eleven official languages legally established in the post-apartheid democratic constitution (RSA 1996a), South African national policies are increasingly emphasising the importance of mother-tongue education for both youth and adults. And yet, despite the growing recognition of the benefits of mother-tongue education, and despite the fact that these women both live and work in environments in which English language literacy is not always necessary for communication, they continue spending their limited free time attending English language literacy classes.

In this article, centring on the life narrative of Thuli, one of the women taking part in these classes, I seek to understand why she is intent on becoming literate in English. I focus specifically on Thuli’s narrative and HERstory,5 but not as a means to ascertain why all female domestic workers in South Africa are learning English. Instead, I use this narrative as a way to understand how the history of adult English education in South Africa combines with the HERstory of Thuli’s experiences as a black, female, South African domestic worker to impact her views on education and literacy and affect her motivations to take English language classes. Moreover, I utilise Thuli’s narrative as a means to draw broader connections to global conceptions of lifelong literacy and domestic work, such as those of the SDGs, to both support these goals and explore what and whom they are excluding.

Methodology: the case for the individual narrative

During my time working with South African domestic workers who are taking English classes in Johannesburg, I have had the opportunity to get to know these learners and hear their various stories. Some stories surround their lives as domestic workers, some centre on their ideologies of language and language learning, and some focus on their views of the educational history within South Africa. This article, however, draws specifically on aspects of narrative inquiry to tell the story of one woman named Thuli.6

I have known Thuli for four years and we have become close friends. I have had dinner at her home, I have taken her to several medical appointments, I have driven her home many times after class had concluded, and I have even met her employers. While Thuli and I come from very different historical, social and class backgrounds, we share a similar sense of humour, a love of talking, and openness in describing our own life stories.

Although Thuli and I began discussing her thoughts on language and education in South Africa very soon after we first met in 2014, Thuli formally agreed to a recorded interview7 towards the end of my stay in 2015. After discussing my research with the group of women taking English language classes, and asking them if any might be willing to take part in recorded interviews, Thuli volunteered. This interview was recorded in Thuli’s home while eating dinner together, and although I began the interview with an idea of the basic questions that I would ask Thuli (i.e. where she was born; where her family was from; when she began domestic work; why she began taking English classes), the majority of our conversation was driven by Thuli. Thus, while this interview was initially set to take 30–45 minutes, it ended up lasting over two hours. Within this two-hour period, Thuli did not simply answer my questions; rather, she provided me with an in-depth narrative of her life and, specifically, the ways in which her educational opportunities and views of language learning have shaped her current views of her own identities. It is for this reason that I chose narrative inquiry as my primary methodological approach in this article.

Narrative inquiry refers to a qualitative research design that utilises stories to describe human action, and the ways in which stories create purposeful engagement with the world (Polkinghorne 1995). Moreover, narrative inquiry views both participants and researchers as essential in the creation of the story (or stories). Because stories are multi-layered and ambiguous,

the constructed nature of truth and the subjectivity of the researcher are particularly evident in this work (Bell 2002, p. 210).

Therefore, recognising the roles of both the participant and the researcher is vital in embracing the relationship of these two parties and the ways in which both shape the narratives being produced (Clandinin 2006). Thus, by drawing on narrative inquiry within this article, I showcase the ways in which Thuli as the narrator and myself as the researcher co-construct both the research questions I sought to answer and the narratives which were being produced.

Within this article, I demonstrate the recognition of my own presence as a researcher by my choice to let my voice be evident within Thuli’s narrative. As Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly (2000) note, the researcher’s overt presence within the narrative can make her vulnerable, and yet, vulnerability is necessary in narrative inquiry, as the researcher’s stories come to light as much as those of her participants. Although the focus of this article is not on my personal narrative, by making visible my own voiced questions (marked by “A”) to Thuli, and Thuli’s responses to these questions (marked by “T”), my aim is to demonstrate the ways in which my conversation with Thuli is being shaped by my presence as the interviewer.

In support of this, it is important to bring in Steven Talmy’s (2010) conception of the interview as two differing perspectives: (1) the interview as a research instrument; and (2) the interview as social practice. While Thuli’s narrative is seemingly affected by social, historical and personal aspects of her past and present life, it is also affected by my role in terms of the questions I ask. Moreover, it is shaped by my responses to her answers and my own identities as a white American English-speaking researcher. Therefore, while I use my interview with Thuli to incite narratives that form my research, it is also a conversation between Thuli and myself which is being shaped by both of us, and is, therefore, a social practice in itself.

