How About Compulsory Sign Language?

How about compulsory Sign Language? Did anyone of our education, public policy and even politics experts consider this question when listing all the compulsory things to tick off of a Swaziland politician’s bucket list of orders to announce before they turn President Mugabe’s age?  

Ok, maybe not the bucket list but who’s ticking off OUR Vision 2022 list? Does it answer my question; how about compulsory sign language and braille to accompany the compulsory Christian and siSwati teachings? Or do we want deaf and blind people to be the heathens that we think we are not when we banish their cursed bodies to dark hell holes - away from contaminating OUR society?

I will refrain from my usual banter of questioning the who, what, where, when, why and how that informed this ‘avant-garde’ decision because I love siSwati like I love Miss – the teacher who made me fall in love with the language in high school.

I remember as a new job seeker in my early 20s; during Joburg interviews, I’d make sure to mention that “I’m also passionate about preserving vernacular languages”. I’d just newly learned the whole “vernacular” whatever thing so I’d say it everywhere with the naïve wisdom of an aspirant youngster. 

One day a follow-up question was put to me; to list what I considered vernacular languages followed by another follow-up question; did I consider Afrikaans, which was missing from my list, to be a vernacular language? I hadn’t actually ever thought of it or any other languages outside of South Africa’s black official languages as vernacular.

Options and Necessity

It was this Kaya FM job interview in 2004 which, for the first time, got me thinking about everyday person-to-person communication on a larger scale. I thought about deaf and mute people, blind people – what is their vernacular language? I asked myself. This ultimately led me to thinking about people with various forms of disabilities altogether. I realized how tremendously inaccessible this world is to people with disabilities. 

And yet it continues to take governments forever to not only include people with disabilities in all areas of the national discourse but also create the necessary national awareness about this segment of our population. 

The inevitable end result of this neglect is alarming gaps in the standard of living between able-bodied and disabled people across the key living standard measurements of access to basic human needs and rights like health, education, choice, information and food. The disparities are worse for people in rural areas as recorded even in the 2011 Living Conditions among People with Disabilities: a National Representative Study. Discrimination much?

Photo credit: Times of Swaziland newspaper; February 23, 2017

This first realization of the disadvantaged position of people with disabilities hit me profoundly because I know how hard a woman has to work in order to be considered competent and capable in the professional space and this world in general. 

Make that twice the effort if you’re a black woman and thrice the effort if you’re young and four times the effort for a rural girl often ‘othered’ into negative social spaces because of lack of exposure/access to modern information and technology. 

Now imagine being a woman with a hearing, speaking of visual disability in addition to all the above? What would you think and feel when people vent about how maddening this latest announcement is because English still remains the language to pass ‘in order to get anywhere in life including being admitted as a police recruit’? 

How would you feel knowing you don’t even have basic knowledge of siSwati Sign Language; a necessity in your world? Yes, even Sign Language comes in different dialects like American, British, South African, siSwati etc.

Breaking Mute Barriers

I don’t have a disability and I don’t have to imagine to in order to remember that the Swaziland government has made numerous promises and commitments to prioritize integration of the disabled into mainstream society. 

In the 1999 National Development Strategy, five out of the 10 disability-focused pledges read as follows:

• INTEGRATE persons with disabilities into economic and social activities.
• Ensure the integration of programs for persons with disabilities into MAINSTREAM EDUCATION.
• Create institutional and POLICY mechanisms through which persons with disabilities can be rehabilitated and INTEGRATED EFFECTIVELY with the rest of society.
• Enact legislation to protect the disadvantaged groups from abuse and DISCRIMINATION.
• Enact legislation to ensure EQUAL opportunities for persons with disabilities.

The National Disability Policy 2013 and Persons with Disabilities Bill 2014 make similar promises; to ‘ensure that all persons with disabilities have equal access and opportunities to education, health and other services at all levels’. 

Equal access means just that – where is the compulsory siSwati for all in Sign language then? Surely breaking the visible silent barriers is what we should continuously be thriving for rather than providing services to people with disabilities in silos. Globalization, like charity, begins at home.

This January I enrolled my six year old son and I for weekly sign language lessons. He’s also just started grade 1; learning a new language (sePedi), mathematics, reading, writing etc. so at times I wonder if the weekend sign language class is not too much for a tiny tot like him. 

It turns out he’s coping and actually at the ripe age to absorb all things new and important. He can now sign his name and attempts to complete the sign alphabet. But more than anything, what taking this course has done for him is heighten his level of awareness about the different people and their needs in our society. 

It is here that he meets and interacts with deaf children and is forced to communicate with them. This makes me wish this knowledge was compulsory for all children from as early as grade 1.Who knows; maybe one day he’ll be a policeman who needs to help ALL citizens including those who can only verbalize through sign language. I’ll sign off right here while this vision of my son at 22 seems reasonably attainable.