‘Daily Express’ ends Kadazan section

Final edition: Marcellus (centre) holding up his last page layout for the Kadazan insert of Sabah’s ‘Daily Express’. With him are two colleagues.

KOTA KINABALU: The Kadazan language insert of the Daily Express newspaper, one of Sabah’s oldest, has ended its run.

Named simply as “Kadazan Dusun”, the page started in the late 1960s and became known, among others, for its “sisindion” (poetry) section and caricatures by 66-year-old Sabahan cartoonist David Sooning, who draws under the pen name Langkawit.

“This is not just about me losing my job but the impending death of a language, ” said news editor Marcellus Puvok, 59.

“Besides Daily Express, there is only one other newspaper that still keeps its Kadazan page, ” he said.

Daily Express, which started in 1963, is one of Sabah’s main English dailies.

At present, the only newspaper that still carries a Kadazan page is the New Sabah Times. Previously, publications like The Borneo Post and the now defunct Borneo Mail had Kadazan pages too.

There are over 30 ethnic languages in Sabah. Kadazandusun is among the major ones.

For the native Kadazandusun, their mother tongue was dying over the course of time despite efforts to revive or at least preserve the language through the school syllabus and books, said Marcellus.

When the company’s management told him that the Kadazan page would be closed for good, for various reasons, including a drop in business due to Covid-19, his mind went blank.

“There was nothing I could think of or say. I was just devastated, ” he said.

May 30,2020, to him, would always be a sad day as he bade farewell to the Kadazan section which he had served for almost 40 years.

Joseph Bingkasan, 64, veteran writer and recipient of Sabah and Labuan’s Journalist Icon Award for 2019, was also saddened to learn of the closure, as he had learned about journalism from the pioneers of Sabah’s Kadazan news pages.

“For the natives, especially the Kadazan people, they buy local newspapers just to read the Kadazan section. Today, when we go to coffee shops, we still see this practice. I guess all this will be a memory for most of us, ” he said.

With only one newspaper left in Sabah that provides a Kadazan page, it would hamper Sabah’s ethnic language preservation efforts, he said.

“Let’s hope there are more efforts to promote Kadazandusun and other ethnic languages in Sabah, as it is a part of culture and heritage that must not be forgotten, ” he said.

There are also calls for the Kadazan page to be preserved in other ways including online.

Sabah Assistant Minister of Law and Native Affairs Jannie Lasimbang said the closure of the Kadazan page in Daily Express was sad because the decline of language in its written form could lead to a decline in the use of the language.

She said this would affect the continuity of culture, especially among younger generations.

“If it is becoming hard for the paper to maintain the section in its written form, it should at least consider an online version, ” she said.

She noted that as the Kadazandusun language was also taught in schools and teachers training colleges, “we need various materials for students to read”.

“On my part, my ministry would like to see the cultural rights of all native peoples preserved, including the protection of their languages, ” Lasimbang said.

She is promoting innovative “adat” (culture) programmes to help encourage young people to learn and practise their culture and the use of the Kadazan language in her constituency of Kapayan.