Speaking Mother Tongues - The Challenge for Africa

 

This is a transcript of the chapter "Speaking Mother Tongues" in the book
"The Challenge for Africa, Wangari Maathai, Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Arrow Books 2009"

Language is an important component of culture and an essential means of binding the micro-nation together. In many Africa states during the colonial administration, the governments's local representative was a native. He would speak the micro-nation's language as well as the European language of the administration, and interpret between the local people and higher-level administrators, who were citizens of the colonial power. One of the legacies of the colonial era is that in many African nations, the governance, justice, and education systems are conducted in foreign languages, as is most media.

Even if another national language has been adopted, such as Kiswahili in the case of Kenya, the great mass of rural population neither speak nor understand it fluently. It is my belief that denying someone the ability to communicate with their government, at least at the local level, is one of the strongest forms of discrimination and, indeed, means op oppression and exclusion.

Most African elites speak and manage in a foreign language that's spoken and read only by a tiny minority and not understood at all by a large majority of their peoples. The elites communicate with each other in official languages, which are European, such as English and French, or national languages, like Kiswahili. Their grammar, pronunciation, and sentence structure are not at the level of a native speaker. However, since those they speak with are also speaking imperfectly, they don't know they are making mistakes. By and large, neither the elites nor the masses know each other's mother tongues, and rarely do we make an effort to learn them. As a result, we have very limited reach in being able to spread our ideas, or listen to others'. 

For most people, especially in the rural areas, the local government representative is still the expression of  the nationstate's government in their lives. If people are not allowed to communicate with, at a minimum, their local government in their own languages, it is almost as if they are living in a foreign country or being governed by a foreign power. Since they do not understand well, if at all, the official or national language, they are, in effect, completely alienated from the governance structures of their nation. This language divide is a crucial way of further distancing the government from the people. Throughout Africa, a country's managers speak to themselves, while those in whose name they govern don't understand them. The people may clap after they are spoken to by the person in authority, but for the most part, they haven't caught enough of what he or she has said to understand its meaning or relevance. If the nation is being run by a group of people that the mass of citizens can't understand, and when its leaders address only themselves, how can it move forward?

Micro-nations should have the opportunity to communicate effectively among themselves, by learning in schools to read and write fluently in their mother tongues; likewise, the government at the local level should communicate with micro-nationalities in their own languages. If the micro-nations were allowed to speak their languages and be adressed in them as well, it would encourage patriotism and a connection to the government and indeed the larger nation-state.

The Green Belt Movement has always insisted that the people participating in its programs be able to speak in their local languages. GBM's rationale is that because many Kenyans, especially those in rural areas with limited formal education, don't fully comprehend Kiswahili - and even less so English - they often sit silently when meetings are conducted in these languages. GBM staff wants to hear what the communities have to say and be sure that they can understand waht GBM is saying, too. If no GBM staff member speaks the local language, someone from the community who knows the mother tongue as well as Kiswahili or English is asked to translate. Such a practice is still not common, even among those organizations doing development work, including NGOs, and indeed is sometimes criticized as "promoting tribalism."

Within Africa, one notable exception to the states' reliance on foreign languages is the Republic of South Africa, which has acknowled its diversity by enshrining in its constitution no fewer than eleven official languages  - including Setswana, Afrikaans, English, isiXhosa, and isiZulu. In doing this, South Africa has established a bedrock upon which it can build a multiracial society that both respects its diversity and encourages identification with the country as a whole. South Africa is at an advantage because it is a relatively wealthy country, and therefore can afford to have multiple languages taught and represented in official documents. Whether or not the cost of having such a polyglot state of robust micro-nations outweighs the intangible benefits of a country that understands itself may be difficult to say at this time, but I believe it is worth the wager. 

To encourage better communication among Africa's micro-nations, African states could decide that every child would study his or her own language in school until the fourth or even the eighth grade. This would enable them to read literature, or the Bible, in their mother tongue, helping ensure not only literacy, but also a sense of their identity through their language. In the higher grade levels, the government could mandate that each child learn one or even two international languages, as well as a language of one of the other micro-nations. In this way, each citizen would know their own culture more deeply, and also be able to communicate effectively with fellow citizens elsewhere in the country.

In Nigeria, for instance, while four hundred languages are spoken, about half of the population speaks one of three: Hausa, Igbo, or Yoruba. So a Yoruba child in Nigeria could learn Yoruba well enough to read, write, and speak it fluently, plus Igbo or Hausa, the languages of the other major Nigerian micro-nations or another, less commonly spoken language. He would also learn English. In Senegal, a child who grew up speaking Pulaar, the language of the Peul and Toucouleur micro-nations, could choose to study Wolof, the language of Senegal's largest micro-nation and the "lingua franca" of the capital, Dakar. She would also learn French, and, if she wanted, English, too.

