Zulu is important because it’s the most common home language in South Africa, and because people fleeing Shaka Zulu took their dialects as far as Zambia and Zimbabwe.
It’s important because there are fascinating praise poems written in Zulu about Shaka and his half brother Dingane who killed him and all the other chiefs and powerful women.
Because there is beautiful music with lyrics in Zulu.
Because when my soccer coach wants to reprimand the players for not coming to practice, he apologizes for “using his perfect language” and then switches to Zulu for the tirade.
Because ideophones give Zulu an amazing richness unique to Bantu languages.
Because my friend Bongiwe wants to tell her relatives about her religion, but some of them only speak Zulu and she doesn’t know the translations of the vocabulary.
Because there’s a delicious traditional Zulu bread called ujeqe, and you can’t talk about it without being able to pronounce the click.
Because every time I say “Sawubona, unjani?” to the woman who cleans my res, her face lights up with a huge smile.
Because there are places with names like Hluhluwe that sound stupid when pronounced by non-Zulu speakers.
Because my friend Thandaza made a hilariously scandalous pun on facebook when she captioned a picture of herself learning to weave a grass mat (icansi), “Now I know how to make ucansi (sex)”.
Because Thandaza’s dad is a preacher so he named his daughter Prayer, and his other daughter Snojesu, We Have Jesus, and every Zulu name means something.
Because there are words like ubuntu and amadlozi that take pages and pages to translate.
Because just as I had to use English to explain this, there are millions of people who can only express themselves properly in Zulu, and a Zulu education gives them more to express and helps them express it more properly.
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