In Malawi early efforts in language planning can be traced back to the role that missionaries and the colonial government played. Missionaries in particular were in favour of using local languages for evangelisation. Three different types of schools were run by missionaries: the vernacular, central and normal schools were organised at village level and thus tended to be small and monolingual as lessons were taught in chosen indigenous languages. Those who successfully completed the vernacular classes then proceeded to follow central and normal schools.
InMalawi we can refer to two particular mission schools as an example that were established under the auspices of the Blantyre and Livingstonia missions in the south and north respectively. The Dutch Reformed Church Mission (DRCM) was established in the centre at Mvera. Both the Blantyre and Livingstonia mission establishments recognised and employed the identified local languages for evangelisation and in early education. Leamers who were promoted into central and normal schools, after two or three years of vernacular instruction, were exposed to bilingual education. Apart from the local languages, English was the other language of evangelisation and education. This was an attractive feature in missionary' enterprises as learners were desirous of joining the rank of health assistants, clerks, interpreters in colonial administration, storekeepers and elementary bookeepers in trading establishments such as the African. Lakes Corporation (ALC) commonly known as Mandala. English thus became the key to acquiring white-collar jobs.
(Kishindo, 1994).
We have noted earlier in the section on Ngoni migrations, that the missionaries adopted Chingoni in preaching to their missionary converts. Essentially they adopted
Chingoni because there was already considerable Christian literature in Zulu of which Chingoni was a dialect. Chingoni was also used in early education. However, when the Chingoni lost its power, Chitumbuka reasserted itself and the missionaries used this language for evangelisation and education.
In both Scottish and Dutch rmssronary establishments, the Bible was printed in English, Chinyanja and in Chitumbuka by the Hetherwick Press in Blantyre. The publications were made available to the converts who attained sufficient literacy in the vernaculars and also in English. Thus apart from emphasis on the use of the two indigenous languages, Chinyanja and Chitumbuka, converts were also encouraged to use English to complement their mother tongues.
One of the leading converts at the Scottish mission at Livingstonia, Charles Chidongo Chinula, among others, was encouraged to write stories about the joys of conversion in his indigenous language, Chitumbuka. This is also where some of the Christian nativity plays and morality tales were translated into African languages (Mphande, 1996:93). Later on Charles Chidongo Chinula translated the classic Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. Following this, the Livingstonia mission press subsequently published it in 1932. Along with this and despite the fact that the missions 'exorcised" native pagan rites, they, nonetheless, appropriated many local Ingoma songs of the Ngoni cultural forms of expression, which they reissued in church hymnals (Mphande,1996). Inthe south similar activities were encouraged for Africans to use indigenous languages alongside English in their religious, cultural and work experiences.
From the discussion above we can observe that the colonial language policy did not want to adopt a multiplicity of languages for their administration. In Malawi's three regions they adopted Chitumbuka in early education and for colonial administration in the north. This is because they observed that the language emerged as a regional lingua franca among all linguistic groups: the Nkhonde, Nyakyusa, Lambya, Tonga and Tumbuka For the central and southern regions, both missionaries
and the government chose and largely employed Chinyanja, which emerged equally as the lingua franca in the two regions among the following ethnic groups: Chewa- Nyanja, Lomwe, Sena, Yao. Inall, two indigenous languages emerged as powerful official languages in early education and in colonial administration throughout the country, along with English. We can observe here that since missionary enterprises both Chinyanja and Chitumbuka have had long literary traditions and were both used in early education and in the media - on radio and in print. The reason for paucity of literature in these two languages, unlike in some, is that they did not operate as viable languages in all spheres of life in solving problems of communication. At the local level they both had different dialects but all the dialects are mutually intelligible as seen in the illustrations below:
(a) Chinvanja 1. Bantu
2. Chinyanja
(b) Chitumbuka_
Chichewa Chinsenga (in Zambia)
1. Bantu
Chingoni (in Ntcheu and Mwanza districts in Malawi)
2. Chinkhamanga Chihenga Chiphoka Chingoni
(in Mzimba and Lundazi )
The illustrations in (a) and(b) show that Bantu is not a specific language, but a superordinate term for a group of African languages that share certain conunon lexical, morphological and phonological features. In (a) I Chinyanja is a Bantu language which has the following dialects: Chinyanja, Chichewa, Chinsenga (as the one spoken in Chipata in Zambia), and Chingoni, the version spoken in Ntcheu and Mwanza districts inMalawi because of the Maseko Ngoni influence. All these are, however, intelligible dialects of Chinyanja . Similarly in (b) Chitumbuka is a Bantu language with the following dialects: Chinkhamanga Chihenga, Chiphoka and also Chingoni, which the Tonga still refer to the Mzimba and Lundazi dialects. All these are mutually intelligible dialects of Chitumbuka.
One other observation is that the colonial government's language policy seemed rather incoherent. While the colonial powers believed that they could administer Malawi if they ruled indirectly through the local native authorities employing the chosen indigenous languages in early education and in administration, they stil1 felt it imperative that a class of the natives they ruled be literate in English, arguing that this was for ease of administration. What is observable is clearly that they developed and deliberately adopted a mixed exploitative policy that worked to their advantage. As we have noted earlier, the missionary forerunners of the British administration switched from using Chingoni to Chitumbuka, with the demise of Chingoni among the -subjugated peoples. In educational contexts, indigenous languages served well as media of instruction in early education but the supremacy of English reigned from secondary school education to the tertiary level. It also meant prestige for the colonial master's language, In British colonial Kenya, for example, kiSwahili, Kikuyu, Luo and Luhya were also recognised as languages in initial education, along with English in higher education (Kimani wa Njoroge, 1985).