Age and nasty experiences in the recent past are not slowing down Ngugi Wa Thiongo, the Kenyan writer. He is still taking the fight to Africa’s conquerors, this time revisiting his insistence on dismantling colonialism’s most functional instrument of hegemony – language and language use. His battle cry is powerfully argued in this report reproduced from University World News. The headline has been slightly adjusted.
Colonialists never left Africa after independence but have continued to expand their empires through language domination, according to Kenyan academic and author Ngugi wa Thiong’o, currently a distinguished English and comparative literature professor at the University of California, Irvine.
In a public lecture, Ngugi said colonisers, whether British, French or Portuguese, have continued to control African economies, politics and cultures through local proxies, who regard themselves as the modern custodians of postcolonial European empires in Africa. The lecture was hosted virtually on 15 August by the Indigenous Language Media in Africa at North-West University in South Africa.
Iris writer, James Joyce
In his presentation, ‘The Joycean Paradox Revisited: Language Empires and Literary Identity Theft’, Ngugi told his audience that most African writers are like James Joyce (1882-1941) in their decision to write only in the languages of the former colonisers instead of the languages spoken in marketplaces.
Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet and literary critic regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. He wrote in English and, in some of his novels, invoked the public utopian hopes tied up in the revival of the Gaelic language and nationalism in Ireland, although he did not take that route.
According to one of his literary critics, Barry McCrea, a professor of English, Irish language and literature at the University of Notre Dame in the United States, Joyce’s characters in one of his novels, Dubliners (1906), had memories of relatives whose daily language was or had been Irish. “But he turned away from Irish and Gaelic revivalism,” says MacCrea in one of his literary essays about Joyce.
However, Ngugi said that, like Joyce, most African writers are linguistically muted as they continue to write in the languages of the former colonisers and not their mother tongues. Recalling what Chinua Achebe, the late Nigerian academic and novelist, had said in 1964, Ngugi posed: “Is it right that a man should abandon his mother tongue for someone else’s?”
For Achebe, it was a dreadful betrayal that produced a guilty feeling, but for Ngugi, it is a deliberate acceptance of the erasure of one’s memories and handing the soul to the colonisers. “There is nothing conquerors hate more than the languages of the defeated, enslaved and subjugated peoples,” said Ngugi.
Enslavement through colonial languages
He reminded his audience that, when the colonisers balkanised Africa, it was not merely for economic and political considerations, but was also divided into the different languages of the European powers.
According to Ngugi, African languages, including those of the drums, were overrun. Summarising that idea from his book, Decolonising the Mind (1986), Ngugi said African children who encountered literature in colonial schools and universities experienced the world as defined by the colonisers. “They were taught to despise their languages and punished for speaking them in school,” said Ngugi.
Even after over half a century of independence, Ngugi told the audience that the Joycean paradox in Africa is very strong. “Many elites are proud to talk to villagers in colonial languages,” said Ngugi.
Newer empires carve out Africa but they call it ‘Africa rising’
Given his experience in Kenya, Ngugi said that, even though the elites have an utopian relationship with their rural areas, they usually send their children to international schools in Nairobi to study in an English-language environment and not mix with peers who speak their mother tongues.
Ngugi clarified that he was not against European or non-African languages, but it is wrong to establish a hierarchy in which some languages are considered more important than others. “Every language has a right to be spoken, even if only five people speak it, because it is democratic and a human right,” said Ngugi.
To him, the ability to speak several languages was an empowerment, but enslavement through colonial languages was terrible and unjustifiable. Ngugi compared global languages to musical instruments that produce unique sounds but generate good music when played together in an orchestra. “In the world of music, a piano cannot claim to make better sounds than a guitar, a violin, a drum, or a flute,” said Ngugi.
In this context, every language gives its speakers a view of the world through images and symbols, and each language is naturally beautiful in its own right. According to Ngugi, there should be no debate about which language is superior, and speakers of any language should not try to suppress other languages.
To illustrate the idea that no language is better than others, Ngugi discussed his short story, The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright (2015), which he originally wrote in Kikuyu, his mother tongue, and has now been translated into over 100 languages globally. Although it is a fable that teaches children how life is connected, Ngugi blended myth and folklore with an acute insight into the human psyche and politics. The Upright Revolution is one of the most translated stories in African literature.
New weapons to build empires
Beyond the scarcity of writings in African languages, Ngugi said most people on the continent are not getting justice in courts that use colonial languages that most accused and litigants do not understand.
Revisiting Joyce’s essay, Ireland at the Bar (1907), Ngugi explained how a 70-year-old man belonging to an ancient Irish tribe was tried for murder and was eventually hanged without understanding the judicial process that was conducted in English, a language that he did not recognise.
