Ten commandments for Setswana to be a resourceful vehicle of development in Botswana

Abstract

When most African countries became independent in the early 1960’s, they were driven by a strong  nationalistic desire to be united, sovereign and developed. After realizing that many languages were spoken  within their borders, they had to come up with language policies, which would meet their aspirations. Although many countries selected the demographically and socio-politically dominant indigenous languages to be  national media, in most cases, the national language remained functionally symbolic. Botswana is one of the African countries which selected its dominant indigenous language, Setswana, to be the national language (Republic of Botswana, 1994).

This paper examines the position of Setswana, whose role has remained largely symbolic, as a national  language (Bagwasi, 2012; Chebanne et al., 1993). However, in order to ensure maximal utilization of the national medium, as a vehicle for development and mass mobilization, Botswana needs to accord Setswana more control of the country’s socio-political, economic and technological domains for sustainable  development. The paper proposes ten possible measures, that it terms “commandments”, which ought to be followed for Setswana to become a resourceful and effective national and primary official language.

Keywords: capacity planning, national language, norm planning, official language, status planning