LITERESI BILENG AVANSE - boukie banane

My dear Navin,
OPEN LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER
Your decision to include Mauritian Creole as an optional subject is not only bold but also progressive.
Your father and the Labour Party are remembered for two major reforms in education: universal
primary education and free secondary education. Apart from a few minor reforms by others the
system has remained basically the same in spite of serious flaws. Your present courageous stand on
the language issue will eventually pave the way to a most needed, urgent, fundamental and
progressive refom: the use of the mother tongue as medium in primary education and the
promotion of a true Mauritian-English bilingualism.
However some dark clouds are gathering in the horizon.
1. The decision to have a permanent Academy for Mauritian Creole is wrong. What is more
appropriate is an ad hoc high powered committee to look into practical problems and find
solutions. Once the language has entered the curriculum of primary education the
committee should be dissolved and different departments of the University of Mauritius and
the MIE should take over the responsibility of research, planning and implementation. An
academy run by bureaucrats is to be avoided by all means. It will not lead to development
and growth, creativity and initiative but to the dictatorship of a few on the many.
2. There are some people, a very vocal minority supported by a certain press, whose hidden
agenda is to use Mauritian Creole as a Trojan horse to promote French to the status of
official language and downgrade English. I do not think that this would be a good thing for
the Republic of Mauritius. These rearguard fighters pretend to be ultrademocrats motivated
by a love of justice and freedom. They oppose the use of a phonemic-based orthography;
they resent any objective description of the syntax of Mauritian Creole; they openly support
an etymological orthography which they claim is reader-friendly. I suppose these people
would refuse to use the plane because their ancestors came to Mauritius in sailing ships.
What is all this hiding? In fact they want to maintain the myth that Mauritian Creole is a
patois, a form of broken-French, an impoverished, corrupt and bastardised version of
French. Most of these people were against universal suffrage and independence and now
they are against the development of our national language. These reactionaries are in fact
wolves in sheep skin.
3. I heard you in Rivière du Rempart expressing your discomfort with regards to hurdles which
bureaucracy has placed on the path of growth and innovation and which delays
implementation of projects however urgent they may be. The Academy of Mauritian Creole
will suffer the same fate and a whole assortment of unnecessary subcommittees will simply
delay decision making. Moreover bureaucrats do not trust the people. They have no regard
for the intelligence of people, no faith in the creative genius of people. Walled up in their
ivory tower they think of themselves as demi-gods whose main preoccupation is feathering
their own nests. The initial training of recruits with a good SC or an average HSC to teach
reading and writing in Mauritian Creole can take a few weeks and a series of in-service
courses together with an 'A' level course in Mauritian Creole studies through distance
learning could adequately equip them. As a result teachers undergoing training, while
gathering classroom experience, will be adequately trained to meet the needs of children in
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