Jean Clandinin contends that narrative inquiry “involves the reconstruction of a person’s experience in relationship both to the other and to a social milieu” (Clandinin 2006, p. 5). In other words, drawing on the narratives of humans’ lived experiences and emotions exposes the ways in which these stories are undeniably shaped by social actors. By highlighting the complexity of Thuli’s life history, I emphasise the ways in which her views of language learning, and specifically English language learning, are inextricably linked to her personal life history of education, opportunity and impediment. Concurrently, what is also apparent throughout Thuli’s narrative are the larger ideologies of power and prestige associated with English in post-colonial, post-apartheid South Africa. Accordingly, in the following section, I will give a concise overview of English language education in South Africa as a means of linking this history to Thuli’s narratives surrounding education, literacy and language learning.

A brief history of English language education in South Africa

English was first introduced to South Africa in 1795 when the British arrived in the Cape of Good Hope, now known as Cape Town, to overthrow Dutch rule and control the Cape sea route between Asia and Europe (Lass 1995). From the end of the 18th century to the middle of the 20th century, English was used as the main language of education for both Bantu-speaking black South Africans and Dutch-speaking Afrikaners (white settlers and their descendants).

During this time, the language of Afrikaans was emerging. While often considered to be a simplified version of Dutch, Afrikaans actually developed from mixing Dutch with Portuguese, Malay, Bantu languages, and even Arabic to produce a new language distinctly different from Dutch (Burden 2007; Willemse 2015). In 1925, Afrikaans gained status as the other official language of South Africa besides English, gradually replacing Dutch, and language remained a central issue in the ethnic consciousness of the Afrikaner community (Mestherie 1995).

Though South Africa did not become fully independent until 1961,8 the Afrikaner-ruled National Party (NP) which came into power in 1948 already implemented radical changes. This new ruling party not only created the social system of racial segregation known as apartheid, but also simultaneously brought an end to the dominance of the British colonial legacy of English as one of the official languages. During apartheid, a primary way for Afrikaner leaders to oppress black Africans was through policies on language of instruction (LOI). One policy in which this was most evident was with the Bantu Education Act of 1953 (PSA 1953). As Kathleen Heugh affirms,

Just as the Bantu Education Act was an integral part of apartheid, so the language in education policy was integral to both Bantu Education and apartheid (Heugh 2000, p. 41).

The main components of the Act promoted Afrikaans and reduced the influence of English in schools while also extending mother-tongue education from grade 4 to grade 8 (Kamwangamalu 2007).9 The promotion of Afrikaans symbolised group identity and power for the Afrikaans-speaking people (descendants of Dutch settlers), while mother-tongue education was used to support apartheid’s repressive linguistic separatism ideology (Taylor 2002). The use of mother-tongue instruction as a form of linguistic separation and educational inequity led many Bantu-speaking South Africans to associate mother-tongue education with educational repression (Wet and Wolhuter 2009). Moreover, because Afrikaans was continually reinforced as the dominant language over both English and mother-tongue instruction, many black South Africans came to view Afrikaans as the language of the oppressor (ibid.).

As a response to this linguistic oppression, English became the language of protest and freedom against apartheid, while the use of African languages in an educational context began to diminish. Among the most notable of protests were the Soweto uprisings of 1976, which made black African students’ responses to the oppressive and inequitable policies under the Bantu Education Act visible. The uprisings were a series of protests that took place in Soweto, a township outside of Johannesburg, in which over 20,000 students from numerous schools took to the streets to demand Afrikaans as the language of instruction. These protests led to new policies implementing South African schools’ choice between English and Afrikaans as the medium of instruction after the fifth year of schooling (Taylor 2002). However, while English was viewed as the language of anti-apartheid protest, it was still associated with British rule and colonisation, as well as an obstruction of Bantu traditions and languages, making its presence in South African education complex.

The apartheid regime came to an end with the 1994 democratic elections, and a new era began under the black African government led by the African National Congress (ANC) and its president, Nelson Mandela. Two years later, the 1996 democratic constitution created new legal provisions promoting equality for all South Africans (RSA 1996a). One primary way in which the ANC hoped to realise this new post-apartheid South Africa was through policies enforcing rights to education for all learners, and, specifically, the opportunity for students to choose their language of instruction. As Veronica McKay states,

the Bill of Rights, chapter 2 in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa […] recognises education as a human right and refers specifically to the right to a basic education, including adult basic education (ABE) in an official language of choice as (a) an inalienable right (ibid., Sections 29[1,2] and 9[3]), and (b) a prerequisite for the development of personal, social, economic and political empowerment (McKay 2015, p. 368).

