Using Translanguaging to Promote Social Justice in South African and Zimbabwean Primary Schools

Background To The Study

In this chapter it will be argued that the translanguaging agenda is intended to promote social justice. Zimbabwe and South Africa are both situated in southern Africa. Both countries suffered from the burden of colonialism and its corollary coloniality. Zimbabwe just like South Africa, inherited an education system that was based on race, ethnicity and that was gendered. The official language of communication prior to political independence in Zimbabwe was English and for South Africa English and Afrikaans held sway. Consequently, after political independence in Zimbabwe in 1980, English is still predominant and for South Africa, which attained majority rule in 1994, Afrikaans and English continue to experience superiority in the country’s linguistic hierarchy. South Africa also suffers from the same challenge of racial, gendered, ethnic and linguistic hierarchy due to the historical policies of apartheid.

Consequently, children who hail from working class family backgrounds and are not able to converse in the English or Afrikaans become excluded from participation in the learning process due to the language barrier. Although official pronouncements in both countries tend to uphold at a constitutional level, the equality of all languages spoken in each of the two states, coloniality by parents, school administrators, ruling elites still favour foreign languages over indigenous languages. In this chapter, it will be submitted that the use of translanguaging has potential to enhance equality in the school system, provided systemic changes are effected which can transform the attitudes of parents, administrators, politicians and educators in both countries towards indigenous languages. Finally, the chapter will submit how praxis and consciousness can lead to real transformation in schools through translanguaging in order to enhance social justice.

Educators around the world have been grappling with the demanding task of instructing linguistically and socially diverse learners. In practice most school governance was built on the premise that schools are the same for all learners and educators and that all learners must engage in taking assessments that are inflexible in order to demonstrate academic achievement (Krause & Prinsloo, 2016;Charamba, 2020). Department for Teacher Education (2020) explains that TIMSS is a global contrast of learners performance in mathematics and science facilitated by International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). The intention of the survey is furnish participating countries with collation of data on the perfomance in mathematics and science and attitudes together with a contrast of the curriculum and didactic praxis in these subjects in primary and secondary schools. The first survey was conducted in 1995 and data has been collected on a cycle of four years ever since. The countries that took part in TIMSS in (2020) were Egypt, Morrocco and South Africa.