Ngugi wa Thiong`o wants Kiswahili
used at the UN
Distinguished Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o (71) yesterday made an impassioned appeal for the use of Kiswahili as the official African language at United Nations forums.
The post-colonial Africa theorist floated the idea when addressing the week-long Pan African Read for All Conference taking place at the University of Dar es Salaam.
He said it would be to the continent’s benefit if one or more of its indigenous languages were used in official communication internationally. Currently, Kiswahili is one of the official languages used at African Union forums.
The professor cautioned that the continent would lose its social memory and identity if the languages were left to die off, saying Kiswahili had grown and flourished thanks to the exemplary foresight of Tanzania’s Founding President, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere.
He said had long seen the importance of using Kiswahili in the consolidation of Tanzania’s unity “and the widely spoken language is now excellently placed to represent Africa at the UN, including the Security Council”.
He added that it was hugely humiliating for people to find pride in their mastery of foreign languages while they regarded using their mother tongues as something to be ashamed of.
“The renaissance of African languages is a necessary step in the restoration of African wholeness,” observed the US-based professor.
He said hemany African states have no national language policies and some have even shown hostility to African languages, “a trend I believe is killing our people’s knowledge and production potential”.
“Over centuries of contact with the West, Africa has suffered the deprivation of slavery, colonialism and globalisation. An integral part of this tragic encounter has been a replacement of native names and language systems with European ones,” he pointed out.
He noted that language was a communal memory bank, and went on to describe the link between Africa’s fragmentation and restoration on the one hand and the global history of colonialism and modernity on the other.
The professor also called on parents to remember that they bore the responsibility of equipping their children with self-confidence and of disabusing themselves of the belief that knowledge of foreign languages necessarily means empowerment “because ignoring one’s own language is slavery”.
A delegate from Cameroon now studying Kiswahili at the University of Dar es Salaam reported in a rejoinder to the presentation by Ngugi wa Thiong’o that his decision to learn African language made people think he had lost his senses.
But the professor said that was a manifestation of colonial mentality, adding: “Indeed, you are a true Pan African and should not be discouraged, as every journey in life begins from where you are.”
Several other delegates, mainly from Nigeria, said the Kenyan novelist had done much in moulding creative minds by relating the past with modern-day realities.
They added that Africa’s quest for development or civilisation should not create linguistic imbalances.
The Kenyan teacher, novelist, essayist and playwright, whose works function as an important link between the pioneers of African writing and the younger generation of post-colonial writers, was formerly known as James Ngugi.
After imprisonment in 1978, he abandoned using English as the primary language of his work in favour of Gikuyu, his mother tongue. The transition from colonialism to post-colonialism and the crisis of modernity has been a central issue in most of his writings.
Source: The Guardian (Tanzania)
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