As a means of redress, the post-apartheid government opted for 11 official languages (Afrikaans, English and 9 Bantu languages), and gave school governing bodies the power to determine their own language policies (Rasool et al. 2006).

And yet, despite these official policies of multilingualism in education, which have been in place for just over two decades now, a drift to English-medium education persists (Ferguson 2013). As Heugh (2000) contends, this is due to unclear plans for the implementation of language policies, since curriculum development and language policies were kept apart. Moreover, the lack of guidance for African language teachers and falling numbers of students of African languages in universities have made the implementation of African language learning in South Africa even more difficult (Heugh 2013). Thus, as Nkonko Kamwangamalu states, English “has become far more hegemonic than any other language in the land” (Kamwangamalu 2002, p. 2).

Both the somewhat erratic history of language in South Africa and the impact of apartheid policies are intertwined within Thuli’s HERstory to reveal hegemonic ideologies surrounding English language learning that have shaped Thuli’s self-perception of being an (un)educated, and, more specifically, a (non)literate human being.

Thuli’s HERstory10

T: “You know, my mother, she didn’t even know how to sign her name. But she was a florist. She had her own florist business. If people had weddings, birthdays, whatever, she would bake a cake if it was a wedding. She was a baker, a cook, a tailor, a dressmaker. If she was asked to sign her name, she would use a thumbprint until we were growing up. My elder brothers taught her how to sign her name and her surname. My mother, she had the three of us, my elder brother and my other elder brother. They have both passed on. I’m the first-born of the girls, the third one in the family. And my mom and dad, I don’t know what happened, it’s their own thing, they divorced. My mother married this other man and you know, if you were married with children, you don’t know what you’re going to get. [The man my mom married] said he can’t educate the girls because they will be married and his money will be like thrown in the river like lobola11 you see? So he said he’d prefer to educate the boys.”

A: “So he chose specifically not to educate you?”

T: “Yes.”

Thuli’s story begins like the stories of many of the women who take English language classes in Johannesburg. She comes from a family in which her mother did not have a formal education and was not able to read or write in any language. Thuli’s mother worked as a florist and, as Thuli later explains, this was a small business that her mother ran from home. Her mother’s primary income came from selling fruit every weekend in a nearby city. Thuli’s parents divorced when she was young and her father died soon after, so Thuli was raised by her stepfather. While not included in the above excerpt, Thuli told me later in our conversation that it was not until she was an adult that she discovered that her stepfather was not her biological father. Thuli believes that both this fact, as well as the gendered choices that her stepfather made, led to her being denied the opportunity to go to school. In the excerpt presented above, for example, Thuli notes that her stepfather thought that educating girls would be like throwing money “in the river like lobola”. This references his choice to save money for his sons to pay lobola, the money needed to pay the bride’s family in exchange for her hand in marriage, rather than pay school fees12 to educate his daughter.
Due to this lack of education, Thuli grew up doing what she calls “housework”, in which she worked cleaning other people’s homes. It was not until she was in her early twenties that she met a man who helped her gain access to further educational and life opportunities, and this man became her husband.

T: “So our job, it was to clean the house, go fetch fire wood, bring water, all those things, you understand? When I grew up, I met this guy. He’s Thompson and he’s dead now. We got married, I was properly married, I mustn’t cheat you. He was working in the airlines. I met this man, got married, I had three boys, we lived, it was so nice. Then he said, you know what, you don’t have education, but you can go to night school, you see? Then I started looking for night schools. My husband was Malawian 13 and he said in his country there are lots of night schools for people who never had education. So we emigrated to his home in Malawi.”

A: “But why did you decide to go to Malawi?”

T: “Because I wanted to know how to read and write my name.”

A: “But you felt like here it was impossible because of apartheid?”

T: “Yes. There were no night schools. There was nothing. When he said if you want, we can go to my country, then you’ll be able to go to school in the evenings, I said OK, fine. If there’s that chance, it suits me. Then we emigrated to Malawi and I found a school.”

When Thuli discussed her husband Thompson with me, she vacillated quickly between feeling joy, seemingly from fond memories of him, and feeling sadness regarding his death. However, what Thuli appears to continually connect with her husband is gratefulness for educational opportunities which her marriage to him opened up for her. Thompson provided her with the opportunity to go to night school by moving with her to his home country of Malawi; and it was in Malawi that Thuli found a school which aided her in learning how to read and write.14 Thuli feels that without the move, her access to education would have remained blocked due to apartheid laws regarding Adult Basic Education (ABE).

