Tbe Lan Literdture

Tbe Langua,ge

of African Literøture

IThe language of African literature cannot be discussed meaningfully

outside ih"iont"*t of those social forces which have made it both an

issue demanding our attention and a problem calling for a resolution.

On the one iattd is imperialism in its colonial and neo-colonial

phases continuously press-ganging the African hand to the plough to

irrr' th. soil over, attã putting blinkers on him to make him view the

path ahead only as determined for him by the master armed with the

Ëible a"d the sword. In other words, imperialism conrinues ro conrrolthe economy, politics, and cultures of Africa. But on the other, and

pitted againit it, are the ceaseless struggles of African people.to liberate

ih"it .õtto*y, politics and culmre from that Euro-American-based

stranglehold to usher a new era of true communal self-regulation and

self-d--etermination. It is an ever-continuing struggle to seize back theircreative initiative in history through a real contröl of all the means ofcommunal self-definition in time and space. The choice of language

and the use to which language is put is central to a people's definitionof themselves in relation to their natural and social environment,

indeed in relation to the entire universe. Hence language has alvays

been at the heart of the rwo contending social forces in the Africa ofthe twentieth century.

The contention siarted a hundred years ago v¡hen in 1884 the

capitalist powers of Europe sat in Berlin and carved an endre continent

*ith " -"ltipli"iry of peoples, cultures, and languages into different

colonies. It seems it is-the fate of Africa to have her destiny always

decided around conference tables in the metropolises of the western

world: her submergence from self-governing communities into colo-

nies was. decided in Berlin; her more recent transition into neo-

colonies along the same boundaries was negotiated around_the.same

tables in lroãdon, Paris, Brussels and Lisbon' The Berlin-drawn

4

division under which Africa is still living was obviously economic andpoliticaJ, despite the claims of bible-wielãing diplomats, but it was alsocultural. Berlin in 1884 saw the division oi Alrica into the differenrlanguages of the European powers. African countries, as colonies andeven today as neo-colonies, came to be defined and to definethemselves in rerms of the languages of Europe: English-speaking,French-speaking or Porcuguese-speaking African couniries.l

^

. Unfortunately writers who should have been mapping paths out ofthat linguistic encirclement of their conrinenr

"ko ð"-e1å be defined

and to define themselves in ierms of the languages of imperiaristimposition. Even ar their most radical and pro-Afiican position in theirsentiments and articulation of problems they still took it as axiomaticthat the renaissance of African cultures lay in the languages of Europe.

I should know!

rn 7962 I was invited to that historic meeting of african wrirersat NÍakerere Universiry College, Kampala, ùganda. The list ofparticipants contained most of the names which have now becomethe subject of scholarly dissertations in universities all over rheworld. The title? 'A Conference of African Writers of EnglishExpression'.2

I was then a student, ol English at Makerere, an overseas college ofthe universiry of London. The main attraction for me was the ceiainpossibility of meeting Chinua Achebe. I had with me a roughtypescript of a novel in progress, 'Weep Not, Chitd, and I wanted hinto read it. In-the previous year, 1.96!, I had completed Tbe RizterBetarcen,.my first-ever ïqer_npr ar a novel, and enterèd it for a writingcompetition organised by the East African Lirerarure Bureau. I waskeeping in- step with the tradition of Peter Abrahams with his output ofnovels and autobiographies from Patb of rh øn d.er to T e ll Fre e do* and,followed by chinua Achebe with his publication on rhings Føll Apartin 1959. Or there were their counterparts in French c-olonies,'thegeneration of sédar senghor and David Diop included in the 1947/4gParis edition of Anthologie de k noørelle poésie nègre et rnàlgøche dehngue,frønçøise.They all wrote in Europeãn languJges

", *"r rh.

""r.with all the participants in that *o*.ntorr, .tt"o,iot.i on Makerere hillin Kampala in 1962.

II

Decolonisinp tbe Mind.

The title, 'A Conference of African \íriters of English Expression',

auromarically excluded those who wrore in African languages. Nowonlooking back from the self-questioning heights of.1986, I can see this

contained absurd anomalies. I, a srudenr, could qualify for the meeting

on the basis of only two published short stories, 'The Fig Tree

(Múgumo)' in a student journal, Penpoint, and 'The Return' in a newjonro"l, Transition. But neither Shabaan Robert, then, the greatest

iirrirrg East African poet with several works of poetry and prose to his

credii in Kiswahili, nor Chief Fagunwa, the great Nigerian writer withseveral published titles in Yoruba, could possibly qualify.

The ãiscussions on the novel, the short story' Poetry, and drama

were based on extracts from works in English and hence they excluded

the main body of work in Swahili, Zulu, Yoruba, Arabic, Amharic and

other African languages. Yet, despite this exclusion of writers and

literature in Afriõan languages, no sooner were the introductorypreliminaries over than this Conference of 'African $üriters of English

Èxpression' sat down to the first item on the agenda: "What

is AfricanLiterature?'

The debate which followed was animated: \üüas it literature about

Africa or about the African experience? 'Was it literature written by

Africans? rü(/hat about a non-African who wrote about Africa: did his

work qualify as African literature? \flhat if an African set his work inGreenlãnd: did that qualify as African literature? Or were Africanlanguages the criteria? OK: what about Arabic' was it not foreign toAfricai What about French and English, which had become Africanlanguages? Vhat if an European v/rote about Europe in an Africanbnfuage? If ... if ... if ... this or that' excePt the issue: the

domination of our languages and cultures by those of imperialist

Europe: in any case there'was no Fagunwa or Shabaan Robert or any

*ritei in African languages to bring the conference down from the

realms of evasive abstractions. The question was never seriously asked:

did'what we wrote qualify as African literature? The whole area ofliterature and audiencè, and hence of language as a determinant of boththe national and class audience, did not really figure: the debate was

more about the subject matter and the racial origins and geographical

habitation of the writer.English, like Frencll and Portuguese, was assumed to be the natural

languáge of literary and even political mediation between Africanp.opl.-itt the same nation and between nations in Africa and other

iotrtitr.tttt. In some instances these European languages were seen as

having a capacity to unite African peoples against divisive tendencies

Tbe Language of Afíicøn Literatøre

-rtergeographic state. Thus Ezekiel Mphahlele later could wrire, in a letterto Trønsitioz number 11, that English and French have become thecommon language with which ro presenr a nationalist front againstwhite oppressors, and even 'where the whiteman has already retrãated,as in the independent srares, these rwo languages are still a unifyingfolce'.3 In the literary sphere they were oftãn seen as coming to ,"rr.African languages against themselves. Vriting a forev¡ord tó BiragoDiop's book Contes d,'Arnødoø Koørnba Sédar Sengho, .o-*.nã,him for using French ro rescue the spirit and sryle of old African fablesand tales.'However while rendering them into French he renews themwith an art which, while it respecrs the genius of the French language,that language of gentleness and honesty, preserves at the same ti-.álthe virtues of the negro-african languãges.'a English, French andPortuguese had come ro our rescue and we accepted the unsolicited giftwith gratitude. Thus in 1964, Chinua Achebe, in a speech entitled .fheAfrican \üriter and the English Language', said:

Is it right that a man should abandon his mother tongue forsomeone else's? It looks like a dreadful betrayal and produces aglilty feeling. But for me rhere is no other choice. I have been giventhe language and I intend to use ir.5

See the paradox: the possibility of using mother-tongues provokes atone of leviry in phrases like 'a dreadful betrayal' and 'a guiþ feelingi;but that of foreign languages produces a categorical positive embrace,what Achebe himself, ren years larer, was to describã as this .fatalistic

logic of the unassailable position of English in our lirerature,.6The fact is that all of us who opted for European languages - the

conference participants and the generation thãt followed- them -accepted that fatalistic logic ro a grearer or lesser degree. 'We wereguided by it and the only question which preoccupied oi *"r how bestto make the borrowed tongues carry the weight of our Africanexperience by, for instance, making them 'prey' on African proverbsand other pecularities of African speech and iolklore. For this task,Achebe (Tbings Fall Apart; Arroa¡ of God),Amos Turuola (The pdlm-wine Drinþørd; My life in tbe Basb of Gho.srs), and Gabriel Okara(TheVoice) were often held as providing the three alternative models. Thelengths to which we were prepared to go in our mission of enrichingforeign, languages by injecting Senghorian'black blood' into their rusryþints, is best exemplified by Gabriel Okara in an ardcle reprinted inTrønsitionz

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As a writer who believes in the utilization of African ideas,

African philosophy and African folklore and imagery to the fullestextent p-ossible, I am of the opinion the only way to use themeffectivèly is to translate them almost literally from the Africanlanguage native to the writer into whatever European language he is

usittg ai medium of expression. I have endeavoured in my wo-rds tokeep as close as possible to the vernacular expressions. For, from a*oid,

" gtoltp of words, a sentence and even a name in any African

language, orrã ."tt glean the social norms' âttitudes and values of apeople.-

In order to capture the vivid images of African speech, I had toeschew the habit of expressing my thoughts first in English. It was

difficult at first, but I had to learn. I had to study each Ijawexpression I used and to discover the probable situation in which itwas used in order to bring out the nearest meahing in English. Ifound it a fascinating exercise.z

'Why, we may ask, should an African writer, or any writer, become

so obsessed by taking' from his mother-tongue to enrich olhertongues?

