Loving My Language

Hleze Kunju is the first person to write a PhD in his mother tongue, isiXhosa. Now he’s on a mission to get others to do the same.

- Khatija Nxedlana

IT WAS a moment he never thought he’d see – the highest point of a long, challenging journey he was determined to complete.

And making it all the sweeter was the fact the most important person was right there on stage to place the academic cap on his head.

Hleze Kunju recently became the first person to write a doctorate degree in isiXhosa at Rhodes University and his wife, Susan, is the one who made it all possible, he says.

“I’m so grateful to her for keeping things together and looking after our children while I was busy working on my PhD,” he says.

“It definitely wouldn’t have been possible without her and that’s why I asked the university to give her permission to cap me during graduation.”

Behind Hleze’s soft-spoken demeanour is an activist with a burning passion for his mother tongue, a passion that’s taken him on an intriguing four-year adventure to Zimbabwe in search of an isiXhosa community the world had all but forgotten.

The 31-year-old dad of three is now on a mission to get more people to follow in his footsteps and pursue subjects they’re passionate about – in the language their parents taught them.

It’s time, he says, for academics to start producing material in their own languages.

“English has become a language to determine the level of your intelligence. If you speak good English, you’ll get a good job. For me, this shows we’re still oppressed or colonised in our minds,” he says.