It is at this point within the narrative that my voice becomes especially evident, for only after I mention the history of apartheid does Thuli affirm its effects on the accessibility of adult education. As noted earlier, Thuli’s narrative is conceivably impacted by the questions I asked her; and while I assume, based on my knowledge of the history of ABE in South Africa, that the impediment to her access to schools was due to apartheid policies, Thuli never explicitly stated this herself. Therefore, it is possible that Thuli would not have linked educational inaccessibility directly to apartheid laws if I had not brought this up in our conversation.

This moment in Thuli’s narrative provides an example of the importance of displaying the ways in which every story is co-constructed by numerous agents, for Thuli’s narrative is concurrently mine as well as her own. However, this moment in the narrative also serves to demonstrate how Thuli’s assertions regarding her personal lack of opportunities in South African ABE have a strong parallel to the history of South African ABE nationally.

South African adult basic education (ABE)

The history of ABE in South Africa is linked to the history of language education. In the 1920s, the first adult literacy classes in South Africa began under the Communist Party’s creation of night schools (Bird 1980). The growth of these schools increased significantly with the Second World War as well as with the establishment of the National Council for Adult Education in 1946 (Aitchison 2003). Thus began the “Night School Movement” in which learners were not only taught basic literacy and numeracy skills (prominently in English), but were also taught broader notions of political and economic relationships meant to spearhead political change (ibid.). However, night schools for black adult learners were poorly sourced, and this radical movement was short-lived (McCowan and Unterhalter 2015), since the implementation of apartheid in 1948 had made teaching black adults in schools which were not government-registered a crime. Moreover, the 1953 Bantu Education Act made it an imprisonable offence to educate any black learner at a non-registered school.

By the early 1960s, almost all night schools were deregistered and closed. As a result, several campaigns to increase adult literacy were launched. Most of these programmes were run by non-profit organisations and were primarily conducted in English. Taking up the tactic initiated during the night school movement, the 1970s ushered in a growing use of adult education as a means to resist apartheid, and student educators were trained to use community education and literacy classes as a means to incite learner empowerment. 1976 was the pinnacle for change in overall conceptions of education as well as adult education, specifically as the Soweto uprisings led to educational reforms throughout the country. These reforms included the creation of an adult education section in the Department of Bantu Education and concurrently led to the reopening of night schools in 1978.

Since the 1970s, South African ABE programmes have continued to change and expand, and yet, Thuli had already moved to Malawi before these discernible changes in opportunities for South African adult learners took hold. Moreover, the presence of English as both the “normal” and necessary language of literacy is apparent in Thuli’s initial expectations of night school classes. As she mentions in the next excerpt, she began classes in Malawi expecting to acquire English literacy. However, while initially wanting to learn literacy skills solely in English, Thuli’s instructor relayed to her the importance of first becoming literate in her native language of isiZulu.15

Thuli’s expectations surrounding “literacy”

T: “I started going to school, to this Catholic school. I was attending school there every night, Monday to Friday.”

A: “ And this was in English?”

T: “That was English. I told the teacher, ‘I know my African language, I want English.’ He told me, the principal said, ‘you can’t learn only English. You have to learn from your language up to English because you need to read some letters in your language. You go to church? Your books are in Zulu. You come to our churches, the books, they are in English’. Then I went to school, I was studying, I got now my first-born, Tim. I’m going to school, I’m going to school. Until I got my second-born, the one who passed on, Aaron. And now I started to know how to sign my name, so if I go somewhere and they say sign, I can be able to sign. And the only thing which is still not clear is to like read the whole paper, I can read somewhere and it comes somewhere, I’m stuck, I need help.”

A: “Both in Zulu and in English?”

T: “No, Zulu, I’m perfect now. Only in English, now I’m struggling with English.”

When Thuli began taking English language classes in Malawi, she had a clear idea of what she hoped to gain from these classes – she wanted to read and write in English. In opposition to Thuli’s initial wishes, the night school teacher insisted that Thuli should learn to read and write in isiZulu. Because Thuli utilised isiZulu significantly more than English, the teacher found it vital that she gained literacy skills in the language that she uses daily. Thuli, however, was attending school in Malawi, and thus, her teacher could not teach her isiZulu but instead, taught the classes solely in English.

While Thuli began to learn English in this setting, she also began to become literate in isiZulu because she followed her teacher’s recommendations. It was with her sons’ help that she learned to read and write in isiZulu – a language which she now considers herself “perfect” in. While I do not know whether Thuli is “perfect” in isiZulu as she says, or what “perfect isiZulu literacy” might encompass, what is apparent from Thuli’s narrative is that she feels simultaneously proud of herself for reading and writing isiZulu and aware of her struggle with English. Moreover, what becomes evident is her instructor’s notion of the importance of acquiring literacy in one’s own language, a notion he expresses to her while simultaneously only teaching her in English. This disconnect between theories of adult language literacy and practice, and Thuli’s own tensions with her desire for an English-only curriculum and her teacher’s urging to first become literate in her native language, parallel wider linguistic issues in ABE and literacy within South Africa.

