West Africa Report Managing Editor, Ejiroghene Barrett, wrote this piece in 2009, reflecting on Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s powerful call for African languages to break free from colonial dominance. The article, originally published after Thiong’o’s remarks at Nigeria’s Garden City Literary Festival, held in Port Harcourt, has been shared again to honour his legacy following his death on May 28. His message still resonates, a bold challenge to linguistic oppression.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o re-echoes language of liberation at Garden City Literary Festival
Since he took up the gauntlet in the sixties, Prof Ngugi Wa Thiong’o has remained staunch in his resistance to what he sees as the continued colonisation of the mind, particularly the African mind, through the erosion of local African languages. He calls this process linguistic feudalism; that is, a system that intones the superiority of one language over another, and he projects a transition from this system to what he terms linguistic Darwinism, “where the growth of one language is dependent on the death of others” he says.
This was the resonating theme of his speech during his interactive session at the recently concluded Garden City Literary Festival when he spoke to a packed hall on the need to re-evaluate the level of neglect African languages suffer and the impact this would have on the future sustenance of our cultural relevance. Ngugi’s insistence to trudge on with his crusade of linguistic emancipation are hinged on the very facts of his upbringing during the years of colonial rule in Kenya and the colonial experiences across the African continent, he says. He takes the audience on a grim journey of colonial intrigues and outright brutality in what finally plays out as a conspiratorial plot to exorcise the “evil” of the native tongue from the native, so he can attain a level of cultural elevation. In other words, through this gradual but steady infiltration of a supposedly superior language and culture; “…English meant pride, African tongues meant shame”.
According to Ngugi, this idea persists to this day, and manifests itself in the puerile show of pride by parents in many parts of the continent whose children cannot speak a word of their native languages. He points out that “the consequence of pride and the conveyance of knowledge through African language is enormous”. In here lies some foundation for contention. Africa’s historical antecedents in allowing language dictate the treacherous course of ethnic pride usually turns out disastrous. In Nigeria for example, many rest their belief in the development of a lingua franca on the desire to erode strong ethno-religious affiliations that could easily erupt from the intent to build a sense of solidarity.
In Kenya, there are critics who argue that his emphasis on promoting his native Gikuyu language is yet another manifestation of the tendency of Kenya’s largest tribe, the Kikuyu, to impose their hegemony on the country. This is obviously far-fetched, and Ngugi is only one of a number of African writers who persist in highlighting the need for this. Ngugi’s focus remains clear. It is to emphasise the risk of losing that important link with relics of our history and culture, which is the very essence of our identity as Africans. He explains that the eradication of our mother tongues is analogous of “a man who decides to cut off one leg to compete in a race”. He is convinced that by adopting foreign languages lock, stock and barrel, Africans are erasing the very essence of their existence.
A member of the audience asks if the incorporation of African languages into the modern/ western structure of literature does not limit the portfolio of one’s vocabulary as Most African languages were more reliant on oral, rather than written, form of expression. Prof Ngugi waves this off as another manifestation of a colonial imposition and misconception that is devised to further entrench the system of colonial Darwinism as he sees it. He notes that before colonialism, literature and the sciences existed, and development of vocabulary would naturally have followed theoretical development.
Ngugi explains that his intension is not to promote the use of African languages to the exclusion of others. On the contrary, he believes multilingual societies are better placed to deal with the complexities of this world. What he is against is the exclusive use of foreign languages on the continent, which has, in effect, made many previously multilingual societies in Africa proficient in only one language – and a foreign one (English, French, or Portuguese) at that.
He derides African parents for discouraging their children from speaking in their mother tongues, which, he says, is resulting in the gradual erosion of the local languages in African societies.
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o leaves behind a debate that is certain to reverberate across Nigeria for some time as he heads back to University of California in Irvine, a great distance from the epicentre of this tremor he has sparked. There is no doubt that his opinions on the subject will provide a germane guide in the search for that which defines true African literary heritage.
