Bite your tongue

EDITOR – In response to Chris Tobo’s column encouraging English people to learn to speak isiZulu so everyone can get along better, it is not language that is a barrier, it is attitude.

Yesterday after my husband fetched our little daughter from school in Hillcrest, he was spoken of in a threatening manner by a group of workers who were working on the road where he had to stop due to roadworks. They spoke in isiZulu boasting of how they would kill him, either presuming that because he was white he would be too stupid to have bothered to learn their language or worse, knowing he might understand and being brazen enough not to care. I am an aggressive person with a low tolerance for bullying.

If I did understand isiZulu and heard half of what preceded or followed “ntombazani” when I walked by I may be in trouble with the law by now. So best some of us not learn each others’ lingo.

I was brought up liberal but have slowly become embittered because of this sort of incident. Today, from the traffic light, I watched an elderly “English” lady struggle up the steps of a local bank while one of our “isiZulu” policemen stood idly by, staring at her. The language of love is stronger than our 11 languages combined. It’s the language of greeting the people who pass by every day with a smile or a lift on a rainy day. It’s in caring for your workers or doing your job properly. Actions speak louder than words and out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The wise old owl sits in silence and if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

Megan Strydom

Pinetown