.Why should he see it as his Particular mission? Iü(ie never

asked ourselves: how can we enrich our languages? How can we 'prey'on the rich humanist and democratic heritage in the struggles of otherpeoples in other times and other places to enrich our own? 'tü(/hy nothavà Balzac, Tolstoy, Sholokov, Brecht, Lu Hsun, Pablo Neruda,H. C. Anderson, Kim Chi Ha, Marx, Lenin, Albert Einstein, Galileo,Aeschylus, Aristotle and Plato in African languages? And why notcreate'literary monuments in our own languages? \Øhy in other words

should Okara not sweat it out to create in ljaw, which he acknow-

ledges to have depths of philosophy and a wide range of ideas and ex-

periences? What was our responsibility to the struggles of African

þeoples? No, these questions were not asked. tù(i'hat seemed to worryot Àot. was this: after all the literary gymnastics of preying on ourlanguages to add life and vigour to English and other foreign lan-

g,t"g.r, *o,tld the result be accepted as good English or good French?

Vill the owner of the language criticise our usage? Here we were more

assertive of our rights! Chinua Achebe wrote:

I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight ofmy African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still infull communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit newAfrican surroundings.s

8

Tbe LiterøtareGabriel okara's position on this was representative of our generation:

Some may r-egard this way of writing English as a desecrarion of theþlg""gj, This is of course not trn.. Lìving languages gro* [[.living.thing_s,_and_English is far from a a."ä t"rr!""i.. ih.;.;;;American, IØest Indian, Ausrralian, Canadian

"r"d ñ.* Zealand

ve.rsions_of English. All of them add life and vigour to the lang.ragewhile

_reflecting their own respecrive cultures. úhy should"';ii;;;be a Nigerian or'lü(i'esr African English which we can use ro expressour own ideas, thinking and philosophy in our own way?e

How did we arrive rrhil acceprance of 'the fatalistic logic of theunassailable position of English inãur lirerarure', in our crrltrire and inour politics? \?hat was rhe route from the Berlin of 1gg4 via theMakerere of pez to w_hat is.still the prevailing and dominant logic ahundred years later? How did we, as African ïriters, .o*. to b"e ,ofeeble towards the claims of our languages on us and ,o

"ggr.rri* i.,our claims on other languages, partiJuhrly the langrra!ãs of ourcolonization?

Berlin of tg8+ was effected through the sword and the bullet. Buttþe n_ish1 of the sword and the bulleiwas followed by the ,rrornirrg ofthe chalk and the blackboard. The physical violence of the battlefleldwas followed by the psychologic"l .,riolurr.. of the classroom. Burwhere the former was visibly brutal, the latter was visibly gentre, aprocess best described in cheikh Hamidou Kane's novel- Ambi-guous Ad'ztenture whele he talks of the methods of the colonialpllase of imperialism as consisting of knowing how to kill withefficiency and to heal with the samã art.

on the Black continenr, one began to understand that their rearpower resided not at all in the cannons of the first morning but inwhat followed the cannons. Therefore behind rhe cannons î"s th"new school. The new school had the narure of both the cannon andthe magnet. From the cannon it took the efficiency of a fightingweapon. But better rhan the cannon it made' the coiqrrestpermanenr. The cannon forces the body and the school fascinatesthe soul.lo

1" -y viewlanguage. was_ the mosr important vehicle through whichthat power fascinated and held the soul prisoner. The bullei was them:a.ns 9f ,þ: physical subjugation. Language was the means of thespiritu.al subjugation. Let me illustr"t. tñi, Ëy drawing upon experi_ences in my ov/n educarion, particularly in language

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Decolonising tbe Mind'

IIII was born into a large peasant family: father, four wives and aboutrwenty-eight children. I also belonged, as we all did in those days, to awider extended family and to the community as a whole.

'We spoke Gikúyú as we worked in the fields. Ve spoke Giküyú inand ouiside the home. I can vividly recall those evenings of story-telling around the fireside. It was mosdy the grown-ups telling the

childien but everybody was interested and involved' '!üe childrenwould re-tell the stories the following day to other children whoworked in the fields picking the Pyrethrum flowers, tea-leaves orcoffee beans of our European and African landlords.

The stories, with mostly animals as the main characters, were all toldin Gikúyú. Hare, being small, weak but full of innovative wit and

cunning, was our hero. We identified with him as he struggled against

the brutes of prey like lion, leopard, hyena. His victories were ourvictories and we learnt that the apparently weak can outwit the.strong.'We followed the anirnals in their struggle against hosdle nature -drought, rain, sun, wind - a confrontation often forcing them to sea-rch

for forms of co-operation. But we were also interested in theirstruggles amongst themselves, and particularly berween the beasts and

the victims of prey. These twin struggles, against neture and otheranimals, reflected real-life struggles in the human world.

Not that we neglected stories with human beings as the maincharacters. There were two types of characters in such human-centrednarratives: the species of truly human beings with qualities of courage,

kindness, mercy, hatred of evil, concern for others; ¿nd a man-eat-manrwo-mouthed species with qualities of greed, selfishness, individualismand hatred of what was good for the larger co-operative community.Co-operation as the ultimate good in a community was a constanttheme. It could unite human beings with animals against ogres and

beasts of prey, as in the story of how dove, after being fed with castor-oil seeds, was sent to fetch a smith working far away from home and

whose pregnant wife was being threatened by these man-eating

two-mouthed ogres.There were good and bad story-tellers. A good one could tell the

same story over and over again, and it would always be fresh to us, the

listeners. He or she could tell a story told by someone else and make itmore alive and dramatic. The differences really were in the use ofwords and images and the inflexion of voices to effect different tones.

10

Lan-suage was nor a mere string of words. It had a suggestive powerwell beyond the immediaæ and lexical meaning. Our ãppreciation ofthe suggestive magical power of language was reinforced by the gameswe_ played with words through riddles, proverbs, transpositiolns ofsyllables, or through nonsensical but musically arranged words.ll Sowe learnt the music of our language on top of the content. Thelanguage, through images and symbols, g"ne ,.tr a view of the world,but it had a beaury of its own. The home and the field were rhen ourpre-primary school but what is important, for this discussion, is thatthe language of our evening teach-ins, and the language of ourimmediate and wider communiry, and the language of our work in thefields were oàè.

And then I went to school, a colonial school, and this harmony wasbroken. The la-nguage of my education was no longer the languáge ofmy culture. I first went to Kamaandura, mission"ry ,r.rr, and thä toanother called Maanguuú run by nationalists grouped around theGiküyú Independent and Karinga Schools Association. Our languageof education was srill Gikúyú. The very first time I was ever girrãn anovation for my writing w'as over a composition in Giküyú. So for myfirst four years there u¡as still harmony berween the language of myformal education and that of the Limunr peasanr "o**rriiti.It was after the declaration of a state of emergency over kenya inL952 that all the schools run by patriotic nationalists'were raken overby the colonial regime and were placed under District EducationBoards chaired by Englishmen, Fnglish became the language of myformal education. In Kenya, English became more rhan

" l"tig""g., it

was tbe language, and all the others had to bow before it in dãferãnce.Thus one of the most humiliating experiences was to be caught

speaking Gikúyú in the viciniry of the school. The culprit was givencorporal punishment - three to five srrokes of the ìane on

*bare

buttocks - or ûas made to carry a metal plate around the neck withinscriptions such as r AM sruprD or r AM A DoNKEy. sometimes thecuþrits were fined money they could hardly afford. And how did theteachers catch the.cuþrits? A button was initially given to one pupilwho was supposed_to hand it over ro whoever wai caught rpe"kittg hitmother to.ngyet Whoever had the bufton at the end of theìay wãuldsingwho had given it to him and the ensuing process would bring out4l th. culprits of the day. Thus childrenÇere rurned into wltch-hunters and in the process were being taught the lucrative value ofbeing a traitor to one's immediate communiry.

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The Literdture

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The attitude to English was the exact opposite: any achievement rn

spoken or written English was highly rewarded; prizes, prestige,

applause; the ticket to higher realms. English became the measure ofintelligence and ability in the arts, the sciences, and all the otherbranches of learning. English became the main determinant of a child'sprogress up the ladder of formal education.