African language literacy in South African education

In the South African context, contentions between English language learning and African language learning are widely existent, with the complexity of language in South African education manifested in several decades of scholarship on South African language learning within education. Many authors have focused on the ways in which African language literacy is necessary for both individual and social development within the country. For example, Leketi Makalela describes language as linked to identity, ideology and power, and finds that use of a language other than the learner’s own language can lead to “cultural alienation, economic exclusion and disempowerment” (Makalela 2005, p. 163). Further, he debunks the myth that the English language was used as a weapon against apartheid, arguing that in local contexts, the non-English-speaking majority used African languages to protest and unite. He notes that while arguments supporting English as the language of instruction often mention the need for a common language to promote development, Bantu languages within South Africa are structurally closer than many recognise and are mutually intelligible. Therefore, he argues, it is imperative that Africans learn through African languages

to curtail the “unassailable position of English”, which has largely proved unproductive with regard to literacy development (ibid.).

Birgit Brock-Utne (2001), also emphasising notions of language and power, contends that teaching and learning in the languages people are culturally familiar with potentially leads to the redistribution of power from those who hold positions of privilege to those who have been historically oppressed. Similarly, as Zandile Nkabinde asserts, teaching adults to use their first languages opens possibilities of both economic and social development:

if adult education is meant to empower learners, then influencing what they believe of themselves and the world around them is accomplished better through their languages (Nkabinde 1997, p. 70).

Finally, Barbara Basel suggests that teaching literacy through African languages and encouraging multilingual learning would support the local, national and global economy by meeting “two national development objectives – job creation and poverty alleviation” (Basel 2004, p. 373).
Reflecting some of these assertions today, the post-apartheid government regards ABE as critical in addressing the needs of adult learners, in view of the fact that millions of South Africans in post-apartheid South Africa have low literacy skills, and 58 per cent of those who are “considered illiterate” are women (McKay 2007, p. 288).16 Numerous initiatives have been created, including the South African National Literacy Initiative (SANLI) implemented in 2000, and the Kha Ri Gude (Let Us Learn) Adult Literacy Programme (KGALP) established in 2008, as a means of reducing prevalent low proficiency in both English language and African language literacy across South Africa. However, McKay (2015; UIL 2016) also reports that despite concerted efforts from these programmes to reduce low literacy rates, these rates remain extremely high in South Africa.17 Further, she asserts that,

basic education and adult literacy are still the “stepchildren” of the education sector [which underpins] the relatively poor investment into adult education and the reluctant delivery across the country (McKay 2007, p. 309).

This is evidenced in the 2016 phasing out of the Kha Ri Gude programme (RSA 2018). Moreover, as John Aitchison, a prominent scholar of South African ABE, relayed to me,

“In a way, the language issue in ABET [Adult Basic Education and Training] has never risen to prominence” (personal communication, 15 August 2017).

This statement parallels the assertions of numerous authors who find that although myriad research emphasising the importance of becoming literate in one’s native tongue(s) exists, ideologies surrounding the necessity of being proficient in English remain prominent in social discourse and educational desires of learners. They also remain obvious in Thuli’s narrative.

English hegemony: within South African education and within Thuli’s narrative

A: “But do you feel like, for example, when the new constitution was written, there was this focus on multilingualism and respecting all languages and 11 official languages. Do you feel like even though you know how to read and write in Zulu, that it’s still not enough?”

T: “Lots of things, when you go to places, it’s English. Like for example, I’ve got this letter. I’m somebody who’s always had that passion of doing things. This I was doing before my son became terminally ill. Because of his illness I couldn’t continue to pay this policy.”

A: “What is it? A life policy?”

T: “It’s a Momentum18 policy you pay for yourself. Then yesterday, my late sister’s son, he came to give me medicine and he said, ‘I got your letter from Momentum.’ I’m trying to read it but I can’t finish it. You see? I have to wait for children, my late sister’s children, to come and read it nicely for me so I can know what to do. I want to be able – if I get a letter like this, I must be able to read it reply it. That’s my biggest focus.”

A: “And do you think, Ma, that once you do – I mean, I understand of course the realistic benefits, but what do you think would be the emotional benefits of that? If you were able to read and write in English, do you think that you would feel different? With yourself?”

