Saving the African memory: Ngugi’s legacy

By Mading Ngor Akec de Kuai,

“We cannot afford to be intellectual outsiders in our own land.”
-Ngugi wa Thiong’O

Jan. 3, 2007 Scholars from around the world and Africa have produced volumes of books on the plight of our ailing continent, beginning from its endemic poverty and disease to its wars. Yet few have paid much attention to the language factor in Africa and its role in preserving the face of Africa and stimulating development of the continent than Kenya’s Ngugi wa Thiong’O.

Apart from the verifiable fact that knowledge is imparted through language and what we as a society come to know is carried through language: our values and cultures and worldview; it is very important that we as a people don’t let up in the language war even when Africa is the sore loser in the economics of globalization. In his recent essay, “Europhone or African memory: the challenge of the pan-Africanist intellectual in the era of globalization” ((African Intellectuals: Rethinking Politics, Language, Gender and Development (2005)), Ngugi as always is uncompromising in pushing for the growth of Africa’s languages. The Kenyan scholar decries the lack of initiative on the part of African intelligentsias when it comes to the language question, never mind that our intellectuals are more often than not acting as agents and ambassadors of Europe by collecting intellectual items and putting them in European language museums and archives.

Ngugi argued that this global visibility of Africa through European languages has meant Africa’s invisibility in African languages. Regrettably, Africans, themselves, are directly or indirectly aiding in the annihilation of their (our) languages by languages of the former colonial other.

Recognizing the imposition of Europe’s memory on Africans, Professor Ngugi, charting the way out, proposed that “We must reconnect with the buried alluvium of African memory on the continent and in the world. This can only result in the empowerment of African languages and cultures and make them pillars of a more self-confident Africa ready to engage the world, through give and take, but from its base in African memory.” This means that Africa can share its rich heritage and Indigenous Knowledge (IK) with the rest of the world but be prepared to borrow from the world to realize intellectual interdependence as opposed to the prevailing dependence. In this respect, Ngugi is of the opinion that only through the use of African languages shall we able to break with European memory and look at Africa and its contact with the world, including its engagement with European memory, from the inside.

The Case for and against African languages

In “African Intellectuals: Rethinking Politics, Language, Gender and Development”, Beban Sammy Chumbow in his essay, (The language question and national development in Africa) identified compelling reasons for the adoption and development of African languages as main mediums of communication; however, I will highlight only few:

a) The intellectualization of African languages and their use will lead to a democratization of access to scientific knowledge and technology to the benefit of the masses of the rural population who now wallow in ignorance, misery, disease and hunger because such life-saving knowledge and skills are currently confined to a foreign language accessible only to a privileged few

b) The use of African languages in education will lead to development of African languages in terms of their ability to cope as vehicles of modern thought, science and technology

c) The languages so developed in this enterprise will better serve as the means of transmitting and preserving cultural values, with the written language complementing oral tradition in this respect. This will enhance cultural independence and linguistic identity

Chumbow reasons that Africa has been spinning in the mud because whatever bright ideas are available to kick-start African economic development fail to integrate the language issue. Generations of Africans are schooled in European-Arabic languages and what this method does, if anything, is condoning and compounding despair in Africa because educated Africans are taught to hide precious knowledge in languages inaccessible, the languages of the colonial other, to those who need it most; the so-called common people in the country.

There are also arguments against the use of African languages in schools put forward by politicians who try to escape their duties –appropriately labeled Afropessimists. It should be noted that the ensuing list is useless as far as the Pan-African project is concerned. The list is inadequate and holds no water by any research standards:

a) Most African languages have no grammar

b) The use of African languages will impede national unity

c) Children who attend schools in which African languages are used as medium at the beginning of the school programme will be at a disadvantage compared to their counterparts who learn in English and French from the onset; particularly where the latter is the language of higher education and the language that guarantees access to job opportunities

d) Cost and resources

Conclusion

One of the Founding Fathers of the defunct Organization of African Unity (OAU), presently known as the African Union (AU), the late Hon. Julius Nyerere once said of our continent that of all the sins Africa can commit, the sin of despair would be the most unforgivable. Likewise, of all the battles that Africa can lose, losing the battle over language will be the most unforgivable.

Europeans built their intellectual tradition; can we do the same?

Here is what Ngugi tells us: “The Gikuyu people number about 6 million; the Danish about 4 million. All books written and published in Gikuyu would not fill up a shelf. Books written and published in Danish number thousands and fill up the shelves of many libraries. The Yoruba people number more than 10 million; the Swedes about 8 million. But intellectual production in the two languages is very different. Why do some people believe these 10 million Africans cannot sustain such a production if 8 million Swedes can? Icelanders number about 250, 000. They have one of the most flourishing intellectual cultures in Europe. What a quarter of a million can do, surely 10 million people can.”

For the past thirty years, Professor wa Thiong’O has been singing one song, and we must listen to it. “African intellectuals must do for their languages and cultures what all other intellectuals in history have done for theirs. This is still the challenge of our history. Let’s take up the challenge.”

* Mading Ngor Akec de Kuai is a student journalist based in Canada. He is the Editor-in-Chief of The New Sudan Vision, www.newsudanvision.com . He can be contacted at [email protected].