As you may know, the colonial system of education in addition toits apartheid racial demarcation had the structure of a pyramid: a broadprimary base, a nar,owing secondary middle, and an even narro.wer

university apex. Selections from primary into secondary were throughan examination, in my time called Kenya African PreliminaryExamination, in which one had to pass six subjects ranging from Mathsto Nature Study and Kiswahili. All the PaPers were written in English.Nobody could pass the exam who failed the English language PaPer nomatter how brilliantly he had done in the other subjects. I remember

one boy in my class of 1954 who had distinctions in all subjects excePt

English, which he had failed. He was made to fail the entire exam. He*.ttt ott to become a turn boy in a bus company. I who had onlypasses but a credit in English got a place at the Alliance High School,one of the most elitist institutions for Africans in colonial Kenya. Therequirements for a place at the University, Makerere UniversityCollege, were broadly the same: nobody could go on to wear theundergraduate red gown, no matter how brilliantly they had per-formed in all the other subjects unless they had a credit - not even a

simple pass! - in English. Thus the most coveted place in the pyramidand in the system was only available to the holder of an Englishlanguage credit card. English was the official vehicle and the magicformula to colonial elitedom.

Literary education was now determined by the dominant languagewhile also reinforcing that dominance. Orature (oral literature) inKenyan languages stopped. In primary school I now read. simplifiedDickens and Stevenson alongside Rider Haggard. Jim Flawkins, OliverTwist, Tom Brown - not Hare, Leopard and Lion - were nov¡ mydaily companions in the world of imagination. In secondary school,Scott and G. B. Shaw vied with more Rider Haggard, John Buchan,Alan Paton, Captain'tü(/. E. Johns. At Makerere I read English: fromChaucer to T. S. Eliot with a touch of Graham Greene.

Thus language and literature were taking us further and further fromourselves to other selves, from our world to other worlds.

'What was the colonial system doing to us Kenyan children? IØhatwere the consequences of, on the one hand, this systematic suppression

12

of our languages and the lirererure they carried, and on the other theelevation of English and the literature it carried? To answer thosequestions, let me first examine the relationship of language to humanexperience, human culture, and the human perception of realiry.

ryLanguage, any language, has a dual character: it is both a means ofcommunication and a carrier of culture. Take English. It is spoken inBritain and in Sweden and Denmark. But for Swedish and Danishpeople English is only a means of communication with non-Scandinavians. It is nor a carrier of their culrure. For the British, andparticularly the English, it is additionally, and inseparably from its useas a tool of communication, a carrier of their culture 4nd history. Ortake Swahili in East and Central Africa. It is widely used as a meáns ofcommunication across many nationalities. But it is not the carrier of aculture and history of many of those nationalities. However in parts ofK9"y," and,Tanzania, and particularly inZanzibar, Swahili is insepar-ably both a means of communicerion and a carrier of the culture ofthose people to whom it is a mother-rongue.

Language as communication has three aspecrs or elements. There isfirst what Karl Márx once called the language of real life,12 the elementbasic to the whole notion of language, its origins and development:that is, the relations people enrer into with one another in the-labourprocess, the links they necessarily establish among themselves in theact of. a people, a communiry of human beings, pioducing wealth ormeans of life like food, clothing, houses. A humãn community reallystarts its historical being as a community of co-operation in productionthrough the division of labour; the simplest is

-berween *ãrr, *orrr"rt

and child within a household; the more complex divisions are berweenbranches of production such as those *ho "r. sole hunters, solegatherers of fruits or sole workers in metal. Then there are the mosrcomplex divisions such as those in modern factories where a singleproduct, say a shirt or a shoe, is the result of many hands and minãs.Production is co-operation, is communicarion, is language, is ex-pression of a relation between human beings and it ii specificallyhuman.

. The second aspecr of language as communicarion is speech and itimitates the language of real life, that is communication irrproducrion.

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Decolonising tbe Mind

The verbal signposts both reflect and aid communication or therelations established between human beings in the production of theirmeans of life. Language as a system of verbal signposts makes thatproduction possible. The spoken word is to relations between humanbeings what the hand is to the relations between human beings andnature. The hand through tools mediates between human beings andnature and forms the language of real life: spoken words mediatebetween human beings and form the language of speech.

The third aspect is the writtén signs. The written word imitates thespoken. 'Síhere the first two aspects of language as corhmunicationthrough the hand and the spoken word historically evolved more orless simultaneously, the written aspect is a much later historicaldevelopment. IØriting is representation of sounds with visual symbols,from the simplest knot among shepherds to tell the number in a herdor the hierogþhics among the Agikúyú gicaandi singers and poets ofKenya, to the most complicated and different letter and picture writingsystems of the vrorld today.

In most societies the written and the spoken languages are the same,in that they represent each other: what is on paper can be read toanother person and be received as that language which the recipient has

grown up speaking. In such a society there is broad harmony for a

child becween the three aspects of language as communication. Hisinteraction with nature and with other men is expressed in written andspoken symbols or signs which are both a result of that doubleinteraction and a reflection of it. The association of the child'ssensibiliry is with the language of his experience of life.

But there is more to it: communication be¡ween human beings isalso the basis and process of evolving culture. In doing similar kinds ofthings and actions over and over again under similar circumstances,similar even in their mutability, certain patterns, moves, rhythms,habits, attitudes, experiences and knowledge emerge. Those experi-ences are handed over to the next generation and become the inheritedbasis for their further actions on nature and on themselves. There is agradual accumulation of values which in time become almost self-evident truths governing their conception of what is right and wrong,good and bad, beautiful and ugly, courageous and cowardly, generousand mean in their internal and external relations. Over a time thisbecomes a way of life distinguishable from other ways of life. Theydevelop a distinctive culture and history. Culture embodies thosemoral, ethical and aesthetic values, the set of spiritual eyeglasses,

through which they come to view themselves and their place in the

t4

universe' values are the basis of a people's identity, their sense of par-ticulariry as members of the h,rmìn iace. All tt i, i, ."*i"ã uy i*-guage.. Language as cuhure is the colective memory banrr of

" pápr",,

experience in history. Culture is almost indistinguish"bl, fro*ih.'lrrr_guage that makes possible its genesis, gro*rh] banking, articulationand indeed its transmission from one gelneration to rheîext.

Language as,culture also has.three imporranr aspecrs. Culture is aproduct-of the history which it in turn ,"âr"tr. culture in other wordsis a product and a reflection- of human beings communicating with oneanother in the very struggle ro creare *.írh and to

"orrtiol it. ¡.rt

culture does nor merely rèflect ghat-history, or rarher it does so byactually forming images or pictures of the world of nature

"nd ,rrrr.".

Thus the second esp-ecr of.Lnguage as cuhure is as an ir""gr-r;t-i"gagent in the mind of a child. ouiwhole conceprion of ouiselrres as apeople, indivìdually and collectively, is based on those pictur.,

"rrJimages which may_or may nor córrectly correspond tä the actualrealiry of the. struggles with nature and nurture *Ëi.h proa""ra iI.*in the first place. But our capacity ro confronr th" *oird

"r."ri".iy i,

dependent on how those images cãrrespond or nor to that r."liÇ, io*they distort or clarify the reaiity of ou, struggles. L"rrg,r"g"

", á"i*r.

rs thus- medratrng between me an_d my own self; between my own selfand other selves; berween me and n"irrr.. Language is mediating in myvery being. And this brings uq to the thirã a$ect of langiage asculture. culture rransmirs õr imparts those imagäs of the *åriJ

""¿reality.through the spoken and the written languãge, that is through aspecific language. In other words, the capaciry io ,i."t , ,t. ."p".irlr,oorder sounds in a manner that makei foi mutual .o*präh"rríio'between human beings is universal. This is the universaliry Jr h"g""g",a.qualiry specific ro human beings. ft corresponds to the úrirr.rriiry ofthe struggle against narure anJthat berween human beings. g"ì'rh.particularity of the sounds, rhe words, the word order into ihr"r., *ds,:ntence:,, and the specific manner, or laws, of their orderìrrg is whatdstrnguishes.one ìanguage from anorher. Thus a specific cultrire is nottransmitted through language in its universaliry but in its particulariryas the language of a specific õommunity with a ipecific histåry. wi*r,lterature and orarure are the main means by which a panicularlanguage rransmirs the images of the world coniained in the culture itcarries.