According to Ngugi, the figure of this old Irish man is a symbol, not merely of the Irish nation at the bar of public opinion, but of all the former colonised people who continue to suffer similar injustices in their countries.
He said modern economic systems such as banking, insurance, capital investments, mortgages, loan agreements and contracts are outlined in complex documents written in colonial languages that most people in African countries, especially in rural areas and informal settlements, barely understand. In this case, it is hard to tell how many people are disadvantaged through documents in colonial languages.
‘Empires of the mind’
However, observing the effects of coloniality in Africa, Ngugi reminded his audience of the reality of the words of Winston Churchill (1874-1965), the former British prime minister and statesman, when he said that ‘empires of the future will be empires of the mind’. According to Ngugi, dominant languages are now the new weapons of building empires in Africa, not through direct rule.
He said languages of conquest have continued to flourish to the detriment of Africa’s economic and cultural progress, especially in international high-level politics and diplomacy. “For instance, mental enslavement through language has been huge among African leaders and other elites,” said Ngugi.
Ngugi told his audience that, since the 1960s, when most African countries became independent, he cannot remember an African head of state addressing the United Nations General Assembly in an African language. “They seem not to understand why leaders from European countries with small populations speak in their mother tongue in international forums instead of English or French,” said Ngugi.
Asked last year as to whether English could be Africanised into Kenyan English or Nigerian English versions, Ngugi responded: “That is like the enslaved being happy that theirs is a local version of enslavement. English is not an African language. Kenyan or Nigerian English is nonsense,” said Ngugi.
Disclosing how he made the transition into writing in his mother tongue, Ngugi said it occurred to him while in prison after being detained without trial in 1977 for writing a play, I Will Marry When I Want (Ngaahika Ndeenda), co-authored with the late Ngugi wa Mirii in 1977.
While in prison, Ngugi wrote his first novel in Kikuyu, The Devil on the Cross (1980) (Caitaani Mutharaba-ini). His most well-known novel, written in Kikuyu and translated into many languages, is Wizard of the Crow (2006) (Murogi wa Kagogo).
‘The water in the ocean started with a raindrop’
When Toyin Falola, a Nigerian historian and a distinguished professor of African studies at the University of Texas at Austin, asked Ngugi whether there should be a structured movement to spearhead writing in African languages, Ngugi quoted an African saying that all the water in the ocean started with a raindrop. “Begin writing in Yoruba, which is your mother tongue, even if it is a children’s story, another person in Zulu, and another in Igbo, and soon the idea will spread across the continent,” said Ngugi.
Addressing the issue of teaching African languages in higher education, Ngugi said all human languages are purveyors of people’s philosophical ideas, images, symbols, pictures of the world of nature, innovation, and other cultural values and, as such, no language should be undervalued.
He said African universities have fallen behind in promoting and teaching African languages since independence. He said African languages should be taught in African universities, and PhD theses should be written in those languages. “What is wrong with a PhD written in the Zulu language?” posed Ngugi.
He urged universities to overcome resistance to teaching African languages, as each language is unique and should also recall the historical denial of enslaved people to speak in their languages as the first ‘seasoning’ of the captives. To Ngugi, multilingualism is the oxygen of all cultures.
Ngugi appeared to think that resistance to coloniality could not be achieved through an institutional body, as it could be easily hijacked, compared to a people’s mass movement that would be hard to control.
Identity theft
On identity theft, Ngugi said that Joyce was conscious of the Gaelic language, but contributed nothing to it. Similarly, Ngugi said that African writers are aware of their languages but, like Joyce, have become prisoners of colonial languages and contribute nothing to their heritage.
Ngugi said that colonial languages are used when African leaders lead their people to celebrate their independence. “We celebrate the centre of our being through colonial languages,” said Ngugi. In a light touch, Ngugi noted that, these days, one can recognise some Africans only by their skin, but not by their names.
Discussing his feelings about not being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, even after so many nominations, Ngugi said he has no bad feelings about it. He explained that the prize is good and has always congratulated those awarded, but his best prize is the ‘Nobel of the heart’, which is more democratic. “When someone tells me that he or she likes my work, that is what I love most,” said Ngugi.
But like Achebe, who turned down the Nigerian national honour in 2011, Ngugi’s literary barbs are mainly directed towards African leaders and Kenya’s, in particular, for what he considers to be their mental enslavement and being ‘home guards’ of coloniality.
However, unlike Joyce, who deliberately wrote in English, Ngugi appears to be angry and frustrated, knowing Africa is moving in the wrong direction but has little power to control the colonial tide.