T: “Yes, yes. I would feel different because I can knock on the door, I’ll be able to open it. You know, when you’ve got [English] education, it’s like a master key, you’ve got a master key which opens each and every door. If you don’t have English, you’re just as good as a dead person. Do you get my point?”

A: “But it’s so interesting, Ma, because you are educated in Zulu. You know how to read and write in Zulu.”

T: “But I can’t do anything with my Zulu. If – let’s say if your company now says that they want people, I can’t submit my CV in Zulu.”

A: “Nowhere? Even though you are a Zulu person?”

T: “Yes.”

A: “Does that make you upset?”

T: “It really kills me.”

Thuli grew up yearning to become educated, and, more specifically, to become literate. However, it is not the act of reading and writing that Thuli desires – it is the act of reading and writing specifically in English. Thuli’s unabated desire for English reflects the hegemonic notions of English within South Africa that numerous authors describe. As Alastair Pennycook (2017) contends, English language teaching and learning is at the heart of colonialism and deeply interwoven into colonial discourse. Neville Alexander (2008) asserts that imported languages imposed during the colonial era have become accepted within Africa, an acceptance he finds problematic, since it leads to the underdevelopment of individual skills and knowledge that can be most supported in the languages in which local people are comfortable. Specifically, within South Africa, the effects of colonialism are extreme, due to the fact that

three hundred and fifty years of colonial, postcolonial and finally apartheid rule were replaced in 1994 by the first democratically elected government of national unity (Heugh 2007, p. 187).

Moreover, the continued hegemony of the colonial language has elevated the perceived importance of English specifically in countries such as South Africa, where “the language of the empire has continued to carry cultural, economic and symbolic capital even after decolonization” (Shin and Kubota 2008, p. 213). Drawing on these findings as examples of the ways in which the English language is linked to complex layers of identity and power, I return to Thuli’s HERstory.

Thuli’s secret

T: “If I was educated, Anna, I could have had a better job. But actually, I’m not a person who wants to rely on going to work every morning, I’m someone whose passion is to watch over other people, those who cannot manage to have a piece of bread. I’m still blessed, I have a slice of bread with butter and jam. There’s somebody who can’t even have a half a slice without butter. If you just give it to him, he’ll appreciate that. That’s my passion. If I can just have my little education, I know I can do more things on my own. I can be able to go for baking classes. In my place I can be able to teach somebody how to make bread and scones and salad. You can have 5 rand, you can buy your mealie meal19 and eat with your children.”

A: “But you can’t do that without an English language education?”

T: “I can’t do it because most of the courses you want to do, they want English. Like now, two years back she [Thuli’s current employer] wanted to register me with the husband of a master chef. But I’m keeping on saying “no I can’t because I can’t eat the seafood,” and I don’t want to tell them I’m not educated, you understand?”

A: “They don’t know?”

T: “No they don’t know. She thinks I’m educated.”

A: “You never told any of the families?”

T: “No.”

A: “So did anyone ever give you something and said oh here, you should read this?”

T: “No. It has never come across. You know, God sometimes works in miracles. It has never come to that challenge. Even in the time she [Thuli’s current employer] was working, she would never leave a note and say ‘today we are feeling like roast lamb with what what’. Whatever I cook them, it’s food.”

A: “So do you feel, Ma, like – do you almost feel that you have some kind of secret? Is that hard?”

T: “I think God is keeping my secret somewhere because even there’s nothing which they – even the time when she was registering me – no. She’s never said read this like I read to you, nuh uh. She just said, ‘take these things and go home and speak over it, if you feel comfortable just sign for me. Bring it back so I can put you on our system’.”

At this point within Thuli’s narrative, she discusses both her shame in having to hide what she thinks of as her lack of education, while also remarking on the gratefulness she feels that the absence of her English literacy skills has never been uncovered by previous employers. Specifically, Thuli mentions her current role, not only as a domestic worker, but as the aide for her employer who had recently started a company in which she places domestic workers with families.

While not evident from this excerpt of the narrative, Thuli explained to me that her employer asked her to help her with this business, recognising Thuli’s strengths in speaking to people – both to the domestic workers themselves and to the families who are hiring domestic workers. Thuli is thus acting as a liaison between the workers and their possible employers by addressing both sides’ needs and desires for possible positions. Although this role in itself calls for further analysis, since it displays a complex relationship between Thuli’s agentic choices within a historically non-agentic form of work, my focus within this article is on the way in which Thuli keeps her lack of English literacy a secret from her employer.

