Language and identity in Africa

I first saw Ngugi wa Thiong’o when I was a high school student in the 1970s. I must admit I was deeply disappointed. He was not tall and he definitely did not fit the profile of the handsome and dashing writer of my hormone-charged adolescent mind. Thirty years later, in 2005, I went to hear him speak at his homecoming in Nairobi. By then I was in awe of the man and captured by his charisma. So what changed in those 30-odd years? To answer that question let’s go back in time to who I was then and track the journey of who I have become that now allows me to see the beauty of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o.

The answer lies in the complications of Kenya’s independence and the road we chose as a people. That path led to the emergent African bourgeoisie delivering its children into the arms of former colonial masters for the purpose of equipping them with a ‘good education’. When I arrived in my ‘good school’ we were a sprinkling of Africans. In these mzungu schools we were left alone with the briefest of tools to deal with the contradictions of our existence on our own and as best we could. The memories of the struggle for freedom were set aside or forgotten, so soon. The raison d’être for the liberation struggle was simply denied or reinterpreted by my mzungu teachers, representatives of former colonial masters, into whose bosom we had been delivered for our good education.

Since we had won our freedom the attitude of our new African leaders appears to have been that there was nothing more to be said. They wanted that chapter closed. Academic and political debates about the shortcomings of this victory and how colonialism had been replaced by imperialism did not filter down into our normal lives because we had won. Indeed, for the next 46 years or so, those who continued in the enquiry were seen as dangerous and paid a heavy price.

This state of affairs left me with no defenses, no memories to buttress me. Until then my experience of colonialism was a sense of extreme disquiet and unease that I lived with, and one image of a childhood bogeyman that was called a ‘Jonnie.’ My direct experience of colonialism reduced to one memory is captured in the words ‘ewe kona, mukone enywe. Vajonnie valikhwicha vamukhupe.’ Torica the maid, my father’s niece, was threatening my sister and I with a beating from the dreaded Jonnies if we did not go to sleep. As a child I imagined Jonnies to be monsters that ate children – demons with one eye in the middle of their heads and many limbs. I later found out that Jonnies were British soldiers who had been deployed to fight during the Mau Mau uprising and the guerilla war of independence. One hundred years of hard colonial history reduced to that one memory and this simple paragraph. All that preparation for the liberation of a people annulled.

In these schools I was always unsettled, and sometimes deeply disturbed. It was Ngugi’s Decolonising the Mind that gave me back the template to understand and make sense of a hitherto undiagnosed state of perpetual unease. I now knew why I was right to be troubled by the interpretations of our history that I was receiving. The legacy behind the school rule that threatened detention for those caught speaking their mother tongue became clear. The premium placed on the English language was revealed – mastering it had been elevated to the sign of supreme intelligence and being capable of achieving Western civilization. I now knew why our gardener who had performed exceptionally in all subjects during his O levels but had failed English language had been deemed incapable and was now a gardener or ‘shamba boy’ in the nomenclature of the time. It wasn’t just the rules of the school – it was actually the legacy of my history that was being transmitted to me!

I read Ngugi’s book and was surprised that I didn’t see that one coming. He helped me understand what the next steps of my incomplete liberation were and what I could contribute so that all of us could take the necessary step on this spiritual journey of our recovery. Ngugi opened a window into the house of choice and freedom for me, giving me the tools to reconcile and set myself free.

THE MEANING OF NGUGI IN KENYA

I have been privy to many conversations on Ngugi and what he means to Kenya, Africa and the world. I am often shocked by the parochial and self-absorbed nature of many Kenyans’ vision of him. Even as we decry the overblown role that politics has come to occupy in our lives, politics is often our first and many times the only port of call in our minds. So although there are many opinions on Ngugi’s 2005 homecoming, the vast majority get mired in political rhetoric.

For instance, there are many who believe that his choice of writing in the Gikuyu language was done as a personal affront to them. Most of these people are not members of the Kikuyu ethnic group. One such opinion was eloquently expressed in a newspaper – Joseph Lister Nyaringo noted the following:

‘By publishing a book in his mother tongue Kikuyu, Ngugi has portrayed himself as a man imbued with sectionalism. This does not go down well with many of his admirers.

‘If Ngugi cared about Africa, its people and traditions, the way he purports, he would have allowed his book to be published in Kiswahili to reach a wider readership, English to reach a global readership and then finally in Kikuyu. I fail to understand all this fanfare about launching a book in a single language in a multi-ethnic country.’[1]

And then there are those who are of Kikuyu extraction who believe that choosing to write exclusively in the language is somehow an endorsement of their singular place on the world stage. No public quotation is representative of this group because their views are usually discussed in private as those who hold them fear being labeled ethnic chauvinists.

