Teach Me How to Pray in Zulu

The title statement is normal if you're a missionary serving in the picturesque hills of KZN. However, if you're a 20 year old black male that checks the 'isiZulu' box under the 'Home Language' section of those yellow forms, it reads and sounds completely different. Almost controversial. I can almost hear the older generation muttering, "Tsk tsk tsk. Ulahle isiko lomfana!" (This boy has lost his heritage/ lost touch with his culture).

Actually, this entry has little to do with how well I can or cannot pray in or even speak isiZulu. Yes, the phrase 'teach me how to pray in zulu' popped into my head as I was listening to my dad pray in the language, and yes, he probably masters the phonetic intricacies of the language far better than I ever have. The crux, however, is this issue of creating and discovering identity. This identity thing just won't leave the youth of today, and in particular, the young black 'privileged' youth. It's like swag when you're Steve Harvey, it just won't go away!

Ethnic identity is becoming obsolete among us. Whether or not it's a good thing, and whether or not one even cares are beside the point. I'm finding that more and more, if I don't ask my fellow black peers at varsity what their language-group is, and if I don't know his/her surname, I can scarcely tell Zulu from Pedi. We seem to be increasingly content with leaving the blackness at the racial level, and the rest of our cultural commonality shall be made up of universal colloquialisms and what common interests we have. I'm not advocating for either side here. I'm not about to launch a campaign for all Zulu men to walk around campus in amaBheshu (covering made of animal skin), waving spears in the air and singing the Praises of uShaka. Neither am I going to encourage the bleaching of black skin and the tightening of nostrils so that the pronounciation of my people sets Buckingham Palace alight with delight.
No, all I'm doing is noting my observations.

So what am I getting at? Well, that perhaps either side is so obsessed with proving the other wrong that neither are learning lessons from each other. My father's fluent Zulu is beautiful to listen to, and is full of rich and profound insights that are embedded within the imagery and heavy metaphoric nature of the language itself. To see Zulu, Tswana, Pedi, and Xhosa youth all forgetting about how many clicks there are in their respective languages (and thereby forging a unity that the seperatist Apartheid regime rendered dead even among blacks) is equally as beautiful. And perhaps neither the dogmatic purists of ethnic vernac AND the neo-liberal 'coconuts' who have no care in the world about their ethnicity have a place in our society today.

Perhaps it's time all of us black people participate in the culture of learning from one another, Gucci jeans, amaBheshu and all.
And yes, I will pray that it happens, in isiZulu.