As Thuli notes, God must be “keeping her secret somewhere”, since her current employer had never asked Thuli to demonstrate English literacy skills. For Thuli, this “secret” is not only that she cannot read and write in English, but, as she says numerous times, that she is not “educated”. For example, Thuli expresses to me earlier in her narrative:

“I’m not educated, I can’t do anything, I’ve tried. You know, if you’re not educated, people try to take advantage of you”.

As is revealed through this statement as well as throughout Thuli’s narrative, Thuli links English language literacy directly with the notion of being educated. It does not matter to her that she has taken years of ABE classes, or that she feels confident about reading and writing in isiZulu. It also does not matter to Thuli that she is verbally proficient in English; her struggles to read and write in English become a source of shame and something she wants to keep hidden.

In addition, this moment in Thuli’s narrative again demonstrates the ways in which my own role as a researcher possibly impacted the narrative verbalised by Thuli. While from our conversation, I feel as though Thuli was describing a type of “secret” that she hides, it is not until I explicitly ask Thuli if she feels as though she has a secret that she verbalises that God is keeping her lack of English literacy a secret. Her choice of words in describing this secret might have been different if I had not asked a question in which I was linking her words to a sense of secretiveness. And yet, Thuli’s connection between her lack of English literacy and her secret shame display aspects of language, identity and symbolic power discussed by some of the authors mentioned above (Alexander 2008; Makalela 2005; Shin and Kubota 2008). By linking English literacy directly to the notion of being educated, Thuli is adhering to the belief that English equates social and individual power. When one is not “educated”, Thuli feels, this leaves a space for vulnerability, because “people try to take advantage of you”. Therefore, Thuli has spent her lifetime hiding the absence of her English literacy skills in order to demonstrate a strength and confidence to her employers which she does not always feel internally.

Concluding Thuli’s narrative/continuing HERstory

T: “I said I want Monday to Friday, maybe you can help me. I’ve tried to talk to [the teachers]. Even if you can accommodate us twice a week, it would be better than nothing.”

A: “But they said they can’t do more than 1 day a week?”

T: “No they said they’ll find out. So I said if I can find where to go Monday to Friday I’ll be very pleased but, I’ll leave it for them.”

A: “So first of all, what is really my dream would be to come back next year and stay for a long time, to be able to teach on the days that [the teachers] can’t teach. I know that once a week is not really helping, but I guess it’s better than nothing.”

T: “It’s nothing. It’s still killing me.”

While Thuli’s narrative with me as a listener concludes, HERstory continues. She wants an English language education, she wants to be literate in English, and she feels as though she is being stymied, and perhaps even metaphorically dying without this knowledge. Thuli has lived over six decades of her life not knowing how to read and write in English. While she speaks with her employers in English, and knows how to read and write in isiZulu, she has spent her life lacking English literacy skills. Due to the history of English in South Africa, and specifically in South African education, as well as the symbolic power that the knowledge of English seems to hold in the post-apartheid social milieu of South Africa, Thuli almost synonymously feels as though she has spent over six decades as an uneducated person. Even though within Thuli’s HERstory, she has taken ABE classes, both in South Africa and Malawi, and despite numerous authors and programmes emphasising the necessity of becoming literate in one’s home language(s) as a means to support both individual and social and cultural capital, Thuli continues to feel as though her inability to read and write in English is a secret for which she should feel shame. Even more, this shame causes Thuli to feel as though she is living a metaphorical death, for without (English) education, she is “just as good as a dead person”.

By drawing on Thuli’s narrative as well as demonstrating the roles that both I as the researcher and Thuli as the narrator play in the creation of her narrative, this article attempts to proffer several key arguments. First, it endeavours to exhibit the power of the narrative in understanding nuances of language, power and identity. By exhibiting these nuances, what materialises are the ways in which Thuli’s identities as a domestic worker and as an adult English language learner are inextricably related. Second, it ventures to reveal the ways in which the links between these concepts continue to affect adult learners in postcolonial South African adult basic education. Moreover, in considering this narrative as an example of the complex status of English within South African adult education and language learning, what becomes apparent are the ways in which the desire to learn English is both individually distinct and laden with historically (re)produced ideologies. Finally, noting the connections of language, education, power and identity in Thuli’s story opens up a potential link between the SDGs’ promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all and a recognition and appreciation of the value of domestic work. This recognition is vital to ensuring that these concepts are viewed as working in collaboration with one another rather than as separate entities.

Footnotes

  1. 1.