Despite the divergence of these two opinions I believe that they represent the same limited view which confines Ngugi’s raison d’être to the logic of a village or at the very most within Kenyan borders. Both groups claim Ngugi’s agenda as a national one and so use his work to justify the essentials of negative, local ethnic discourse. As I listen to these views I am reminded of the saying that is attributed to Jesus Christ that a prophet often goes unrecognized and acknowledged in his or her own home. I can imagine the national debate that may have surrounded the great literary figures in their time. In a similarly multi-ethnic Russia, Tolstoy may have been accused of representing only the interest of his linguistic group and dismissed as a parochial chauvinist. And yet today we know his genius. If he wrote in his mother tongue the many others would have complained of the inaccessibility of his novels.

They all miss the point. By writing in Gikuyu, Ngugi is carving out an alcove of existence, a space of freedom for all of those many ethnicities and civilizations that do not come from a dominant-language culture. The image that comes to mind is of the meaning of the term ‘niche’ in the natural environment. A rare, highly specialized species of moss will inhabit a sliver of micro-climate created by the particular conditions that are due to an outcropping of rock perhaps; a result of chance; in just the right temperature, soil conditions, wind and moisture. A fitting anomaly becomes established and we joyously acknowledge the miracle of nature.

The quandary of the highly specialized moss has become the predicament for those of us who do not belong to the dominant-language culture, be it the global parlance of English, French, German or Spanish; or whatever the local dominant-language culture. How can we carve out a linguistic niche and create those special conditions that will allow us to exist and thrive wherever we are – even in the heart of the dominant culture – without natural support structures? What effort do we have to make not to become extinct? What is our responsibility? Ngugi shows us.

When people condemn Ngugi they confine us all to oblivion and agree that it is alright for all of us to be consumed by whatever the dominant-language culture is (English, Hausa, Swahili?). Why? Because Ngugi is showing the way; from him we can learn what we have to do to exist with all our differences, our diversity, the specific ways in which we have found to speak and our unique way of living that makes us special. Ngugi has taken our fight to the heart of the dominant culture that would homogenise us – the United States of America. He dares to carve his niche within the belly of a civilization so hegemonic in character that it radiates its influence like a colossus across the world, turning youth in far flung countries into a global hip-hop generation; introducing hamburgers, hotdogs and french-fries to diets all over the world; dictating that democracy is synonymous with elections held periodically. America stands towering in the 21st century ordering and reordering the world in its own image.

To many, Ngugi’s efforts to exist in an African language like Gikuyu, or Zulu, or Luhyia seem puny and futile. But the effort is not lost on all of us. Instead of listening for the mighty lesson garnered from one insightful man’s Herculean journey – epic in proportion, instead of hearing one of life’s sweet lessons for freedom, we judge his efforts through our fears. We reduce his gargantuan efforts to the proportions of a personal affront. That’s why a prophet can never win at home. In his home there is always a personal angle that turns a mighty effort into a small fear.

For me the existence of many languages and cultures is the salvation of human beings. It makes us experience a state of virtual relativity that we can use to cancel out our tendency towards being significant, feeling special and being consumed by our own opinions – that unbeknownst to us shuts us off from the access of human communication – and our power. How? Self-importance detracts from the freedom of a child’s sense of wonder and discovery. With it, we instead enter the blinkered world of the old man who knows it all and spends his time feeling his singular status in a world where nothing is ever special except himself.

How again? By helping us acknowledge that our language and our civilization is like a single opinion – just one way of speaking. It is not the way and it is definitely not the right or wrong way of speaking. I remember the freedom I experienced when I realized that I have just an opinion and not the opinion; I don’t have to save the world. More importantly, other people have something to contribute to me. It made me capable of working with groups of people to build fantastical ideas and astonishing structures filled with the magic of endless possibility instead of having to rely on constructing only from the outer limits of my lone vision, however grand.