Language as communication and as culture are then products of eachother. Communication creates culture: culture is a means of

The n Literatare

15

w

Decolonisingthe Mind

communication. Language carries culture, and culture carries, parti-

""t"rty through or"tir. -and

literature, rhe entire body of values_ by

which *. "ori. to perceive ourselves and our place in thevorld. How

oeople perceive thåmselves affects how they look at their culture, at

it.ii påtiri.s and at the social production of wealth, at their entire

relationship ro nature and to other beings. Language is- thus ins.eparable

from orrrsôlves as a community of human beings with a specific form

and character, a specific history, a specific relationship to the world.

so what was rhe colonialist imposition of a foreign language doing to

us children?The real aim of colonialism.was ro conffol the people's wealth: what

they produced, how they produced it, and how it was distributed; to

"o*åL in other *ords, tfie entire realm of the language of real life.

colonialism imposed its control of the social production of wellththrough military conquesr and subsequent political dictatorship.-But

its mo"st i-portãnt area of. domination was the mental universe of the

colonised, ih. corrtrol, through culture, of how people perceived

themselves and their relationship to the world. Economic and political

control can never be complete sr effective without mental control. To

control a people's culture is to control their tools of self-definition in

relationship to others.For colonialism this involved two aspects of the same process: the

destruction or rhe deliberate undervaluing of a people's culture, their

art, dances, religions, history, geography, education, orature and

lirerarure, and thã conscious elevation of the language of the coloniser.

The domination of a people's language by the languages of the

colonising narions was crucial to rhe domination of the mental

universe of the colonised.Take language as communication. Imposing a foreign language, and

suppressin{thã native languages as rpokrtr,and written, were already

b."åki"g tñe harmony previously existing between the African child

and theihree aspecrs ófi"ngo"gr. Since the new language as a means ofcommunicatiorwas a product of and was reflecting the 'real fanglageof life' elsewhere, it could never as spoken or written properþ reflect

or imitate the real life of that.om*rrnity. This may in part explain whytechnology always appears to us as slightly external, their product and

16

not ours. The word 'missile' used to hold an arien far-away sound untilI recently learnt its equivalent in Gikúyú, nguraÞahi, "rrâ

i, *"à. *"apprehend it differently. Learning, fór'" ãolonial child, ur."-.

"cerebral activity and not atr emotionlaily felt experience.

. But since rhe new, imposed languages courd never completelv breakthe native languages as spoken, thãit irost effecdve

"r."-;iã;;ir,"rio'was the third aspect of language as communication, th. *ritt.rr. fh"language of an African childf formar education *", ror.r!rr.-rn"language of the books he read was foreign. Th. l;"g;;;;-ãf ni,conceptualisation was foreign. Thought, in h-im, took thJrriribleform:f -"

fo,r"itlt Janguag€.

So rhãwritten iárrgrr"g. "i".t it¿t "pfìi"giig i,the school (even his spoken language v¡ithin the school co*p"o,räd¡

became divorced from-his spokeñ raãguage ar home. Th"r. *"', ofte'not the slightest relationshþ between ih.".hild', written *orlJ, Ji.nwas. also the language of hiJ schooling, and the world of hi, i*á.Ji"t,environmenr in the family and the coÃmunity. For a colonial child, theharmony existing b9m9en the three

"rp..r, of t""g""g. ;..*-L"i_

cation was irrevocably broken. This rãsulted in tËe disassociation ofthe sensibility of thai child from his natural

""d ,;.ü;;;;;;;",,

whar we- might call colonial alienation. The arienati"; br;;-.reinforced in the teaching of history, geography, music,

-*i.r.bourgeois Europe was alwavs the centre'of ,i, ,i"i""Á..

This disassociation, divorce, or alienation from the immediateenvironmenr becomes clearer when you look at coroniar t"rrg.rig.

", "carrier of culture.since culture-is a producr of the history of a people which it in rurn

reflects, the child was now being exposeá e*.t"ri"Ëry ,o "

..rlr*¿ it ",was a product of a world exrernal to himself. He was being made to

stand outside himself to look at himself. cøtching rbr* yoZig i-thetitle of a book on racism, class, sex, and poritics iã children's fit?ratrrreby Bob Dixon. 'catching them young' as'an aim was even more true ofa colonial child. The imaggs of ihis w-orld and his place i" it i*pt"rrt.ain a.child take years to .r"di""te, if they ever can be^.

Since culture does not just reflect the world in images but actually,through those very images, conditions a child to ,ee"th"t;";ld i;

"certain way, the colonial child was made to see the world and *t.r. t.stands in it as seen and defined by or reflected in the cuhure of thelanguage of imposition.

And since those images are mostly passed on through orarure andliterature it meant the child would rã* only see the worrd as seen inthe literature of his language of adoption. úo- th" p"i"i "i"ir* "r

The Lan Literatare

17

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alienation, that is of seeing oneself from outside oneself as if one was

anorher self, it does not *ãtt.t that the imported literature carried the

great humanist tradition of the best in Shakespeare, Goethe, Balzac,

iolrtoy,'Gorky, Brecht, Sholokhov, Dickens. The location of this

great áirror ofimagination was necessarily F.urope and its history and

ðultu.e and the rest;f the universe was seen from that centre.

But obviously it was worse when the colonial child was exposed to

images of his ïorld as mirrored in the written languages. of his

colo"niser. \íhere his own native languages were associated in his

impressionable mind with low status' humiliation, corporal pu-nrsh-

-eìt, slow-footed intelligence and ability or downright stupidiry,non-intelligibility and barbarism, this was reinforced by the world he

met in the-works of such geniuses of racism as a Rider Haggard or a

Nicholas Monsarrat; not ó mention the-pronouncement of some ofthe giants of western intellectual and political establishment, such as

Hrrrie ('. . . the negro is naturally inferior to the whites . . .'),ttThomas Jefferson ('.

-. . the blacks . . . are inferior to the whites on the

errdowmãnts of both body and mind . . .'),to or Hegel with his Africa

comparable to a land bf childhood still enveloped in the dark mantle ofthe night as far as the development of self-conscious history was

.orrc.rãed. Hegel's statement thãt there v¡as nothing harmoniöus withhumaniry to bã found in the African character is representative of the

racist images of Africans and Africa such a colonial child was bound to

.rr.oorrt.i in the literature of the colonial languages.l5 The results

could be disastrous.In her paper read to the conference on the teaching of African

literature lrr schools held in Nairobi in 1973, entitled ''WrittenLiterature and Black-Images',16 the Kenyan writer and scholar

Professor Micere Múgo related how a reading of the description ofGagool as an old African woman in Rider Haggard's King Solornon's

Miies had for a long time made her feel mortal terror whenever she

encountered old African women. In his autobiography This LifeSydney Poitier describes how, as a result of the literature he had read,

tre tta¿ come to associate Africa with snakes. So on arrival in Africa and

being put up in a modern hotel in a modern city, he could not sleep

becairse he kept on looking for snakes everywhere, even under the bcd.

These rwo have been able to pinpoint the origins of their fears. But formost others the negative image becomes internalised and it affects theircultural and even political choices in ordinary living.

Thus Léopold S¿dar Senghor has said very clearly that although the

colonial language had been-forced upon him, if he had been given the

18

choice he would still have opted for French. He becomes lyrical in hissubservience to French:

'We express ourselves in French since French has a universalvocation and since our message is also addressed to French peopieand others. In our languages [i.e. African languages] the halo thatsurrounds the words is by narure merely that of sap and blood;French words send out thousands of rays like diamonds.lT

Senghor has now been rewarded by being anointed to an honouredplace in the French Academy - that insritution for safe-guarding thepurity of the French language.

In Malawi, Banda has erected his own monumenr by way of aninstitution, The Kamuzu Academy, designed to aid the brightest pupilsof Malawi in their mastery of English.

It is a grammar school designed to produce boys and girls who willbe sent to universities like Harvard, Chicago, Oxford, Cambridgeand Edinburgh and be able ro compete on equal terms with orherselsewhere.

The President has instructed that Latin should occupy a cenrralplace in the curriculum. All reachers musr have had at least someLatin in their academic background. Dr Banda has often said that noone can fully master English without knowledge of languages suchas Latin and French . . .18

For good measure no Malawian is allo¡¡ed to teach at the academy -nott. ir good enough - and all the teàching siaff has been recruiiedfrom Britain. A Malawian might lower the srandards, or rarher, rhepurity of the English language. Can you ger a more telling example ofhatred of what is national, and a servile worship of what is foreign eventhough dead?

In history books and popular commenraries on Africa, too much hasbeen made of the supposed differences in the policies of the variouscolonial powers, the British indirect rule (or rhe pragmatism of theBritish in their lack of a cultural programme!) and the French andPortuguese conscious programme of cultural assimilation. These are ainatter of detail and emphasis. The final effect was the same: Senghor'sembrace of French as this language with a universal vocarion is not sodifferent from Chinua Achebe's graritude in1964 to English-'those ofus who have inherited the English language may nor be in a position toappreciate the value of the inheritance'.7e The assumptions behind thepracdce of those of us who have abandoned our mother-tongues and

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Decolonising the Mind

VI

adopted European ones as the creative vehicles of our imagination, are

not different either.Thus the 1962 conf.erence of 'African Writers of English expression'

was only recognising, with approval and pride of course, what throughall the years of selective education and rigorous tutelage, we had

already been led to accept: the 'fatalistic logic of the unassailable

position of English in our literature'. The logic was embodied deep inimperialism; and it was imperialism and its effects that we did notexamine at Makerere. It is the final triumph of a system of dominationwhen the dominated start singing its virtues.

