South African state schools will introduce Mandarin lessons next year in a bid to bolster cultural relations with China, its largest trading partner, a government official said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Basic Education spokesman Elijah Mhlanga told AFP that South Africa hopes to teach Mandarin to \u201cas many people as far as practically possible\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mhlanga said that the programme – part of a 10-year plan signed by President Jacob Zuma in December last year – was already under way.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are teachers who travel to China for training while China has and will bring trainers into the country to support us,\u201d said Mhlanga, adding that China was footing the bill for the training.<\/p>\n
But the decision to introduce the language has outraged the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu), which said it was \u201ctantamount to a new form of colonisation\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cSadtu rejects this imposition with the contempt it deserves,\u201d said the union’s general secretary Mugwena Maluleke.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will prioritise African languages in order to build social cohesion.\u201d<\/p>\n
The roll-out of Mandarin will see China training hundreds of South African teachers and building three Confucius Institutes, research centres similar to Germany’s Goethe-Institut designed to promote Chinese culture.<\/p>\n
In 2009, China became South Africa’s largest trading partner.<\/p>\n
But the trade balance has been skewed in favour of China, with Africa’s most developed economy exporting raw materials and importing manufactured goods, causing concern that the trade between the two countries is not a mutually beneficial relationship.<\/p>\n
Source: IOL<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South African state schools will introduce Mandarin lessons next year in a bid to bolster cultural relations with China, its largest trading partner, a government official said on Wednesday. Basic Education spokesman Elijah Mhlanga told AFP that South Africa hopes to teach Mandarin to \u201cas many people as far as practically possible\u201d. Mhlanga said that … Continue reading “SA schools to introduce Mandarin next year”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":20014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[2716,144,2771,8516,1783],"class_list":["post-20013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-basic-education","tag-china","tag-language","tag-mandarin","tag-schools"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/mandarin.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20015,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20013\/revisions\/20015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}