AND THE BENEFITS OF CULTURAL HOMOGENISATION

And yes that homogenisation thing is a valuable tool too, despite the way in which it came to us. It allows people from far-flung places to speak to each other; and to craft the conduit that leads total strangers from other civilizations into our lives with ease and equips them with the ability to appreciate our version of being human; an unprecedented historical event, perhaps. Languages, cultural maps, traditions – all the sign posts of a whole civilization held in common by peoples geographically dispersed who would otherwise have no means of communication or way to find their commonalities as human beings. Cultural homogenisation simply allows for communication and for knowledge and understanding across distinct cultures and peoples. It becomes the layer of familiarity that helps explain the differences. But it does not take away the uniqueness of being Indian or being Kenyan.

I once found its value when I was part of a gathering that brought together peoples who had been colonized by the British from India, Jamaica, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. What we held in common went far beyond the shared language. All I can say is that we recognized each other as if we were long lost brothers and sisters. We knew the same nursery rhymes, could recite the same poetry – Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Keats and Byron. We ate the same food, had an obsession with tea, we had played cricket, netball, hockey and tennis at school and we even had the experience of learning Scottish dancing at school. The women had all faced the terror of being the last to be picked, or the one picked by the wrong boy.

CULTURAL HOMOGENISATION AS CONTROL

Yet there is a dark side that we all know. During the gathering of former colonials I also left feeling as though we had been genetically modified, all in the same way. The same foreign DNA grafted onto us Asians, Africans and Caribbeans; a process that had left us with the identical angst from which we were still trying to extricate ourselves. For us all, colonialism had become a spiritual journey of recovery that we were still walking. And it is Ngugi’s role in that recovery that has always interested me.

Our common spiritual displacement made us allies. We united to search and strive to return to our ‘whole selves’ that would allow us to engage with the outside world from a position of knowing that we too come from God – the common home of all humanity no matter what language is spoken – and regardless of the step we have taken on the rung of the ladder of civilization, if civilization be progression.

After all the other definitions of the word, homogenise means to regulate; normalise; even-out; regiment. These other meanings all stand for control and I sense the hushed shadow of violence silently implicit in this definition. It is these antagonistic characterisations that have formed the overwhelming function of cultural homogenisation through the ages, especially for the colonised. Many believe that those who take on the language of the coloniser are so controlled, homogenised, regimented and constrained. This school of thought believes that when it is ‘control by language’ the source of that language – the mind – is placed under the command of the coloniser. Here I will paraphrase Steve Biko who said that the best weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. And I add, ‘… and language is his handmaiden.’

But is this really the case? From my perspective, that analysis is one of the victim who reduces the powerful evolutionary entity that constitutes the human being (after all the inventor of all languages that have gone before and those that are yet to come) to the status of the dog wagged by the tail of language. This picture is not convincing. The question at stake is: What is the source of human freedom and what role does language play in a human being’s choice function/capability? My perspective is that choice or freedom can be retrieved at any time by the human being in any language by the simple exercise of free will. It is then possible to use the same foreign language to think any thought; to free oneself by simply choosing to be free. This is in fact what African Americans have done through the ages. They have snatched freedom not through language but through the exercise of free will even in their chained state.

It seems easy enough. But, the conundrum is that the ability to choose is a journey of enquiry involving steps that lead to a state of ‘becoming free’ or becoming capable of choice; a chicken and egg enigma. Freedom means that choice is exercised despite the consequences of that choice or the price to be paid, and despite too the state in which the person exists – slavery, slum dweller, woman or king. In the case of language it involves a conscious ‘seeing’ of the controlling function of the foreign language being spoken, and then choosing to take back one’s right to self-determination. After all, languages have been invented and lost time and time again. That choice is always present despite the condition of the person. Slave or king, the existence of choice is immutable. It is synonymous with being human. It is this imperative that impels slaves to seek freedom even after hundreds of years of servitude. It creates free men and women even within the heart of the institution of slavery. It is the impetus driving the suicide bomber who reacts to a threat to his right to choice so severe that he must defend it with his life; it is the only human being choice left.

History is not just about recording the victories of the conqueror. When we view history from the side of the conquered, we capture an important function of history: That it can also provide a knowledge and awareness of the greater context within which our lives take place. So history is about the evolution of thought. By understanding the reality of the people who came before us, especially the allegedly weak and powerless, we can see why we look at the world the way we do and what our contribution is toward further progress. We can pinpoint where we come in, in the long development of civilization, and that gives us a sense of where we are going. This is what Ngugi wa Thiong’o has been able to do for me. He gave me my vision back.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This article first appeared in KenyaImagine.
* Sitawa Namwalie is a poet, performer and author of 'Cut off my Tongue'.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] The East African (2004) ‘Letters to the Editor’, 6-12 September, p.12