The twenty years that followed the Makerere conference gave theworld a unique literature - novels, stories, Poems, plays written byAfricans in European languages - which soon consolidated itself into a

tradition with companion studies and a scholarþ industry.Right from its conception it was the literature of the petty-

bourgeoisie born of the colonial schools and universities. It could notbe otherwise, given the linguistic medium of its message. Its rise anddevelopment reflected the gradual accession of this class to politicaland even economic dominance. But the petry-bourgeoisie in Africawas a large class with different strands in it. It ranged from that sectionwhich looked forward to a perrnanent alliance with imperialism inwhich it played the role of an intermediary berween the bourgeoisie ofthe western metropolis and the people of the colonies - the sectionwhich in my book Detøined: A Writer's Prison Dia'ry I have describedas the comprador bourgeoisie - to that section which sas¡ the futurein terms of a vigorous independent national economy in Africancapitalism or in some kind of socialism, what I shall here callthe nationalistic or patriotic bourgeoisie. This literature by Africansin European languages was specifically that of the nationalisticbourgeoisie in its creators, its thematic concerns and its consumP-tion.20

Internationally the literature helped this class, which in politics,business, and education, was assuming leadership of the countriesnewly emergent from colonialism, or of those struggling to so emerge'

to eiplain Ãftica to the world: Africa had a past and a cuhure ofdignity and human complexity.

20

common literary frame of references, which it otherwise lacked withits uneasy roots in the culture of the peasantry and in the culture of themetropolitan bourgeoisie. The literature added confidence to the class:the petry-bourgeoisie now had a pasr, a culture and a literature withwhich to confront the racist bigotry of Europe. This confidence -manifested in the tone of the writing, its sharp critique of Europeanbourgeois civilisation, its implications, particularly in its negritudemould, that Africa had something nev/ to give to the world - reflecrsthe political ascendancy of the patriotic nationalistic secrion of thepetry-bourgeoisie before and immediately after independence.

So initially this literature - in the post-war v¡orld of nationaldemocratic revolutionary and anti-colonial liberation in China andIndia, armed uprisings in Kenya and Algeria, the independence ofGhana and Nigeria q¡ith others impending - was parr of that great anti-colonial and anti-imperialist upheaval in Asia, Africa, Latin Americaand Caribbean islands. It was inspired by the gener:al politicalawakening; it drew its stamina and even form from the peasantry: theirproverbs, fables, stories, riddles, and wise sayings. It was shot throughand through with optimism. But larer, when the comprador sectionassumed political ascendancy and strengthened rather than weakenedthe economic links with imperialism in what was clearly a neo-colonialarrangement, this literature became more and more critical, cynical,disillusioned, bitter and denunciatory in tone. k was almosr unani-mous in its portrayal, with varying degrees of detail, emphasis, andclarity of vision, of the post-independence betrayal of hope. Bur rowhom was it directing its list of mistakes made, crimes and wrongscommitted, complaints unheeded, or its call for a change of moraldirection? The imperialist bourgeoisie? The petry-bourgeoisie inpower? The military, itself part and parcel of that class? It soughtanother audience, principally the peasantry and the working class orwhat was generally conceived as.rhe people. The search for newaudience and new directions was reflecred in the quest for simplerforms, in the adoption of a more direcr rone, and oftèn in a directiallfor action. It was also reflected in the content. Instead of seeing Africaas one undifferentiated mass of historically wronged blackness, it nowattempted some sort of class analysis and evaluation of neo-colonialsocieties. But this search wes sdll within the confines of the languagesof Europe whose use it now defended with less vigour and confidenie.So its quest was hampered by the very language choice, and in itsmovement toward the people, it could only go up ro rhar section of the

21

Decolonising the Mind

petty-bourgeoisie - the students, teachers, secretaries for instance -still in closest touch with the people. It settled there, marking time,caged wìthin the linguistic fence of its colonial inheritance.

Its greatest weakness still lay where it has always been, in theaudience - the petty-bourgeoisie readership automatically assumed bythe very choice of language. Because of its indeterminate economicposition between the many contending classes, the petty-bourgeoisiedevelops a vacillating psychological make-up. Like a chameleon ittakes on the colour of the main class with which it is in the closesttouch and sympathy. It can be swept to activity by the masses at a timeof revolutionary dde; or be driven to silence, fear, cynicism,withdrawal into self-contemplation, existential anguish, or to collabor-ation with the powers-that-be at times of reactionary tides. In Africanthis class has always oscillated between the imperialist bourgeoisie andits comprador neo-colonial ruling elements on the one hand, and thepeasantry and the working class (the rñasses) on the other. This verylack of identity in its social and psychological make-up as a class, wasreflected in the very literature it produced: the crisis of identity wasassumed in that verry preoccupation with definition at the Makerereconference. In literature as in politics it spoke as if its identity or thecrisis of its own identity was that of society as a whole. The literature itproduced in European languages was given the identity of Africanliterature as if there had never been literature in African languages. Yetby avoiding a real confrontation with the language issue, it was clearþwearing false robes of identity: it was a pretender to the throne of themainstream of African lirerarure. The practitioner of what JanheinzJahn called neo-African literature tried to get out of the dilemma byover-insisting that European languages were really African languagesor by trying to Africanise English or French usage while making sureit was still recognisable as English or French or Portuguese.

In the process this literature creared, falsely and even absurdly, anEnglish-speaking (or French or Portuguese) African peasantry andworking class, a clear negation or falsification of the historical processand reality. This European-language-speaking peasantry and workingclass, existing only in novels and dramas, was at times invested with thevacillating mentaliry, the evasive self-contemplation, the existentialanguished human condition, or the man-torn-between-two-worlds-facedness of the petty-bourgeoisie.

In fact, if it had been left entirely to this class, African languageswould have ceased to exist - with independence!

22

VIIBut African languages refused t9 {ie. They would not simpry go rheyay 9f Latin to become the fossils for linguistic archaeology rá d"ig rrp,classify, and argue about the interrrationil conferences.

ar ---o

. These languages, these national heritages of Africa, were kept aliveby the peasanrry. The peasantry r"* no contradiction berweenspeaking their own mo-ther-tongues and belonging to a larger nationalor continenral geography. They saw no r.."ttãryå.rtagoniîtic conrra-diction between belonging to their immediate natioialiry, to thèirmultinational state along the Berlin-drawn boundaries, and ío Afri."

",a whole._ These people happily spoke \Øolof, Hausa, yoruba, Ibo,Arabic, Amharic, Kiswahili, Gikúyú, Luo, Luhya, Shona, N¿eUete,Kimbundu, zulu or Lingala without this faci rearing ihe multi-national srâres aparr. During the anti-colonial struggle thãy showed anunlimited capacity ro unite around wharever leadãi or parry best andmost consisrently articulated an anti-imperialist position. If anything itwas the petty-b_ourgeoisie, particularly the compradorr, *íth tlr.i,French and English and Portuguese, with their ietry rivalries, theirethnic chauvinism, which encouraged these ,rertical divisions to th"point of war at times. No, the peasantry had no complexes about theirlanguages and the culrures they carried!

In fact when the peasanrry and the working class were compelled byne.cessity or. history to adopt- the language of the masær, th"yAfricanised it without any of the respeci foi its ancestry shown bysenghor and Achebe, so totally as ro have created iew Africanþnguages,.like Krio in Sierra Leone or pidgin in Nigeria, thet owedtheir identities ro the synrax and rhythmt ãf Rfri."ã languages. Allthese.languages were kept alive in the daily speech, in the cireironier,in political sffuggles, above all in the rich store of orarure - proverbs,stories, poems, and riddles.