In Kenya, I could envision a Kikuyu child choosing strategically to learn Luo, since Luos are the third-largest micro-nation (after Kikuyus and Luhyas). Since Kikuyus can understand the Kambas, learning Luo would broaden the mind and the cultural references of the Kikuyu child, so that she would be as comfortable in Nyanza Province on the shores of Lake Victoria as she is in Nyeri in the Central Highlands. Likewise, if as an adolescent or adult she walked into a market in Kisumu and found the majorit yof people speaking Luo, she would not feel out of place, even though she was raised as a Kikuyu. She would visit a local restaurant and order local food, and nobody would feel embarrassed that the food is not the sort served in Hilton hotels or in New York, but is native to the region - and as worthy a cuisine as any other. Her life would be enriched by the experience; the local community would understand that a Kikuyu had made an effort to understand their cultural and linguistic reality; and possibilities for mutual cooperation will have been enhanced. The same would be true of someone raised in the Senegalese countryside speaking Pulaard and spending time in Dakar; or a Yoruba from southwest Nigeria traveling to, or even settling in, the Hausa-speaking north. 

Smaller communities might be at a disadvantage, because children and their parents might decide that it would be more valuable to learn a language belonging to a larger micro-nation. This, however, might be an opportunity for greater political and linguistic coordination within or between micro-nations that could enable communities to join together to express their identity more effectively.

If instituted, such policies in Africa have the potential to bind nations not merely through the promotion of national or official languages that people don't know well, but because self-confident micro-nations would develop, with their own cultures and languages. It is, of course, possible that wider knowledge of languages might encourage people to travel and settle elsewhere, which could, as it has in the past, lead to conflict with local communities; but it's also possible that a greater sense of self would make individuals more creative and confident within their own communities, and less likely to be hostile to outsiders. Indeed, this mobility could create greater cohesion, since members of micro-nations would not only be found in their traditional homelands. This could help reduce the ethnic identification, implicit or explicit, of many African political parties. Such "melting pots" of micro-nations are already the norm in African metropolises.

A relatively inexpensive and direct way of communicating in Africa is through the radio. In the 1990s, many African states refused lincenses to independent media outlets, including radio stations. They kept dissident voices out of the media or employed the state-run television and radio stations in propaganda efforts. Since then, as part of the (albeit often slow) opening of democratic space, the media have become notably freer and more diverse in Africa. State monopolies have loosened, and the Internet and satellite communication have created new channels for information and opinion. 

In my view, local radio is a crucial means for micro-nations to reclaim their languages and  cultures, as well as to bring greater cohesion to the nation-state. Not only can people listen to national news and opinion, but increasingly they can  find radio programming in their mother tongue. Some critics rightly point out that local radio can be used to promote hate and incite violence. This was the case in Rwanda in 1994, when Radion Télévision Libre des Mille Collines actively called upon Hutus to murder Tutsis and moderate Hutus. In Kenya in 2008, charges that they magnified ethic tensions were leveled at local-language radio hosts.

Distressing as these examples are, the answer is not to shut down this avenue of communication by closing all local-language radio stations. It is the attitudes of those speaking into the microphones in the studios that need to be addressed. National media codes of conduct and legislation banning hate speech and incitement to violence could be considered to ensure that these outlets are used to inform and explain, not for broadcasting the rants of demogogues and bigots. The danger, of course, is that such structures of governance could be used by the leadership to squelch dissenting voices, but the media could be proactive in this area: for instance, by engaging the government in a dialogue about the media's behavior, so as to avoid freedom of speech being compromised by too much government control. 

One individual who would have benefited from the expansion of local-language radio was my mother, who died at the age of ninety-four a mere three months before the first Kikuyu-language FM radio station opened. She would have loved to listen to that station - speaking to her in a language she would have understood. As it could for millions of other Africans, especially the elderly and those who do not have access to newspapers or television, it would have opened and enriched her world. That is what I would like to see happen for the millions like her across Africa.

"I am quite literally restoring myself - as, I believe, is every African - because who we are is bound up in the rivers and streams, the trees and the valleys. It is bound up in our languages, rich in aphorisms from the natural world and our fragile and almost forgotten past. We are fighting of our children, and the children of the men and women who grew up with us, and the future generations of other species." P. 287-288

(The Challenge for Africa, Wangari Maathai, Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Arrow Books 2009).