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http://littlemagonline.com/tag/sally-victor/ June 14th, Washington D.C.

can i buy prednisone at walmart Tomorrow Catherine and I depart for Africa for a most unusual reason: to teach Latin. Last year Marianne Dircksen, a professor in the school of ancient languages at Northwestern University in Potchefstroom, came to Rusticatio Virginiana in search of help. Latin, which had been part of the colonial educational system in South Africa, and a requirement for such things as law and medicine degrees, had, over the course of her lifetime, largely vanished from the course catalogs and the general culture. Convinced that the Classics were a worthy endeavor, but aware that the current course offerings were not succeeding with students, she had turned her scholarly attention to the study of instructional methodology, looking for some new approach. And so she came across – I don’t quite know how – the work of SALVI, the North American Institute of Living Latin Studies (or Septentrionale Americanum Latinitatis Vivae Institutum). She came to Rusticatio Virginiana, one of our programs, where I was teaching, for a week-long Latin immersion program. Convinced that immersion methods would be a vast improvement over existing Latin instruction in South Africa, she arranged for us – myself and Nancy Llewellyn, the founder of SALVI – to teach a week-long immersion program in South Africa, which would immediately precede a four-day conference at which we would speak. Utterly fascinated by the problem – as well as the prospect of a trip to Africa – we agreed immediately.

But it is a problem, isn’t it – what does Latin have to offer South Africa? It already has eleven national languages, and the majority of citizens will never master more than two or three of them. Not to mention the 55,000 rapes a year, fifty percent unemployment, and vast economic disparities which are the legacy of generations of legally enforced racial segregation – is this really the time or place for Vergil and Caesar and Cicero? And what does Latin mean there? As much as communication depends on intention, often the meanings of our words and actions do not match our intentions for them. Can Latin in South Africa mean anything more than the imposition of a foreign culture on an alien land? Latin is the imperial language par excellence, is it not? It even gave us the word “empire.” And that’s another thing – here we speak of Latin being the root of our culture, and one of the building blocks of our language. What does it mean for people of other cultures, and other languages?

And I am sure that the political meanings of language is not lost on South African culture. Steven Biko, whose 1977 death in police custody is still one of the most bitter events in the national psyche, took as one of the pillars of the “Black Consciousness” movement the necessity, for black South Africans, to resist the imposition of European language and culture. He was one of the organizers of a school strike in which students walked out of schools because they refused instruction in Afrikaans – the Dutch dialect used in many South African schools. He wanted instruction in his own native tongue. What would Steven Biko think of Latin?

It’s not 1977 anymore. But I head off to South Africa really not knowing what to expect. I can put the questions of universality and relevance aside a bit – for now it is enough that some South Africans – at least one, anyway – want me to come, and share with them what I know.