The.peasantry and the rirban working class threw up singers. Thesesang the old s.on-gs or compos€d new ones incorpdr"ti.ig the newexperiences in industries and urban life and in working.chãs struggleand organisations. These singers pushed the languager"ro ,r.* [rññr,renewing and reinvigorating them by coining ãeJ *ord, and newexpressions,. and.in generally gxpanding their iapacity to incorporatenew happenings in Africa and the worldl

The peasantry and the working class threw up their own wrirers, oraftracted to their ranks and

"oncer' intellectuals from

"*orrg th"

23

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Decolonising the Mind

petty-bourgeoisie, *ho "ll *-r" in Afri""n languages. It is these

writers like Heruy \øäldä Sellassie, Germacäw TaHa Hawaryat,Shabaan Robert, Abdullatif Abdalla, Ebrahim Hussein, EuphraseKezilahabi, B. H. Vilakazi, Okot p'Bitek, A. C. Jordan, P. Mboya,D. O. Fagunwa, Mazisi Kunene and many others rightly celebrated inAlbert Gérard's pioneering survey of literature in African languages

from the tenth century to the present, called Afriran Language

Literøtøres (1981), who have given our languages a written literature.Thus the immortality of our languages in print has been ensured

despite the internal and external pressures for their extinction' [nKenya I would like to single out Gakaarawa \üanjaú, who was jailed

by the British for the ten years berween 1952 and' 1962 because of.hiswriting in Gikúyú. His book, Mntøndîleinta Mdu Møa lthødrnírioinî,adiary he secredy kept whTe in political detention, was published byHeinemann Kenya and won the 1984 Noma Award. It is a powerfulwork, extending the range of the Gikúyú language Prose' and it is acrowning achievement to the work he started in 1946. He has workedin poverty, in the hardships of prison, in post-independence isolationwhen the English language held sway in Kenya's schools from nurseryto Universiry and in every walk of the national printed world, but he

never broke his faith in the possibilities of Kenya's national languages.

His inspiration came from the mass anti-colonial movement of Kenyanpeople, particularþ the militant wing grouped around Mau Mau or the

Krnya Land and Freedom Army, which in 1952 ushered in the era ofmodern guerrilla wartare in Africa. He is the clearest example of those

writers thrown up by the mass political movements of an awakened

peasantry and working class.- And finally from among the European-language-speaking Afri-

can petry-bourgeoisie, theie emerged a few who refused to jointhe èhorus of those who had accepted the 'fatalistic logic' ofthe position of European languages in our literary being. It was

one -of

these, Obi \ù(rali, who pulled the carpet from under the

literary feet of those who gathered at Makerere in 1962 by de-

claring in an article published in Trønsition (L0, September 1963),

'that ìhe whole uncritical acceptance of English and French as '

the inevitable medium for educated African writing is misdirected,

and has no chance of advancing African literature and culture'¡

and that until African writers accepted that any true African 'literature must be written in African lattguages, they would merely be

''

pursuing a dead end.

24

'what v¡e would like future conferences on African literature ro

devote rime to, is the -all-imporranr problem of African writing in

African-languages,_ and all its implicaiions for the development äf atruly African sensibiliry.

- Obi.Ilali had his predecessors. Indeed people like David Diop ofsenegal had_put the case against this use of colonial la.rguages Ë,renmore strongly.

The African crearor, deprived of the use of his language and cut offfrom his people, might turn our ro be only th. ,e ,.ierrtative of aliterary trend (and thar not necessarily thé least giatuitous) of theconquering narion. His works, having become a p.tfe"t illustrationof the assimilationist policy through imaginatiõn and sryle, willdoubtless rouse rhe warm applautr ãf

" certain group of critics. In

fact, these praises will go mostly to colonialis* lhi.-h, v¡hen it canno longer keep its subjects in slavery, rransforms them into docileintellectuals patterned after rüestern literary fashions which besides,is another more subtle form of bastardization.22

David Dio-p quire correcrly saw that the use of English and French wasa matter of temporary historical necessity.

Surely in an Africa freed from oppression it will not occur ro anyyriger to express, otherq¡ise than in his rediscovered language, hisfeelings and the feelings of his people.23

The importance of obi vali's intervention was in tone and timing: itwas published soon after the 1962 Makerere conference of Afríc"nylter.s of F,nglish expression; it was polemical and aggressive, pouredridicule and scorn on the choice of Èn$ish and Frerrch, whilË beingunapologetic in its call for the use of African languages. Notsurprisingly it was met with hostiliry and then silence.-Bu-t rwenryyears of uninterrupted dominance of literature in European languages,the reactionary rurn rhar political and economic evenrs in Afriða hävetaken, and thç search for a revolutionary break with the neo_colonial stetus quo, all compel soul-searchirrg

"*orrg writers, raising

once again the entire question of the language oÌ African litera-ture.

Tbe Literdtare

25

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Decolonisins tbe Mind

VIIIThe question is this: we as African writers have always complainedabout the neo-colonial economic and political relationship to Euro-America. Right. But by our continuing to write in foreign languages,

paying homage to them, are we nod on the cultural level continuingihat neo-colonial slavish and cringing spirit? Vhat is the differenceberween a politician who says Africa cannot do without imperialismand the writer who says Africa cannot do without Europeanlanguages?

Vhile we were busyharanguing the rulingcircles in a language whichautomatically excluded the participation of the peasantry and theworking class in the debate, imperialist culture and African reactionaryforces had a field day: the Christian bible is available in unlimitedquantities in even the tiniest African language. The comprador rulingcliques are also quite happy to have the peasantry and the workingclass all to themselves: distortions, dictatorial directives, decrees,

museum-type fossils paraded as African culture, feudalistic ideologies,superstitions, lies, all these backward elements and more are communi-caied to the African masses in their own languages without anychallenges from those with alternative visions of tomorrow who have

deliberately cocooned themselves in English, French, and Portuguese.It is ironic that the most reactionary African politician, the one whobelieves in selling Africa to Europe, is often a master of Africanlanguages; that the most zealous of European missionaries whobelieved in rescuing Africa from itself, even from the paganism of itslanguages, were nevertheless masters of African languages, which theyoften reduced to writing. The F.uropean missionary believed too muchin his mission of conquest not to communicate it in the languages mostreadily available to the people: the African writer believes too much in'African literature' to wriie it in those ethnic, divisive and under-developed languages of the peasantry!

The added irony is that what they have produced, despite any claimsto the contrary, is not African literature. The editors of the PelicanGuides to Engish literature in their latest volume were right to include'a discussion of this literáture as part of twentieth-century Englishliterature, just as the French Academy was right to honour Senghor forhis genuine and talented contribution to French literature andlanguage. What we have created is another hybrid tradition, a traditionin transition, a minority tradition that can only be termed as Afro-

26

European languages.2a It has produced many writers and works ofgenuine talent: Chinua Achebe, Vole Soyinka, Ayi Kwei Armah,Sembene Ousmane, Agostino Neto, Sédar Senghor and many others.'Who can deny their talent? The light in the products of their fertileimaginations has certainly illuminated important aspecrs of the Africanbeing in its continuous struggle against the political and economicconsequences of Berlin and after. However we cannot have our cakeand eat it! Their work belongs ro an Afro-European literary traditionwhich is likely to last for as long as Africa is under this rule ofEuropean capital in a neo-colonial set-up. So Afro-European literaturecan be defined as literature written by Africans in European languagesin the era of imperialism.

But some are coming round to the inescapable conclusion articulatedby Obi Vali with such polemical vigour rwenry years ago: Africanliterature can only be written in African languages, that is, thelanguages of the African peasanrry and working class, the majoralliance of classes in each of our nationalities and the agency for thecoming inevitable revolutionary break with neo-colonialism.

IXI started writing in Gikúyú language in 1977 afrer sevenreen years ofinvolvement in Afro-European literarure, in my case Afro-Englishliterature. It was then that I collaborated with Ngúgi wa Mirii in thedrafting of the playscript, Ngaøhiha Ndeenda 1thãEnglish translationwas I 'Will Morry 'When I Want).I have since published a novel inGíkúyú, Cøitaøni Mû.tharabainl (English translation: Devil on theCross) and completed a musical drama, Møitñ. Njugîrø, (English trans-lation: Motber Sing for Me); three books for children, Njarnba Nenenø Mbøøtbi i Mathøga, Bathitoorø ya Njørnba Nene, Njørnbø Nene nøCibñ Kîng'øng'i, as well ds anorher novel manuscript: Matigøri MaNjiraungi. \üíherever I have gone, particularly in Europe, I have beenconfronted with the question: why are you now writing in Gikúyú?\(lhy do you now write in an African language? In some academicquafters I have been confronted with the rebuke, .Why have youabandoned us?' It was almost as if, in choosing to wrire in Glkúyú, Iivas doing something abnormal. But Gikúyú is my mother tongue!The very fact that whar common sense dictates in the literary pt".ti..

Decoloni the Mind

of other cultures is being quesrioned in an African wrirer is a measureof how far imperialism has distorted the view of African realities. It hasturned reality upside down: the abnormal is viewed as normal and thenormal is viewed as abnormal. Africa actually enriches Europer butAfrica is made to believe that it needs Europe ro rescue it from

. poverty. Africa's natural and human resources continue to develop'Europe

and America: but Africa is made to feel grateful for aid fromthe same quarrers that still sit on the back of the cõntinent. Africa evenproduces intellectuals who now rationalise this upside-down way oflooking at Africa.

