Look out! Our beautiful Kiswahili could be stolen by opportunists
Tanzania's founding President Mwalimu Julius Nyerere.
I was in Zanzibar in midweek this week, celebrating the inaugural observation of the Kiswahili Language International Day. I promised to tell you how these celebrations, spearheaded by the East African Kiswahili Commission, would go, but now I am genuinely at a loss over what to share and what to spare for another day.
The event, in the heart of the Island’s ancient capital, was a gigantic two-day extravaganza. The activities ranged from presentations by leaders and administrators from the region, through scholarly and professional analyses of the state and status of Kiswahili in our region to scintillating poetry (shairi, tenzi, ngonjera), acrobatic and ngoma (song and dance) performances and material culture displays.
The climax of the celebrations on the Day itself on Thursday was graced by the presence of the Islands top leaders. Listening to these leaders, from Zanzibar and Pemba, and all our hosts at the celebrations, welcoming us and sharing all their experiences and aspirations with us in the mellifluous tones of their mother tongue, Kiswahili, you wonder where people get such weird ideas as the claim that Kiswahili “has no native speakers”!
Such anomalies and many other aspects of the Kiswahili phenomenon, leading to its international recognition, dominated the presentations at the symposium on the language, held on the eve of the Day itself. Here, scholars, teachers, writers, media practitioners and other stakeholders presented their experiences and views of Kiswahili and its prospects as a global language. I dearly wished that this enlightening palaver could go on for at least a week. Hopefully, the East African Kiswahili Commission might organise a full-fledged colloquium on such matters soon.
I was one of the contributors to the symposium, as I told you when I asked you to help me with suggestions for “our” input into the topic of the challenges of Kiswahili as an official language of the East African Community. I am grateful for the responses I got from you, including those from my friends, John Kanya and Catherine Mutahi. I tabled our views to the symposium, but the space here does not allow me to go into details.
Among the challenges I highlighted, however, were such hurdles as multilingualism and cultural pluralism, competition and rivalry with indigenous languages and foreign languages and false and distorted impressions about Kiswahili and its users. I also mentioned, as many of you had suggested, the challenge of the various dialects of Kiswahili and the rise of slangs and pidgins, like “Sheng”. We also face a genuine shortage of skilled personnel, like teachers, language planners and activists, to implement the systematic spread and development across the region.
Other presenters had also antincipated my regret of a lack of mechanisms and materials to use in promoting Kiswahili and a poor distribution of even a few of the available ones, like publications. The lack of political will and the colonial “hangover” (kasumba ya ukoloni) that adores colonial languages were mentioned by me and many other presenters.
Back to these presenters, Prof Ken Inyani Simala of Masinde Muliro University (MMUST), who was the first Executive Secretary of the East African Kiswahili Commission, gave us a stimulating keynote speech about Mwalimu Nyerere’s indefatigable efforts to promote Kiswahili locally, regionally and globally. The remarkable acceptance of Kiswahili in Tanzania, and now in the world, mainly due to Mwalimu’s activism (utetezi), is testimony to what a genuine political and professional commitment can achieve.
The most thought and concern-provoking presentation, for me, was from Prof Clara Momanyi, who cautioned us that the recognition of Kiswahili as an international language is not all glitter and glamour. Its new status could easily attract global opportunists, profiteers and downright thieves to hijack it for their own nefarious purposes. They could, for example, patent it as their own intellectual property, leaving us, its owners in the lurch.
The Professor pointed out to us that, if we think this is far-fetched, we should remember what happened to our properties, like the ciondo (the Kenyan handwoven sisal bag) and the kikoyi (the African loincloth). Distorted and perverted imitations of these are currently mass produced and marketed as “inventions” of those who went and patented them. What could prevent them from doing the same with Kiswahili?
These are alarm bells, and they are genuine. The Professor’s observations reminded me of Prof Said Ahmed Mohamed’s paper at a conference at the University of Dar es Salaam in 2000. He called it “Utandawazi ama utandawizi (globalization or global theft)? Prof Mohamed suggests there that, if we are not smart and clear-minded, globalization may mean our giving away everything to the world while getting very little in return. The looting of African cultural treasures has been going on for centuries and it continues in various forms today. The possible looting of a language, however, had never occurred to me. Yet, on second thoughts, one of my correspondents hinted to me recently (July 3rd) that “a time will come when we’ll sell our Kiswahili like the Brits sell their Kiingereza.”
I know nothing about selling or marketing. But I hope and pray that we owners of Kiswahili will take all necessary steps to ensure that it remains firmly in our hands and under our control, whether or not the time to sell it comes. Or maybe the time is already here. As you know, scores of international media houses already have Kiswahili as one of their transmission languages. Kiswahili is taught in hundreds of universities across Europe, Asia and the Americas, some 300-plus in the USA alone. Kiswahili is already a highly sought-after commodity!
Like all valuables, it will attract all sundry, not all of them with the best of intentions. Can we Waswahili, even if not fanatics like me, afford to remain indifferent in the face of such challenges?
Professor Momanyi has alerted us (ametutahadharisha). The rest is up to us.
Prof Bukenya is a leading East African scholar of English and [email protected]
