While browsing the latest headlines a few weeks back, I came across a really great project that has been embarked upon by Motherland Isiko TV, also known as miTV for those of us in the social media sphere. The project endeavours to teach 1 million South Africans the Zulu language in an effort to further break down the barriers that many of us face by not being able to speak an African language.

For those of you that might not be accustomed to the South African situation, we have eleven official African languages which makes it extremely important for all citizens to become accustomed to at least one major African language in order to better and more effectively communicate with our country's people.

The Motherland Program was created by Motherland founder, Kevin McKerr, and seeks to teach isiZulu to as many as people as it can in the space of 8 weeks. The tuition is free of charge and will be broadcast every Monday and Thursday morning via the Internet on www.mitv.co.za. The course is set to kick off you on 8 September 2007, but if you go check out the miTV website, the first lesson is already up with an introduction to the course too.

This is a really good initiative and we need more good news like this to bolster understanding and appreciation of what our country, South Africa, has to offer the rest of the world. So I hope to catch you online and perhaps we can practise a Zulu phrase or two together :-)