    The term “herstory/herstories” is not new. It has been used in several works by scholars and educators (Alston and McClellan 2011; Patterson 2003; Serisier 2007) to push back against the gendered nature of words and the ways in which the embeddedness of gender can impact how we perceive the world. As a means to both resist and reconstruct male-dominated speech, I employ the term HERstories to reflect the ways in which language is not only a site for conceptions of reality and of individual and collective identities, but also a site for resistance and change.

  2. 2.

    I returned to Johannesburg in the summer of 2015, and again in 2016 for a five-month stay, during which I continued working with these women while also conducting my dissertation research.

  3. 3.

    The Afrikaans term apartheid [apartness] refers to legally sanctioned racial segregation and discrimination in South Africa from 1948 until 1994. Favouring white South Africans over Bantu (all black Africans), coloured (mixed-race) and later also Asian (Indian and Pakistani) citizens, legal regulations required all non-white citizens to adhere to numerous restrictions concerning their access to land and where they could live, their use of public facilities, the schools they could enrol in, the jobs they could hold etc.

  4. 4.

    The retirement age in South Africa (for both women and men) is 60 years. However, many of the women in my research continue to work for their employers due to the small pension funds that they expressed to me that they would earn upon retirement.

  5. 5.

    I am using the term HERstory to differentiate between Thuli’s personal story within South Africa and the histories of language, education, and adult basic education within the country. By using the term HERstory whilst also describing larger South African histories, I am attempting to reveal how a country’s history and one woman’s HERstory conflict and interact.

  6. 6.

    Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the participant.

  7. 7.

    Thuli signed a consent form approved by the Institutional Review Board for Protection of Human Subjects in Research (IRB). agreeing to this interview being recorded and used for my research.

  8. 8.

    A referendum, held on 5 October 1960 – and restricted to white citizens in South Africa – led to the establishment of the Republic of South Africa on 31 May 1961. Queen Elizabeth II lost her position as head of state and the Governor General, Charles R. Swart, became the first President of the new Republic.

  9. 9.

    Today’s formal school system in South Africa runs from Grade R (Reception Year) to Grade 12. Grades 1–9 are compulsory, while grades 10–12 are considered Further Education and Training (FET). Education was made compulsory for all learners under the South African Schools Act of 1996 (RSA 1996b).

  10. 10.

    It is important to note that minor changes have been made to the dialogue shown in italics. While I have tried to keep all written dialogue as I transcribed it, certain words have been gently adjusted in terms of grammar to improve the readability of the text on the page. Explanatory additions are surrounded by square brackets.

  11. 11.

    As Nicola Ansell states, lobola “refers to the provision of gifts to the parents of a bride, usually in the form of cash or livestock, [and] is an entrenched part of marriage in parts of Southern Africa” (Ansell 2001, p. 697).

  12. 12.

    As Mark Constas (1997) notes, during apartheid, almost all Black schools required substantial student fees, while this not always the case for White schools.

  13. 13.

    Although Thuli’s husband was from Malawi, due to the large number of isiZulu speakers in Gauteng, Thuli and Thompson communicated primarily in isiZulu. While Thuli told me later that she spoke some “Malawian” (probably referring to Chichewa, the African language most widely spoken in Malawi), she confirmed multiple times that the main language she spoke with her husband and still speaks with her sons is isiZulu.

  14. 14.

    As becomes clear later in this article, for Thuli, learning to read and write connotes reading and writing specifically in English. Although her teacher at the school she attended in Malawi promoted her first learning how to read and write in isiZulu, for Thuli, reading and writing is synonymous with reading English and writing in English.

  15. 15.

    While Bantu languages were traditionally oral languages, they were first written down in the Roman alphabet by British missionaries as a means to forcibly spread Christianity to native South Africans (Alexander 1989). As Leketi Makalela argues, missionaries who arrived from European countries encoded closely related dialects based on differences they perceived and consequently “balkanized indigenous African language varieties with artificial boundaries” (Makalela 2005, p. 152)..

  16. 16.

    Writing in 2007, McKay used the term “illiteracy”, which implies a literate/illiterate (yes/no) dichotomy. Current usage, however, tends to favour the idea of literacy as a continuum of different levels of proficiency, with low literacy at one end of the scale and high literacy at the other (Hanemann 2015).

  17. 17.

    It is important to note that within these statistics, it is unclear as to whether the term “literacy” connotes literacy in any language or solely in English.

  18. 18.

    Momentum is a financial service and insurance provider in South Africa.

  19. 19.

    Mealie meal, sometimes spelled mielie meel, is coarse maize flour which is made into porridge (mealie pap). It is a staple ingredient in South African cooking.

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Copyright information

© Springer Nature B.V., and UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Pennsylvania State UniversityState CollegeUSA

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