Aug-Sept 2014 K.indd

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www.cosatu.org.za • AUG/SEPT 2014

One of the great advantages of English is that it is easy to speak at a simple level, though immensely complex in its idiom. It is because of this history and consideration of objective and subjective factors in the development of language which has imposed a dividing line amongst the African language activists into those who insist on asserting mother tongue as a way of decolonising the mind. In this regard Ngugi Wa Thiong’o argues that “Berlin of 1884 1 was effected through the sword and the bullet. But the night of the sword and the bullet was followed by the morning of the chalk and the blackboard. The physical violence of the battlefield was followed by the psychological violence of the classroom. [. . .] In my view language was the most important vehicle through which that power fascinated and held the soul prisoner. The bullet was the means of the physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation”. To illustrate his point Ngugi tells the story of his boyhood in Kenya, of how he was taught in his native Kikuyu language at school when suddenly in 1952 the British authorities forced schools to teach in English instead. Proof that Europe forced its languages on Africa. But the grouping which in the main is represented by Chinua Achebe insists that Africanness cannot necessarily be advanced through African languages exclusively but language including the English Language can be used to carry to the world African perspectives. They argue that it is the reflection of thoughts that must be African and not necessarily the use of African languages. Chinua Achebe disagrees with Ngugi Wathiong’o’s assertion and points out that Ngugi’s argument was simplistic and that Ngugi was not being completely honest, that he is using language to play politics. Achebe argues that the truth is that the British, both as rulers and Christian missionaries, generally taught Africans in their own languages.They had little interest in teaching English in Africa. The demand for European languages came mainly from the Africans themselves. He them points out through examples that for instance in Kenya

the Scottish missionaries taught the Kikuyu in Kikuyu. It was the Kikuyu themselves who set up English-language schools. In Nigeria African demand for English instruction goes as far back as the early 1800s. In Angola it was the Marxists who fought against white rule who pushed Portuguese as the country’s main language. He argues that those who write in English do so not because they want to write to the world in a world language – or to write to white people in a white language. They want to write to Nigerians and can only do that in English. If they wrote in their native Igbo, they would only be writing to part of Nigeria. Achebe argues that he understands that the British drew the borders of Nigeria, making English necessary as a side effect. But also points out that he also knows that there were borders for which millions of his fellow Igbos died in the civil war of the 1960s. Nigeria is a land divided by three large languages and 200 little ones. English is the only language that can hold it all together without favoring any one part of the country. And it is not just Nigeria. Ghana is the same way: English is the only language common to the whole country. And so it goes for many other African countries. Elsewhere Achebe admits that sometimes it is hard to express African thought in English, but he has used that to shape English instead of letting English shape him or limit what he can say. Achebe continues and points out that “the real question is not whether Africans could write in English but whether they ought to. Is it right that a man should abandon his mother tongue for someone else’s? He asked rhetorically and answered that “ It looks like a dreadful betrayal and produces a guilty feeling. But, for me, argues Achebe, there is no otherchoice.Ihavebeengiventhislanguage and I intend to use it. I hope, though, that there always will be men... who will choose to write in their native tongue and ensure that our ethnic literature will flourish side by side with the national ones. For those of us who opt for English, there is much work ahead and much excitement.

He then further referred to the writing by James Baldwin who said “My quarrel with the English language has been that the lan guage reflected none of my experiences. But now I began to see the matter another way. Perhaps the language was not my own because I had never attempted to use it, but had only learned to imitate it. If this were so, then it might be made to bear the burden of my experience if I could find the stamina to challenge it, and myself, to such a test. Achebe proceeded with his argument and pointed out that “I recognize, of course, that Baldwin’s problem is not exactly mine, but I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but al tered to suit its new African surroundings. But Ngugi Wathiog’o differs sharply with Achebe and argues that “like prophets and seers, writers are driven by a force, an irresistible desire to give to the inner impulses, the material form of sound, color and word. This desire cannot be held back by laws, tradition, or religious restrictions (or any limitations imposed by the spread of imperialist influence ). The song that must be sung will be sung; and if banned, they will hum it; and if humming is banned, they will dance it; and if dancing is banned, they will sing it silently to themselves or to the ears of those near, waiting for the appropriate moment to explode”. May I add that this they will do using the most intimate way of communication – their native language. Therefore, he concludes that, “killing the singing goose is the only way of stopping the golden voice of conscience” and this is exactly what colonialism seeked to do in Africa – to kill the goose He continues and argues that art in its broadest sense as self-expression needs three areas of freedom and amongst these he counted democratic access to the means of self-expression. He argued that you may have the talent, but do you have the means of expressing it? If one is denied pen and paper, or any writing machine, a typewriter or computer, then one is hampered by that denial. That’s why oppressive regimes deny imprisoned writers or workers in ideas access to pen and paper. One of the basic, most fundamental means of individual

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