Can Kiswahili unite Africans and fast-track decolonisation?
On 5 July, the Ugandan cabinet adopted Kiswahili (Swahili) – the most widely spoken indigenous language in Africa, which has long had official status in Kenya and Tanzania – as an official language and as a directive. Later it was made a compulsory subject in primary and high schools. from the East African Community (EAC) faction,
I wholeheartedly support this development and believe that the entire sub-Saharan continent should adopt Kiswahili as the official language.
Here’s why.
Currently, there are no indigenous languages in Africa that are widely spoken to serve as a common language on the continent. I often find myself communicating with a fellow Afrikaans in English, the language of our former colonists. It makes me feel ashamed, embarrassed – but there is no alternative. Sadly, after independence, the founders of our nations failed to recognize the need to establish a common language—a language that did not belong to the colonists—that would allow us to communicate easily amongst ourselves and to create a sense of closeness and unity. can help create. Instead, they inspired us to adopt English – or French or Portuguese – as our common language.
For example, English has been dominant in my home country, Zimbabwe, throughout my life, both socially and academically, from primary school to adulthood.
In 1980, the year Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain, I started Hollingsbury Primary School in Harare. There, our mostly white, English-speaking teachers told us not to speak Chishona – my mother tongue – or any other language indigenous to the country, during school hours, and inadvertently went on to punish anyone. .
I think they were right, as the government had already designated English as the primary language of communication in the country. It did not help matters that everyone at the time regarded then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s impeccable command of English and observers in the West regarded him as “one of the world’s great speakers”. So our social education seemed normal and to some extent plausible. When the government of our newly independent nation should have supported and prioritized indigenous languages and cultures, English was being sold to young children as a symbol of intelligence, sophistication and status. I soon became convinced that Chishona was inferior to English and should not be associated with education, science or business.
After completing my primary education, I went to Prince Edward High School in Harare, which is considered one of the best state schools in the country. The six years I spent there amounted to an academic exercise in organized Englishization. The school was named after Prince Edward of Britain and took great pride in preserving Old English traditions and encouraging students to write, speak and think in English – to the detriment of our African heritage. While there, I went through an extensive and visible process of Westernization that distorted my African identity. And the situation outside school was not much different. Two of the four state-owned national radio channels, Radio 1 and Radio 3, will broadcast in English and focus on English-language content. A large part of the programming on state broadcaster ZBC TV, including the daily main news bulletin, was also in English. In our earliest years, we were exposed to mostly British and American programs that were designed with an English-speaking Western audience in mind.
Besides English, I studied only one other language during my formal education: French. Commonly spoken indigenous languages of Zimbabwe – no one bothered to teach me Isinebele, Tjikalanga, Tshiwenda, or Tswana. As a result, I have never acquired the ability to socialize with Zimbabweans across the country who have not received English language education or have chosen out of principle to learn or communicate in the language of the colonizer.
Because of the state’s preference for English, I developed two distinct personalities – one who communicated mostly in English, responded to Western social codes and was immersed in Western culture that was used in daily life and conversation. , and another who communicates in Chishona and prefers the traditional ways of living and living, which are used in conversation with some family members, such as my grandmother, who could not speak English.
As celebrated West Indian author and political philosopher Frantz Fanon said in his seminal novel Black Skin, White mask“To speak one language is to take a world, a culture“My African comrades and I, sadly, were stuck with English (and immersed in the music, art and literature that imposed it on us). The Zimbabwean government legislated and promoted multilingualism through education. made no effort to give
At the regional level, South African development communityeconomic community of west african States of America And the Organization for African Unity didn’t do much better. They implemented policies that promoted English, French, and Portuguese as official working languages, and made no effort to accommodate indigenous languages.
Renowned Kenyan academic and author Ngogo Wa Thiongo lamented that the older generations of Africa “presented the languages of Europe as if they were the only ones who could bear knowledge, wisdom and everything else” that led to “a created a mindset where even African leaders want recognition from the West.”
This clearly misleading mindset should have no place in Africa today.
In colonial times, English, Portuguese and French were introduced to the continent and given priority in all social, economic and educational contexts, not because they were “better” than indigenous languages in any way, but because that their widespread use made it easier for the colonists. Exploiting Africa’s natural and mineral resources and undermining its history, traditions and economic system.
So why are Africans still insisting on using these languages to communicate with each other?
In February this year, months before Uganda decided to do so, the African Union finally adopted Kiswahili as an official function. Language: Hindi with European languages.
Nevertheless, African leaders should do more to limit and eventually eliminate the dominance of colonial languages in Africa. Establishing Kiswahili as a primary international language throughout sub-Saharan Africa can help heal our bad spirits and restore our dignity.
Kiswahili, which originated in East Africa, is steeped in African history and shares similarities with a host of “Bantu” languages such as Chishona, Isizulu, Oshiwambo, Isixahosa, and Lingala, to name but a few.
According to the United Nations, it already has over 200 million speakers spread across 14 countries: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), South Sudan, Somalia, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia, Comoros and in the Middle East to Oman and Yemen,
The University of Cape Town plans to introduce Kiswahili as an elective language course from 2023 and as a major subject from 2028. Similarly, Addis Ababa University is set to start teaching Kiswahili in partnership with Dar es Salaam University.
A continent-wide policy of teaching Kiswahili in schools and universities could help encourage the free movement of people Africa and promote social and economic integration. This is 1.1 billion. market can People And be a game changer for the media, film and TV industry – a lucrative commercial prospect that can help creators tell a plethora of neglected historical and contemporary African stories. Widespread use of kiswily could also strengthen academic collaboration and help ease the consequences of medical colonization of the West. If more countries follow Uganda’s lead and make Kiswahili an official language, it could encourage educational institutions across Africa to pay as much attention to this indigenous language as they do to European languages. As a result, our younger generation can eventually socialize using an indigenous Afrikaans language.
This is Africa, and we are Africans. Now is the time for us to start talking to each other in Afrikaans.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.