I believe that my writing in Gikúyú language, a Kenyan language, anAfrican language, is part and parcel of the anti-imperialist struggles ofKenyan and African peoples. In schools and universities our Kirv"r,languages - that is thJ lar¡guages of the many nationalities which makeup Kenya - w€Í€ associated with negative qualities of backwardness,underdevelopmenr, humiliation and puniihment. 'W'e who wentthrough that school sysrem were meanr to graduate with a hatred ofthe people and the culrure and the values ofìhe hnguage of our dailyhumiliation and punishment. I do not wanr to r.. KJnyan childrengrowing up in that imperialist-imposed tradition of contempt for thetools of communication developed by their communities and theirhistory. I want them to transcend colonial alienation.

Colonial alienation takes two intedinked forms: an acrive (orpassive) distancing of oneself from the reality around; and an active (orpassive) identification with that which is most exrernal ro one,senvironment. Ir srarts with a deliberate disassociation of the languageof conceptualisation, of thinking, of formal education, "f tne¡ialdevelopment, from the language of daily interaction in the home and inthe community. It is like separating rhe mind from the body so rharthey aye occupying rwo unrelared linguistic spheres in the same person.On a larger social scale it is like producing a society of bodilesì headsand headless bodies.

So I would like to contribute rowards rhe resrorarion of theharmony between all the aspecrs and divisions of language so as rorestore the Kenyan child to his environmenr, undersr"nã iifnlly ro

",to be in a position to change it for his collecdve good. I would iike tosee Kenya peoples' morher-rongues (our national languages!) carry aliterature reflecting not only the rhythms of a ìhiid,r rpoÉ.r,expression, but also his struggle with nature and his social nature. løitttthat harmony between himself, his language and his environment as hisstarting point, he can learn other languages and even enjoy the positive

28

literatures and cultures without any complexes about his ã*nlanguage, his own self, his environmenr. The all-Kenya nationallanguage (i.e. Kiswahili); the other national languagés (i.e. thelanguages of the nationalities like Luo, Gikúyu, Maãsai, Luhya,Kallenjin, Kamba, Mijikenda, Somali, Galla, Turkana, Arabic-speaking people, etc.); other African languages like Hausa, \flolof,Yoruba, Ibo, Zulu, Nyanja, Lingala, Kimbundu; and forêign languages

- that is foreign to Africa - like English, French, German, Rùssian,Chinese, Japanese, Porruguese, Spanish will fall into their properperspective in the lives of Kenyan children.

Chinua Achebe once decried the tendency of African intellectualsto escape into abstract universalism in the wórds that apply even moreto the issue of the language of African literarure:

Africa has had such a fate in the world that the very adjectiveAfricøn can call up hideous fears of rejection. Better then to cut allthe links with this homeland, this liabiliry, and become in one giantleap the universal man. Indeed I understand this anxiety. Butrlr.nrling aany frorn oneself seems to me a.zery inødeqaate way ofd.ealing atitb øn anxiety [italics mine]. And if wrirers should

"pi fot

such escapism, who is ro meer the challenge?2s

\(iho indeed?\üfle African wrirers are bound by our calling to do for our languages

what Spencer, Milton and Shakespeare did for English; u¡hat pushkinand Tolstoy did for Russian; indeed what all wrirers in world historyhave done for their languages by meeting the challenge of creating aliterature in them, which pfocess later opens the- languagrr Iotphilosophy, science, technology and all thè other areas of h.t*"tcreative endeavours.

B-ut writing in our languages per se - although e necessary first stepin the correct direction - will not itself bring about the renaissance inAfrican cultures if that literature does not iarry the conrenr of our¡re,ople's anti-imperialist struggles to liberate their productive forcesfrom foreign control; rhe content of the need for unity among theworkers and peasants of all the nationalities in their struggle to controlthe wealth they produce and to frep it from internaiãnd exrernalparasites.

In other words wrirers in African languages should reconnecrthemselves to the revolurionary traditions ol an organised peasantryand working class in Africa in their struggle to defeai imperiãfism and

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29

tbe Mind. The Literatarecreate a higher sysrem of democracy and socialism in alliance with allthe other peoples of the world. Uniry in that struggle would ensureuniry in our multi-lingual diversity. It would also rèveal the real linksthat bind the people of Africa to the peoples of Asia, South America,Europe, Australia and New Zealand,,Canada and the U.S.A.

lyl l, it precisely when writers open out African languages to thereal links in the struggles of peasants and workers that tñ.y *ill *..ttheir biggest challenge. Fon to the comprador-ruling regimes, their realenemy is an awakened peasantry and working class- A writer who triesto communicate the message of revolutionary unity and hope in thelanguages of the people becomes a subversive'character. It is ìhen thatwriting in African languages becomes a subversive or treasonableoffence with such a writer facing possibilities of prison, exile or evendeath. For him there are no 'national' accolades, ,rã ,r.* year honours,only abuse and slander and innumerable lies from the mouths of thearmed por¡er of a ruling minority - ruling, that is, on behalf ofU.S.led imperialism - and who see in democracy e real threat. Ademocratic participation of the people in the shaping of their own livesor in discussing their own lives in languages thai allow for mutualcomprehension is seen as being dangerìrus to the good government of acountry and jts institutions. African languages addressing themselvesto the lives of the people become the enemy of a neo-colonìal state.

July-1964, as quotedöy AIi A._Mazrui and Michael Tidy in their work Nationalismand Neat States in Africa, London: 19g4.

'on both sides of Africa, moreover, in Ghana and Nigeria, in uganda and inKenya, the spread of education has led to an increasedi.Ã*ã r.ï, Ë"¿irL

"pllary level. The remarþable. thing is tbat Engrish has not beri ,ìiii¿ Ã-)"r*uaof colonialism; it has rather been ädopted a'z pot;tioily ü"i*íüîs"îli iä""¿tbe,reproaches of-tribalism.It is also a-more atträctiv. píoporiiiã" i'-iiriåiiL i'either India or Malaysia because comparatively few Africans

"tr "o*pr.t"lv Í-i.r"r.ïl the veTlculÏ.,longues and even in the languages of regional cornmuíication,Hausa and Sv¡ahili, v¡hich are spoken by núüi;d *d .rli-r."d-*ä *ìrlä uythousands.' (My italics)

Is Moorehouse telling.us that th,e English language is politically neutral vis-à-visAfrica's confrontation with neo-coloniaism? L ñ.,ËUi"g'* rf,ã, dviéZ;;;;;;"."more Africans lirerate in European languages than ii ¡rii"*'l*zu"e"riTh*Africans could not, even if thaì was thã císe, be rrr.r"i.-]" ,h.ir'å*r'ï"r¡ã"Jlalguages or in the regional languages? Really ii u. ir,ro*"rrã"r.iã"g"":tyiü *.African?

4 The English utle is Taty ,of

Ama.dou Koamba,.ptbhshed by oxford universityPress. The translation of this-panicular passage'fiom ,t i prnriri-Á7¿ãa":, i^¡,edition of the book c¡as donefõr me by dr BaËírir oi"g". i" B"y';;rh1'

^-"-''5 The paper ìs nov¡ in Achebe's collecúon of essays MZrniig mi-ü ôrrot;on ooy,

London: 1975.6 In the introduction to Moming yet on creøtion Day Achebe obviously takes a

slighdy.more critical stance.froio his tso+ position. ú"ph;;r; ¡ "priåi "

îia"generadon of us African wnters.

7 Transition No. 10, September 1963, reprinted,from Di¿loøø¿. paris-8 chinua Achebe 'The African !Øriter and the English rariguagc, i Moming yet on

Creation Day.9 Gabriel Okira,Transitioa No. 10, September 1963.

10 cheikh Hamidou Kane L'aoenture-Ambigaè. (English translation: AmbiguoøsAdrenture). This passage c/as. translated f"r'-. dy È1ã¡r it*;--'1l -h'xample jrom a- tongue twister: 'Kaana ka Nikoora koonã koora koora: nako koora koona kaana ka Nikoora koora koora., I,m indebted to.!üanzui wa Gorofor this example. '\i9l-rol,at child sav¡ " b"by f-; ;J-,-- ";;;:;d ä",l1: ^o_"!y

f¡og saw Nichola,s child it dso ,xr'^w^f., A Giküyü sieaking childhas ro ger the correct rone *i þ"g4 of.vowel and páuses to g.t ít rigitt. oth'erwiseit becomes a jumble of Ë's andr,s ai,d.na's.

