Why Kiswahili should not be downgraded
Of all the books published recently concerning the African condition, perhaps none is as important as Remembering Africa, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s latest non-fiction contribution to the fund of thought on how to liberate the continent.
It is that, by preferring to conduct our business in certain foreign languages of which few of us have any real knowledge, we lose mind-boggling economic, cultural and intellectual wealth. We lose even knowledge of our objective self-interests.
Ngugi’s detractors raise the point that if Zambia, for instance, dropped English, it would be hard put to agree on any of its “vernaculars” as its national language. We are familiar with the tragedies into which this problem has plunged, for example, the Sub-Continent.
I do not advocate that we drop English. But, in East Africa, we are lucky to possess a language – Kiswahili – which not only enjoys a regional spread but also is broad-minded enough to open itself up to enrichment by all other world thoughts and languages.
Though at the bottom, a Bantu language, Kiswahili is, at the top – in its superstructure of social, scientific, philosophical and religious thought – powerfully influenced by Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Hindustani, Portuguese, German, English and even Chinese.
That is what puts it on a par with English. English is also, at base, very narrow (merely Germanic). But it has a superstructure dominated by the Greco-Latin languages and an open-door “policy” which has enabled it to swallow thoughts, words and expressions from all of the world’s ethnic systems.
Kiswahili is thus among the world’s fastest developing languages. Certainly, it is Africa’s most vital means of communication. Yet the rest of the world seems to recognise this much more than we do. Most universities the world over now have fully fledged Kiswahili departments.
Yet, despite its geographical spread – from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic and from Mozambique to Djibouti – there are large pockets within the region where whole communities have only a smattering of the language.
When I grew up, the Luo didn’t know it at all and often even disdained it. My father could get by. But my mother never knew even a word. The excuse many Luos gave was that Kiswahili was Bantu whereas Dholuo was Nilotic. This was, of course, pure water. The Kalenjin, who are equally Nilotic, had a much better grasp of it.
On the other hand, though the Kikuyu are Bantu, they generally had a poor grasp of Kiswahili. It is gratifying that the younger-generation of Luo and Kikuyu are now fluent speakers. But fluent speech does not mean knowledge of a language. Our children speak English fluently. But it is appallingly bad English.
Similarly, whenever I listen to certain coastal individuals teaching Kiswahili through radio, I agree that it is their mother tongue. But I am equally embarrassed by their philological ignorance of it.
As social planners, then, our task is two-pronged. First we must recognise Kiswahili as the only language that can unite us as a nation. Any recognition of that fact should impel us, as leaders, into making sure that every community in Kenya has a good command of that language – the way Tanzania has done.
This can be achieved only if we encourage – indeed, even dictate – its use at all levels of communication throughout the republic: only if we take its teaching seriously all the way from the cradle to the university. That is why I began this story with Ngugi. I expect that everybody concerned with our curriculum has read that book.
If so, how can the very institution in charge of our language development be planning to downgrade Kiswahili by making it “optional” in schools? If they have not read Ngugi, then we must question their qualification. How can individuals who do not read even books most relevant to their work be tolerated as the makers of our education policies?
If they have read the book but feel that Ngugi is wrong, that is their prerogative as individuals. However, it is not a tenet of democracy for officials to force their crotchets and social biases on a whole nation by means of intra-ministerial memos and directives. We should leave that to Idi Amin’s ilk.
The decent thing would have been for them to raise the question for national debate so that the minister, the permanent secretary and the director of education could take a decision informed by the thinking public’s mood. Had they had done so, they would have learned a few other important facts.
One is that a number of people are planning to fight for Africa to be represented by Kiswahili among the official languages of the United Nations.