12 'T7te production of ideas, of conceptions., of consciousnesb, is at first directlyinrerwoven with the material activiry and the material irrt.i"o'rr";ï;;;,;"language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, ,h. -"",Ji*r.o;;;;;ï;;,;;;* ",this stage as the direct efflux of iheir m.rä"I b.h*i,orrrlrrr",ä"

"ooii.lrJåär¡¡-r3ju¡tio.n as expressed in the language of politifs, i;*r; ;;iÍi|, ";.ï;;",meraphysrcs, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of tåeir conceptio*, id."i.r".- rea.l' actrve men' as lhgy are conditioned by a definite denelôpmeni of theirproductive forces and of the intercourse corresiondi"g ,"iI..r., ü;;; fuJ;"l*:, Mla:4 Engels,-Germ-an lde.ology,.the'firsi pä publirh.ir"ã;;,lh;;;",

. - Í e aerbdch : opposition of th e M ateriarist and I dearist ö utrooþs,London : 197i, p. g.13 Quoted in Eric I(¡illiams A History of tbe people

"f T;"id"¡;;d f;b;s;|ii,íd"", 1964, p.32.14 Eric Williams, ibid., p. 31.15 In references to Africa in the introduction to his lectures in The pbilosoph"y ofHistory, H-gel gives historical, philosophicar, *,io"J.*ptÃri"" *ilã-i",¡rí"i -every conceivable European raciìt mytË about Africa. Afrlca is .".;J.;i:ã h;;;*"

geog¡aphy v¡here rr does nor correspond to the myth. Thus Egypt is not part of

ìì.

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li

Notes'European languages became so imponant to the Africans that they defined theirown i.lentities pardy Þy reference io those languages. Africans befan to describeeach other in terms of being either FrancophonJor-English-speakin[ Africans. Thecontinent iæelf was thought of in terms of French-spealiing stãtes, Eñglish-speakingstates and Arabic-speaking states.'Alt A. Mazrui, Africa's International Rehtions,London: 1977, p. 92.

Arabic does not quite fall into that category. Instead of Arabic-speaking srares asan- example, Mazrui should have put Ponuguese-speaking states, Árabic ls novr an

SJd".-. l"lgrlge unless.we wani to writJoff ali the iñdigenous populations ofNonh Africa, Egypt, Sudan as not being Africans.

And as usual with Mazrui his often apt and insighd.l descriptions, observations,and comparisons of the contemporaryhfrican reãüties as affected by Europe areunfomrnätely, often tinged with;pp'ó"J;';;;;;¡l;;;;;;ibl.ilãíi ruiliñ,.

*"The conference was organized by ihe anti-Communist Paris-based but Américan-inspired and financed society for culrural Freedom whicli was later discoveredactually to have been financed by cIA. It shoc¡s how certain directions in ourcultural, political, and economic'choices can be masterminded from the metro-politan centres of imperialism.This is an argumenr often espoused by colonial spokesmen. Compare Mphahlele'scommenr with that of Geoffrey Moorhouse in Mancbester Gaaidian weehly, 15

3o 3l

Decolonising tbe Mind.

Most of the writers were from Universities. The readership was mainly the productof schools and colleges. As for the underþing theme of much of tirat litirature,of schools and colleges. As for the underþing themeAchebe's statement in his oaoer. 'The Novelist as a Teac:hebe's statement in his paper, 'The

'If I v¡ere God I would resard as

The Langøøge of Africøn Literatøre

Africa; and Nonh Africa is pan of Europe. Africa proper is the especial home ofravenous beasts, snakes of all kinds. The African is not pan of humaniry. Onlyslavery tò Europe can raise him, possibly, to the lower ranks of humaniry. Slavery isgood for the African. 'Slavery is in and for itself injøsti.ce, for the essence ofhumanity ts freedom; but for this man must be matured. The gradual abolition ofslavery is therefore wiser and more equitable than its sudden removal.' (Hegel TbePhilosopby of History, Dover edition, New York: 1956, pp.91-9.) Hegel clearlyreveals himself as the nineteenth-century Hitler of the intellect.The paper is now in Akivaga and Gachukiah's The Teacbing of African Literature inScåools, published by Kenya Lite¡ature Bureau.Senghor, Introduction to his poems, 'Éthiopiques, le 24 Septembre 1954', inanswering the question: 'Pourquoi, dès lors, écrivez-vous en français?' Here is thewhole passage in French. See hov¡ lyrical Senghor becomes as he talks of hisencounter with French language and French literature.

Mais on me posera la question: 'Pourquoi, dès lors, écrivez-vous en français?'perce que nous sommes des métis culturels, parce que, si nous sentons ennègres, nous nous exprimons en françaib, parce que le français est une langue àvocation universelle, que notre message s'adresse aøssi aux Français de Frence etaux autres hommes, parce que le français est une langue 'de gentillesse etd'honnêteté'. Qui a dit que c'était une langue grise et atone d'ingénieurs et dediplomates? Bien sûr, moi aussi, je I'ai dit un jour, pour les besoini de ma rhèse.On me le pardonnera. Car je sais ses ressources pour I'avoir goírté, mâché,enseigné, et qu'il est la langue des dieux. Ecoutez donc Corneille, Lautréamont,enseigné, et qu'il est la langue des dieux. Ecoutez doic Corneille,Rimbaud. Péìuv et Claud=el. Ê"outez le srand Fluso. Le frânc¿ensergne, et qu'tl est

Rimbaud, Péguy et É"o,ttez le.grand Hugo. Le français, ce.sont les

blame others, much as they may deserve such blame and condemnation. What s,eneed to do is to look back and try and find out where we wenr.wrong, u,here therain began to beat us.

'Here then is an adequate revolution for me to espouse - to help mv sociew{ain belief in itself and put away the complexes of ihe years of denigrátion attâreg4n belief in itself and put away the complexes o:

sell-abasement.' M orning Y et on Cre ation D ay, p. 4 4.self-abasement.' M orning I et on ire ation D ày, p. 4 4.

^,lince the peasant^and the v¡orker_had neveireally had any doubts about their

of denigràtion and

16

l7

18

t9

20

22

2324

Africannesss the reference could only have been tó the .edúcared, or the petry-bourgeois African. In fact if one subsiitutes the words 'the petry-boureeois' fãr tÉeword 'our' and 'the petry-bourgeois class' for 'my sociery, tL. sat"-errt i, aot.accurete, and describes well the assumed audience. Of-course, an ideologicjrevolution in this class would affect the whole sociew.D-avid Diop 'Conrribution to the Debate on Nation'al Po etry', présence Africaine 6,1956.David Diop, ibid.The term 'Afro-European Literature' may seem ro put roo much weight on theEuropeanness of the literature. Euro-African literature? probablv. thã Enelish.French, and Ponuguese componenm would then be 'Anglo-Afri""n lit".aírrre','Franco-African literature' or 'Luso-African literarure'. Vhat is imponant is thatthis minority literarure forms a distinct tradition t'hat needs a difierent term rodistinguish it from African Literatøre, instead of usurping the title AfricanLiterature as is the current practice in literary scholarship. There have even beenarrogant claims by some litèrary scholars who talk as if-the literature s,ritten inF.ur.opean

þnquageq is necessarily closer to the Africanness of its inspiration thansimilar worhs in African languages, tle languages of the majority. Sô thoroughlyhas the mìnority'Afro-EuropeanLiterature;(Eùro-African liierature?) usurpeJtÉname 'African literature'in the current scholarship that literature by Africans inAfrican languages is the one that needs qualification. Alben Gérarä's otherwisetimely book is titled.African Langaage Literatares.Chinua Achebe 'Africa and her '\lriters' ir Moming Yet on Creation Day, p. 27 .

grandes orgues qui se prêtent à tous les timbres, à tous les effets, des douceursles plus suaves aux fulgurances de I'orage. Il est, tour à tour ou en même temps,flûte, hautbois, trompefte, tamtam et même canon. Et puis le français nous a fãitdon de ses mots abstraits - si rares dans nos langues màternelles -, où les larmesse font pierres précieuses. Chez nous, les mots sont narurellement nimbés d'unhalo de sève et de sang; les mots du français rayonnenr de mille feux, comme desdiamants. Des fusées qui éclairent notre nuit.

See also Senghor's reply to e question on language in an interview by ArmandGuiber and published in Présence Africaine 7962 under the title, Leópold SédarSenghor:

Il est vrai que le français n'est pas ma langue maternelle. J'ai commencé del'apprendre à sept ans, par des mots comme'confirures'et'chocolat'. Aujourd'-hui, je pense naturellement en Français, et je comprend le Français - faut-il enavoir honte? Mieux qu'aucune autre langue. C'est dire que le Français n'est pluspour moi un 'véhicule étranger' mais Ia forme d'eipression naturelle de mapensée.

Ce qui m'est étrange dans le français, c'est peut-être son style:Son architecture classique. Je suis naturellement porré à gonfler d'image son

cadre éroit, sans la poussée de la chaleur émotionelle.

Zimbabute Herald August 1981.Chinua Achebe 'The African Iíriter and the English Language' in Moming Yet onCredtion Døy p.59.

25

as a Teacher', is instructive:'If I v¡ere God I would regard as the veryv/orsr our acceptance - for v¡hatever

reason - of racial inferiority. It is too late in the day to get worked up about it or to

32

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